Thunder Across the Swamp

Confederate President Jefferson Davis hoped one of his commanders could baffle the enemy in his designs on the Mississippi Valley. Confederate Major General Richard Taylor knew that the only long- term solution to protecting the twin river citadels at Vicksburg and Port Hudson was an active offensive. To that end he had already built a modest but well-supplied army while his powerful Rebel gunboat flotilla grew daily. Taylor just needed time. With the enemy army under General Nathaniel P. Banks fixated east of the Mississippi, Taylor believed he might just see his plans put into action With luck, the Confederate army might regain territory lost in Louisiana and its flag might once against float over New Orleans. The Union army would then have much larger issues to worry about.

Taylor had cause to be optimistic. The Federal Army and navy had been trying the direct approach against Vicksburg and Port Hudson with mounting casualties, lost ships, and growing frustration. “There is no use longer deceiving the public, for the Banks expedition is a failure,” wrote a Massachusetts journalist. “Much as I admire Gen. Banks I am forced to admit that he is not the soldier I judged him to be nor the general this department needs.”

As Rebel plans matured, time grew short for Union efforts. Banks needed to redeem himself, and his officers suggested an indirect approach west of the Mississippi, working from enclaves captured the previous fall, as the the key to victory. “The Teche county was to the war in Louisiana what the Shenandoah Valley was to the war in Virginia” Captain John William De Forest of the 12th Connecticut Infantry noted. “It was sort of a back alley, parallel to the main street wherein the heavy fighting must go on”. Instead of wasting his army against enemy entrenchments and prepared positions, Banks decided instead to roll up Bayou Teche, destroy Taylor’s small army, and isolate Port Hudson from its groceries. Capturing places like Franklin, New Iberia, Opelousas, and Alexandria, he might even open the possibility of cooperation with the army under General Ulysses S. Grant operating against Vicksburg.

Taylor, caught by surprise and beaten to the punch, reacted with typical pugnacity “To retreat without fighting was . . . to abandon Louisiana”, he wrote....read more...