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Later in the year, a motley horde of
white and
red marauders, composed of the united forces of
Quantrell and Standwatie, the
Creek chief, attacked one of
Colonel Phillips's outposts, near
Fort Gibson,
in the
Indian Territory.
A contest of over four hours ensued, when the assailants were repulsed and driven across the
Arkansas River.
After that there was no fighting of importance in all the region between the
Red and
Missouri rivers for some.
time.
Let us now observe what occurred farther southward in the region west of the
Mississippi, over which
General N. P. Banks held control, as commander of the Gulf Department.
When
Banks suddenly withdrew from
Alexandria, on the
Red River, and marched to invest
Port Hudson — a service which required nearly all of his available troops--
General Dick Taylor, whom he had driven into the wilds of
Western Louisiana,
1 took heart, and soon reappeared with about four thousand followers, including a large number of
Texas cavalry.
He reoccupied
Alexandria and
Opelousas, and garrisoned
Fort de Russy, early in June.
He then swept rapidly through
the
State, over the route he had been driven a few weeks before, and pushed toward New Orleans, hoping to find it sufficiently weak in defenders to allow him to capture it, or at least by his menace to draw
Banks from
Port Hudson, to defend it.
Banks's outposts were drawn into
Brashear City, where there seems to have been very little preparation made for a defense of that important interior post, and the vast amount of National property collected there.
Even its only railway communication with New Orleans appears to have been strangely undefended, and it was not until word suddenly reached
Lieutenant-Colonel Stickney, in command at
Brashear, that the
Confederates had struck the road at La Fourche Crossing, near
Thibodeaux, that a suspicion of danger in that quarter was entertained.
Stickney at once hastened with the greater portion of his command to oppose that dangerous movement, and, in so doing he left
Brashear exposed.
Taylor's troops found little difficulty in raiding all over the country between
Brashear and the
Mississippi at New Orleans.
They captured little posts here and there; and some Texans, dashing into
Plaquemine,
on the
Mississippi, captured some convalescent prisoners, and burnt four steamers, seventy-five bales of cotton, and a barge.
At the same time a co-operating force, under the
