Louisiana Native Guards: The Black Military Experience During the Civil War

5. I Regard It as an Experiment

5 I REGARD IT AS AN EXPERIMENT The major objective for the Union army in the Mississippi Valley in 1863 was to wrestle control of the Mississippi River from the Confederates. To that end, Ulysses S. Grant pushed his army slowly down the west bank of the Mississippi River,looking for a way to gain a foothold on dry ground below Vicksburgfrom which to launch an assault on the Rebel fortress. Nathaniel P. Banks was expected to make his way up the river from New Orleans to effect a juncturewith Grant at Vicksburg , splitting the Confederacy in two.1 The major obstacle confronting Banks was Port Hudson, a well-fortified Confederate stronghold clinging to high bluffs on a hairpin bend of the Mississippi River some fourteen miles north of Baton Rouge. Banks tested the Rebel fortifications at Port Hudson on March 14 with a feeble diversionary attack while Farragut attempted to run past the batteries covering the river.The whole affair was a disaster; Banksaccomplished nothing, and Farragut's fleet was badly shot up. Nevertheless, the admiral did make it past Port Hudson with two ships and was able to establish 1. C. Grover to Banks's AAG, December 17, 1862, OR, Vol. XV, p. 191; also Special Orders No. 29, December 15, 1862, ibid., 609. 48 I R E G A R D I T A S A N E X P E R I M E N T contact with Grant's forces near Vicksburg. The Confederate stronghold at Port Hudson still held firm, however, and Banks fell back to Baton Rouge to reconsider his options. By early April Banks decided to bypass Port Hudson. Moving up Bayou Teche to Vermillionville (now Lafayette) and on to Alexandria, Banks dispersed all Confederate attempts to resist his advance. Having accomplished his objective of opening a water route to the Mississippi River via the Atchafalaya Basin, Banks abandoned Alexandria and marched his army down the Red River toward the Confederate citadel at Port Hudson. ByMay 22 Banks had crossed the Mississippi River and invested Port Hudson from the north, while Union troops from Baton Rouge sealed off the fortress from the south. The siege of Port Hudson had begun. The 1st and 3rd Regiments of the Native Guards did not accompany Banks's army into central Louisiana but were left behind in Baton Rouge to fret over their inaction. As often happens when troops are frustrated by the dull routine of garrison duty, disciplinary infractions occurred. In late April, a local woman, who had nursed young Lieutenant John Crowder back to health when he was sick with the fever, visited the 1st Regiment's camp, accompanied by a young girl. A private soldier, probably thinking to shock the lady, unbuttoned his trousers and exposed his penis. Captain Alcide Lewis observed the incident but failed to discipline the man. When Crowder found out what had happened, he promptly had the soldier arrested, which made Lewis' inaction look like dereliction of duty. Lewis was incensed, but Crowder did not care. "My opinion of Capt. Lewis and Lieut. Moss has been reduced since my arrival in this city," he wrote his mother. "They are the most pucillanamous dirty Low life men that I ever seen. Likemany others they have no respect for no one. they seem to think there is not a woman that they cannot sleep with, every woman seems to be a common woman with them, they have grown hateful in my sight."2 Two weeks later there was another incident, this one involving the 1st 2. Crowder to his mother, April 27,1863, in Glatthaar, "The Civil War Through the Eyes of a Sixteen-Year-Old Black Officer," 213. It is not known whether Crowder's friend, identified only as Mrs. Marsh, was white or black. From Crowder's description, Mrs. Marsh was apparently well situated (Crowder to his mother, April 18, 1863, ibid., 211). The 1860 census recorded no Marshes in Baton Rouge, although an "M. Marsh" resided in Port Hudson, just up the road. M. Marsh was a thirty-eight-year-old white physician born in New York. 49 T H E L O U I S I A N A N A T I V E G U A R D S Regiment's colonel, Spencer H. Stafford.3 On May 13, a woodcutting detail from the 1st Regiment was stopped at the picket line because...