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[53] some 4,500 men, was menacing it, Banks sent General Weitzel with reinforcements, who drove the Confederates back again.

Up to January 14, 1863, on which day the writer under instructions completed a detailed map of the Mississippi River, from New Orleans to about thirty miles above Vicksburg, and possibly up to the middle of March, when the demonstration was first made against Port Hudson, as already related, it had undoubtedly been General Banks' intention to carry out his implied instructions from Washington to form a junction with Grant at Vicksburg and take command of that campaign; but the increased strength of Port Hudson from about 1,500 men in October, 1862, to 16,000 in January, 1863, unknown to the government when those instructions were given, now made it evident that such a plan of campaign might be a questionable one, but as late as May 17, 1863, Banks had not abandoned it. Yet it seemed clear that Port Hudson, with its large army, ought not to be left between our forces and New Orleans, as it would be if Banks marched on Vicksburg, unless we wished to lose New Orleans. The plan of campaign, viz., to unite with Grant at Vicksburg, which Banks had originally been instructed to do, but which he on May 13 came near abandoning, and a little later changed to one against Port Hudson, was known in its earlier stages as the ‘Teche campaign.’ It was to leave sufficient forces at Baton Rouge and at New Orleans to hold those places; and then, aided and protected by the gunboat fleet, to cross Berwick Bay, and thence to march up the shores of the Bayou Teche and the Bayou Boeuf to Alexandria on the Red River, from thence returning down the Red River to the Mississippi, and to land north of Port Hudson, cut it off from communication with Vicksburg and from all succor; and then either to invest it and capture it, or to join General Grant's forces at Vicksburg. The passage of Farragut's boats past Port Hudson in March rendered this feasible; and Banks succeeded admirably in carrying out this plan of campaign.

The Bayous Teche and Boeuf are nearly the western limits Of the ‘Louisiana Lowlands,’ a name endeared in song and

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