Part 4

March 26th. A beautiful morning with the birds singing merrily. I got into camp about eleven o'clock. We had orders about nine o'clock in the evening to be ready for marching. It was very rainy weather and there was very little done in camp.

March 27th. We had orders to march and all was packing and confusion. I was ordered to help put our tents and baggage aboard the boat, the St. Mary. We had all our things aboard this little craft about five o'clock in the afternoon. At last, after being over a week packing up, waiting for orders, we were on the move. We left Baton Rouge at five o'clock and reached this place at nine, (as luck would have it) in a rain-storm. Lay on the ground under the trees all night.

March 28th. We just received marching orders again. Where we were going to nobody seemed to know. I supposed our destination was Brashear City and Burwick Bay, but beyond that nothing was known. Rumor said, Texas and Red River. We took tents and all our baggage and did not expect again to see Baton Rouge.

Sunday morning, March 29th. Arrived in Donaldsonville about nine o'clock last evening. Slept on the ground all night. In the morning had some hard-tack and coffee. We received a mail. I got several letters, one was from mother. I went to a Catholic meeting. Donaldsonville is an exceedingly pretty place, very old-fashioned, shingled-roofed town. A bayou extends through the center, some three hundred yards wide; it runs to the gulf and is so deep that a frigate lies in it about a mile from where it sets in from the Mississippi. The catalpa and China-bell trees were in full blossom and the pecans were leafing out. There was a Catholic church here that looked like a barn outside but quite pretty inside, as I saw for myself, and thither the people who were mostly French and Spanish, were flocking. We here enjoyed the luxury of seeing ladies, in clean white petticoats, walking the streets. And really we had to laugh, for actually those petticoats were the most home-like things we had seen for some months. "Billy" Wilson's Zouaves, who were in our division, were placed under arrest and had their arms taken from them. They got very drunk coming down on the boat and mutinied.

March 30th. You can't imagine how beautiful the flowers were looking. Cherokee roses, jessamines, jonquils, and a great variety of flowers were in blossom. We lived out under the trees with the rain pattering upon us. We were greatly bothered with vermin, which it is almost impossible to pick off. Campaigning evidently agreed with me, for I had gained several pounds since leaving New York.

April 1st. We were on the march very early. Our brigade went ahead as skirmishers. We went through a very pleasant country. We started about seven o'clock on the morning of April 2nd. Our company was guard of the baggage train. We went through a place called Thibodeaux, a very pretty village. We stopped "a right smart way," from Thibodeaux, as the contrabands used to tell us when we inquired the distance of them. We were there only a short time, when we were crowded on to some freight cars like cattle and transported to Bayou Boeuf, arriving at ten o'clock at night, pretty well fagged out.

We had some awfully hot and fatiguing marches and the boys were very foot-sore. I held out wonderfully; did not so much as raise a sign of a blister, though carrying a rubber blanket, a heavy overcoat, canteen full of water, haversack, with two days' rations in it,--by no means a small load as I found after a few miles' march. My nose and cheeks underwent a skinning operation on our Port Hudson expedition and I felt quite badly when I found that they were again peeling.

April 3rd. We have fixed up our shelter tents, and I helped unload our baggage. The day was pleasant but Bayou Boeuf was a very unpleasant place. A comrade came into our camp from the Twelfth Regiment, C.V. His name was Wells Hubbard of Glastonbury, Conn.

April 5th, Sunday. On camp guard I was stationed in front of General Grover's headquarters for the night. During the day we crossed over the Bayou Lefourche to the main part of the town and spent some time in exploring it. It must have been an exceedingly beautiful place before the bombardment a short time before. Many of the houses were lying in ruins. Then there was a very pretty cemetery embowered in red and white roses which hung in clusters over the monuments. I saw on some of the graves fresh wreaths of roses and pinks and on many pictures were hanging showing the weeping survivors beneath a weeping willow. Blue pinks seemed to be a favorite flower and were planted around a great many of the graves. There were some old tombstones at that place. On one was the following inscription:

"Affliction sore, long time I bore; Physicians were in vain, Till God did please, that death should come, And ease me of my pain."

Again we were all packed up and on the move at about 8 A.M. The road, in fact all the way to Thibodeaux, lay along the Bayou Lefourche, a clear and cool stream, on which our steamers were passing bearing the sick and baggage. As we wound along under the catalpa and China-ball trees, the people were out on the piazzas watching us; this seemed to be their occupation almost everywhere. Such a slovenly set you never saw,--the women with frizzled hair and slipshod shoes. They were evidently very poor. But, oh, the fine clover fields we passed. The heart of a cow would have leaped with joy at the sight; and it was just so all the way to Thibodeaux. It must have been a splendid farming country. Sugar cane and cotton fields were also looking fine. After marching about twelve miles we encamped at Paincourtville, pretty well tired out. There were plenty of chickens, pigs, and sheep running loose of which we were not slow to avail ourselves. About the last thing I saw when I had lain down for the night was a porker squealing for all he was worth and charging blindly among the camp-fires over bunks and slumbering soldiers pursued by a band of shouting men discharging all kinds of deadly missiles at him.

April 7th. We were off at 7 A.M. Still among clover fields. On our march we passed some beautiful plantations; one was especially so. It was perfectly embowered in trees, had a smooth-cut lawn. There was a fountain and some swans swimming in the pond in front of the house. On the veranda there were two ladies working and some little children were playing. It was the prettiest sight I had seen in Louisiana. It fairly stilled the boys, seeing those children, and I heard more than one tough fellow sing out "God bless them." At another little white cottage we saw a lady whose husband had fallen in the army. She sent her slaves out where we were with pails of cool water. It was a simple act but we could not help blessing her for it.

And then we resumed our dusty way. The heat and dust were very intense; not a breath of air was stirring. We marched fourteen miles to Labadieville, and camped for the night on a sugar plantation, where we just had sugar and molasses to our hearts' content. Early the next morning we started in a flood of moonlight that silvered the grass with dew-drops. There is something very fascinating in camping-out; the camp-fires far and wide, the hum and bustle everywhere. It makes one forget his troubles.

April 9th. We had marching orders this morning. We marched as far as Brashear City, and camped for the night. It was the hardest day's march of all. The men staggered over the road from fatigue and sore feet. We felt better when we passed from the road into the clover field to lie down. At 6 P.M. came the order to fall in and we were ordered on board the little steamer, St. Mary. We stayed there all night,--expecting to start every minute.

April 11th. Although it was a small boat, the Fifty-second Massachusetts, the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth Connecticut, and a battery with horses, were just packed on board. Just imagine how we must have been crowded together.

April 12th. We steamed out of the bay at 9 o'clock, the Clifton flagship ahead, then the Calhoun, Arizona, Laurel Hill, and St. Mary, also several tugs. We were now under convoy of these gunboats; they were to pilot us up through the chain of lakes from Burwick Bay into Grand Lake, where we arrived about 12 o'clock. It was an extremely hot day for so many to be crowded together, and we slept but little.

April 13th. We went ashore at one o'clock. There was some firing on our picket line at night. I was detailed to go back to the lake and help bring up some rations where our forces were stationed. There was a heavy thunder shower and we slept but little all night.

I want to say here that we landed our forces, after sending out a party to reconnoitre under cover of the Calhoun, which shelled the woods while we came ashore. Our object was to cut off the retreat of the Confederates while Emory's and Sherman's division crossed Burwick Bay to attack them.

April 14th. On this date came the hard-fought battle of Irish Bend. We started out at daylight as skirmishers without any breakfast. When we had gone about a mile, brisk firing commenced on both sides. We advanced very fast, loading and firing as we went. When we had advanced very near the Rebel batteries and supposed that everything was going well, we were flanked by the enemy. We were immediately ordered to fall back a short distance. The Thirteenth Connecticut took our places soon in solid column, when the tune changed and the Confederates retreated into the woods, whence they came. When our brigade got together and formed in line of battle, we were again ordered to the front, where the Rebels sent shells into our ranks from their gunboat Diana. They burned her about two o'clock and retreated.

April 15th. This morning I thought I must write a little in my diary. I think it was through the mercy of God that my life was spared through the previous day's fight. It seemed a miracle that one came out alive. I felt very thankful that I was able to come out of the Battle of Irish Bend without a scratch, after hearing the horrible results. Our regiment suffered severely. For about two hours we were under a hot fire entirely unsupported. We went into the fight with 380 men and lost 83 killed and wounded and 14 missing. Our third brigade was about the only one engaged and we lost in that short space of time over 300 men killed, wounded and missing. Colonel Birge had his horse shot from under him. We had two officers killed and four wounded. It seems almost a miracle, when I think of it at this time, that so many escaped without a mark. We started on the march on the morning of April 15, about nine o'clock pursuing the Rebels very closely through the day. It was a fine rich country that we passed through; the cane and cotton fields were looking finely. We went into camp at night near a sugar mill that had a quantity of sugar in it, to which we helped ourselves. There was considerable firing through the day.

A more detailed account of the Battle of Irish Bend is here given by Major Thomas McManus of the Twenty-fifth.

THE BATTLE OF IRISH BEND.

Interesting Reminiscences of Terrible Conflict Between States.

Horrors of War Graphically Told by General Thomas McManus, Who Was Major of the Twenty-fifth Regiment, Connecticut Volunteers.

By request of Major Thomas McManus I will give a brief account of the country of lower Louisiana and the battle of Irish Bend, as given by him in an address at St. Patrick's Church, Collinsville, April 23, 1893, and published in the Hartford Post of the date of April 14, 1913, being fifty years to a day after that terrible conflict:

Lower Louisiana is a marshy, swampy level stretch of country with an imperceptible coast line. No one can tell where the solid ground ends or where the sea begins. Approaching from the Gulf of Mexico, you find your ship in muddy waters, and by and by you see here and there a speck of mud itself, emerging above the surface, and barely large enough to be noticed, and after a while these small islands grow together and you begin to realize that there are distinctly defined banks each side of the broad muddy channel through which you are sailing, intersected here and there by other channels extending in every direction. Twenty miles perhaps from the place where you first perceived indications of real mud, the land will be firm enough to sustain a few piles supporting a fisherman's cabin or pilot's hut. Ten miles further on and you may see signs of life and cultivation. The river banks have risen to a height of two or three feet above the level of the water. The whole southwestern part of the state is a network of bayous or natural canals, usually narrow and always deep. In summer they are mere channels of drainage, but in spring they are full to the top and often overflowing thus making a system of natural waterways that reach within a mile or two of every plantation with currents strong enough to carry the flat boats laden with sugar, cotton and corn to New Orleans, Brashear or the ports on the coast. Here and there the yet unfilled depressions in the soil form large but shallow lakes, that in the dry season are mere marshes.

This was the region where it was fated that the Twenty-fifth Connecticut regiment should make its spring campaign in 1863. Early in December we had taken possession of Baton Rouge on the Mississippi and had employed our time in practically learning the art of war, and we prided ourselves on our proficiency in drill and discipline. The winter had been, to us who were accustomed to our rigorous climate here, very mild, but we had begun to feel as early as the end of March, a foretaste of that terrible enervation that the coming summer was to bring to our men habituated to our bracing air of Connecticut. We were somewhat hardened to the little outdoor inconveniences of Louisiana. We didn't mind the mosquitoes, although they were ten times as big--a hundred times as hungry and a thousand times as vicious as those we raise here. We didn't mind the wood-ticks, and although we preferred not to have moccasin snakes in our tents, they would come sometimes. We had made a movement on Port Hudson early in March and the Twenty-fifth was in the lead, seven miles in advance of the main army. We had built a bridge over the Bayou Montecino, and had lain on our arms all night awaiting orders to attack Port Hudson, when Farragut's fleet attempted to pass the batteries. Only two of his ships, the Hartford and Albatross, succeeded, while the Richmond was disabled and the Mississippi was destroyed. We had engaged in a night skirmish with the enemy at Montecino, and had lost one man in that affair. We had retired from Port Hudson as rear guard to the column. Ours was the post of danger every time, and we had encountered the worst storm and waded through the deepest mud to be found on the continent and had bivouacked in a field almost as dry as the bottom of Lake Ontario.

With these experiences we felt like veterans, but we didn't then know how much we had to learn. On March 31, our regiment was transported to Donaldsonville, fifty miles below Baton Rouge, from there we marched beside Bayou Lefourche to Thibodeaux and then took the cars for Bayou Boeuf, and after a few days' halt, marched over to Brashear. We knew that something was going to be done, but didn't know what. We knew that somebody was going to be hurt, but didn't know who. We knew that some folks were going to get badly whipped, but it wasn't us. We were certain of that. Our superior officer and officers couldn't tell us anything or wouldn't tell us anything, and I have since come to the conclusion that they were very much like some of the wire pulling politicians of the present day. They didn't know themselves. It may be wisdom sometimes in war and in politics, not to let your followers know just what you intend to make them do, but it's mighty poor policy to let your enemy know it first.