myself for ever; and, when running a risk in their cause, I do not want to be deserted. One of my

officers has already been asked 'If we would not burn our gunboats as soon as the army left?' speaking as if a gunboat was a very ordinary affair, and could be burned with indifference. I inclose two notes I received from Generals Banks and Stone. There is a faint attempt to make a victory out of this; but two or three such victories would cost us our existence."

Again, on page 166 of the same volume appears this despatch from Lieutenant - General Grant, at Culpepper, Virginia, to General Halleck, Chief of Staff, at Washington :

"You can see from General Brayman's despatch to me something of General Banks's disaster." Concerning the battle of Pleasant Hill, General Banks reports (p. 326):

"The whole of the reserves were now ordered up, and in turn we drove the enemy, continuing the pursuit until night compelled us to halt. The battle of the 9th was desperate and sanguinary. The defeat of the enemy was complete, and his loss in officers and men more than double that sustained by our forces. There was nothing in the immediate position and condition of the two armies to prevent a forward movement the next morning, and orders were given to prepare for an advance. But representations subsequently received from General Franklin and all the general officers of the 19th corps, as to the condition of their respective com

mands for immediate active operations against the enemy, caused a suspension of this order; and a conference of the general officers was held in the evening, in which it was determined to retire upon Grand Ecore the following day. The reasons urged for this course were: 1. That the absence of water made it absolutely necessary to advance or retire without delay. General Emory's command had been without rations for two days; and the train, which had been turned to the rear during the battle, could not be put in condition to move forward upon the single road through dense woods, in which it stood, without great difficulty and much loss of time." Again, on page 13, General Banks states :"The enemy was driven from the field. as clear a rout as it was possible for any army to suffer. After consulting with my officers, I concluded, against my own judgment, to fall back to Grand Ecore and reorganise. We held the field of battle. Our dead were buried. The wounded men were brought in and placed in the best hospitals we could organise, and surgeons were left with them, with provisions, medicines, and supplies; and at daybreak we fell back to Grand Ecore."

It was

Here the proportion of fiction to fact surpasses that of sack to bread in Sir John's tavern bill; and it may be doubted if a mandarin from the remotest province of the Celestial Empire ever ventured to send such a report to Peking. General Fessenden's testimony, given above, shows that the army marched during the night of the 9th, and continued to Grand Ecore, where it intrenched; and General A. L. Lee's,

that the main army joined him at that place on the evening of the 10th. Twenty of the thirty-six miles between Pleasant Hill and Grand Ecore were passed on the 10th by my cavalry before the rear of the enemy's column was seen; yet General Banks officially reports that his army left Pleasant Hill at daybreak of the 10th. Homeric must have been the laughter of his troops when this report was published.

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CHAPTER XI.

ESCAPE OF BANKS AND PORTER.

FROM my resting-place on the ground at Pleasant Hill, after the battle of the 9th, I was aroused about IO P.M. by General Kirby Smith, just arrived from Shreveport. This officer disapproved of further pursuit of Banks, except by a part of our mounted force, and ordered the infantry back to Mansfield. He was apprehensive that the troops on the transports above would reach Shreveport, or disembark below me and that place. In addition, Steele's column from Arkansas caused him much uneasiness, and made him unwilling for my troops to increase their distance from the capital of the "Trans-Mississippi Department." It was pointed out that the water in Red River was falling, and navigation becoming more and more difficult; that I had a staff officer watching the progress of the fleet, which was not accompanied by more than three thousand men-too few to attempt a landing--and that they would certainly hear of Banks's defeat, and seek to rejoin him at Grand Ecore. As to Steele, he was more than a hundred miles distant from Shreveport,

harassed by Price's force; he must learn of Banks's misfortune, and, leading but a subsidiary column, would retire to Little Rock. Banks, with the remains of his beaten army, was before us; and the fleet of Porter, with barely water to float upon. We had but to strike vigorously to capture or destroy both. But it was written that the sacrifices of my little army should be wasted, and, on the morning of the 10th, I was ordered to take all the infantry and much of the horse to Mansfield.

The Bayou Pierre, three hundred feet wide and too deep to ford, leaves the Red River a few miles below Shreveport, and after a long course, in which it frequently expands into lakes, returns to its parent stream three miles above Grand Ecore, dividing the pine-clad hills on the west from the alluvion of the river on the east. Several roads lead from the interior to landings on the river, crossing Bayou Pierre by ferries. One from Pleasant Hill to Blair's Landing, sixteen miles, has been mentioned. Another led from Mansfield to Grand Bayou Landing, eighteen miles. Despatches from Captain M'Closkey informed me that the enemy's fleet had passed this last place on the morning of the 9th, pushing slowly up river, impeded by low water. Feeling assured that intelligence of Banks's defeat would send the fleet back to Grand Ecore, and hoping to cut off its communication, at dawn of the 11th I sent General Bagby, with a brigade of horse and a battery, from Mansfield to Grand Bayou Landing. Before reaching the ferry at Bayou Pierre, he ascertained that the fleet had turned back on the afternoon of the