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| The last stronghold on the Mississippi Confederate fortifications on the bluff overlooking the Mississippi at Port Hudson, Louisiana. At Port Hudson the east bank of the River rises steeply in a bluff eighty feet high, forming a perfect natural fortress. When Breckinridge failed in his attempt to recapture Baton Rouge in 1862, he retired to Port Hudson, thirty miles farther up the River, and by the middle of August the fortifying of that place was well advanced, the object being to hold the Mississippi between this point and Vicksburg, so that supplies coming from Arkansas by way of the Red River would not be cut off from the Confederacy. Within the heavy parapets, twenty feet thick, the Confederates mounted twenty siege-guns along the bluff, completely commanding the River. It was therefore no light task that Farragut took upon himself when on the night of March 14th he attempted to run by these batteries with his fleet. Five of his seven vessels were disabled, the Mississippi running aground and being abandoned and burned by her commander. Farragut, in the famous Hartford, with the Albatross lashed to her side, barely escaped running aground under the guns of the batteries in the darkness. Finally he got safely by, and the object of the gallant fight was accomplished. |
