Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

[483] our troops at very long range upon the enemy, which would have been disastrous. Suffice it to say that the enemy, after three hours and a half of fighting, the fog having lifted, were repulsed in full run, leaving their dead and wounded in piles in our hands. Colonel Cahill, of the Ninth Connecticut, was left in command. He cautiously sent out scouts to a very considerable distance, and found the houses on the route filled with the dead and wounded. A flag of truce came from the victorious (?) General Breckinridge, asking leave for a party to come in and bury the dead and to bring out General Clark who had been wounded. That flag of truce was answered that the task of burying the dead had already been substantially accomplished, and that General Clark was in the house of a personal friend of his.

The ram Arkansas, from which so much had been expected, had come down the river and run herself on shore about four miles and a half above Baton Rouge. Breckinridge says he had no information of this until the morning of the day of the battle. As soon as he learned it he sent out a party, at the head of which was one of his staff officers, the late Governor Wickliffe of Kentucky. Wickliffe was in my office later with a flag of truce, and he told me that he went on board the Arkansas and that her crew set her on fire with her guns all shotted, and that she exploded on her way down river. This was stated to me in the presence of Commodore William Porter (a brother of Admiral Porter), who had just before stated to me that that morning he went up with the iron-clad Essex, from which nobody had heard anything during the night, and that he met the Arkansas coming down, opened fire upon her, and by his second shot she blew up. Wickliffe replied that nobody fired any shot at her, and that they did not see or hear from the Essex.

I knew Wickliffe before I knew Porter and his reputation, so that I believed Wickliffe and not Porter, although in my first despatch about the battle of Baton Rouge, I gave Porter and the Essex the credit of having done that which Porter said they had done. Soon after, I was informed by Farragut from up river that Porter's account was not true, and I corrected my subsequent report in that regard.

It will be observed that I state that the Arkansas was put on shore. My ground for this is that there are no tides in the river, and how