. . . And now I desire, most respectfully, to decline the command of the district which has just been created, and which, as we have not yet secured a foot of ground on the Teche, ought properly to be called the District of La Fourche. The reason I must decline is because accepting the command would place me in command of all the troops in the district,
This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
[496]
On the same day, I pushed forward from Algiers a column consisting of the Eighth Vermont Volunteers and the First Regiment of Native Guards (colored). They were to proceed along the Opelousas Railroad to Thibodeaux for the purpose of forwarding supplies to Brashear City and General Weitzel's expedition, and to give the loyal planters an opportunity to forward their sugar and cotton to New Orleans.
I believed that I could easily hold that portion of Louisiana, by far the richest, and extend the movement so far as to cut off substantially all supplies from Texas to the enemy the coming winter by this route, especially if I should receive early reinforcements.
The expedition from Algiers was commanded by Col. Stephen Thomas, of Vermont.
No better or braver officer was there in my command to my knowledge.
Weitzel landed at Donaldsonville on Sunday, October 26.
He soon found the enemy in force, and a sharp engagement ensued in which sixteen men and one officer were killed and seventy-three men wounded.
The enemy suffered largely: their commanding officer, Colonel McPheeters, was killed; a large number of men were killed and wounded, and two hundred and sixty prisoners and one piece of artillery were captured.
I afterwards sent forward to aid Colonel Thomas in opening the railroad, the Second Regiment of Native Guards (colored), under command of Colonel Stafford. Colonel Thomas, aided by the untiring labors of the colored troops, opened the Opelousas Railroad, rebuilt burned bridges, routed the enemy, and then was ordered to report to Weitzel and form a portion of his force.
On the 1st of November I received a report from General Weitzel that everything had been done which he had been ordered to do; that the Native Guards had opened and picketed the Opelousas Railroad; and on the 2d he reported “the country as safe to travel now as Canal Street.”
But on the 5th of November I received a very surprising despatch from Weitzel, from which I quote:--
A. M. Thayer and Co. 1892.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.