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¬ 5 ¬ “I Cannot Tell How It Was I Escaped” The Bloody Battle at Milliken’s Bend T he texans’ spirits were high. With over 350 miles behind them in slightly more than a month and after more than a year in the service, most of it spent in fruitless marching and countermarching, they had met the enemy and forced him to flee. In all of their travels across Arkansas and Louisiana, McCulloch’s Brigade of Walker’s Division had not yet had the opportunity to meet the Yankees. They did so, for the first time, on May 31, 1863, at Perkins’ Landing, Louisiana, about twenty-five miles southwest of Vicksburg. Maj. Gen. John G. Walker gave McCulloch the mission of capturing “a camp of instruction and insurrection for negroes” at Perkins’ Landing.1 The Rebels set out for Perkins’ Landing at about 9 p.m. on the evening of May 30. They left Buck’s plantation, the head of navigation on the Tensas River, and marched twelve miles out to the landing on the Mississippi River. As the sun rose, McCulloch formed his men in line and advanced.2 The Federal outpost was held by a single regiment. Far outnumbered by the full brigade under McCulloch, Col. Richard Owen of the all-white 60th Indiana Infantry tried to buy some time with his picket line. While he did so, the remainder of his regiment, with the aid of about three hundred black laborers, built makeshift breastworks out of cotton bales close to the river. The Confederate troops rushed on, into the abandoned camp of the enemy. There they found breakfast still on the fire and began to help themselves. McCulloch quickly reestablished order, and the Southerners continued their advance.3 Crossing an open field, the brigade came under fire from a Yankee gunboat . McCulloch ordered most of his infantry to take shelter behind a levee but kept Col. Richard Waterhouse’s 19th Texas Infantry in the field to support Capt. William Edgar’s artillery. “They did their duty nobly,” McCulloch wrote in his report. “Colonel Waterhouse was in front of his regiment, exhibiting coolness and courage worthy of imitation by all officers and men.” The men themselves “stood up under the fire like a wall of masonry.” Perhaps so, but at milliken’s bend 84 least one man in the ranks thought it an unfair fight. E. D. McDaniel later told his wife, “We could not do anything with musketts against the gunnboats I did not like to stand there and be shot at and not get to shoot any not that I am Blood thirsty or want to kill anyone but when I am where they are shooting at me then I want to shoot some myself.”4 Captain Edgar brought two fieldpieces, known as “6-pounders” for the weight of the solid shot projectile they fired, into action to attack the river transport on which the enemy was trying to make an escape. However, Edgar quickly found himself the underdog in an artillery duel with the Federal ironclad Carondelet, which had come to aid Owen’s overwhelmed garrison. Armed with a variety of heavy artillery, the Carondelet outgunned Edgar, but, like David meeting Goliath, the Confederate captain was not intimidated. Edgar’s guns and the Carondelet peppered each other with nearly three hundred shells between them. The ironclad was predictably unaffected, but Edgar’s men had nothing to fear either, as almost all of Carondelet’s shots went far overhead. Despite the noise and bluster of the big guns on the river, McCulloch’s Brigade sustained few casualties. Only one man was killed, Capt. Gallatin Smith, a staff officer. More than a year after Walker’s Division was organized and left Texas, Smith was the division’s first man to die in battle.5 While the Carondelet blazed away, the transport Forest Queen sidled up to the riverbank and evacuated the 60th Indiana. Meanwhile, McCulloch ordered up artillery and infantry reinforcements, and Generals Walker and Taylor had arrived as well. As McCulloch realized his enemy had left, the Rebels began ransacking the Union camp, taking what they could and destroying the rest. Some of the men who had written letters full of foreboding to their loved ones before the battle now glowed with confidence and victory. “If this is all the fear I don’t mind a battle,” wrote Capt. Elijah Petty. He and others like him would have their braggadocio challenged a week later.6 Losses on...

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