he surrender of Port Hudson
it was found that the enemy had established batteries below, on the
river, cutting off our communication with New Orleans, making it
necessary to send a large force to dislodge them. On the 9th of July
seven transports, containing all my available force, were sent below
against the enemy in the vicinity of Donaldsonville. The country was
speedily freed from his presence, and Brashear City [Berwick's] was
recaptured on the 22d of July."

Here are remarkable statements. Fourteen hundred men and the vast stores
at Berwick's (Brashear City) are omitted, as is the action of the 13th
of July with "all my [his] available force.... The country was speedily
freed from his [my] presence, and Brashear City reoccupied," though I
remained in the country for eleven days after the 9th, and had abandoned
Brashear City twenty-four hours before the first Federal scout made his
appearance. The conduct of Major J.D. Bullen, 28th Maine volunteers,
with two hundred and twenty-five negroes, "including convalescents,"
appears to have surpassed that of Leonidas and his Spartans; but, like
the early gods, modern democracies are pleased by large utterances.

While we were engaged in these operations on the Lafourche, a movement
of Grant's forces from Natchez was made against Fort Beauregard on the
Washita. The garrison of fifty men abandoned the place on the 3d of
September, leaving four heavy and four field guns, with their
ammunition, to be destroyed or carried off by the enemy.

CHAPTER X.

MOVEMENT TO THE RED RIVER--CAMPAIGN AGAINST BANKS.

Recent events on the Mississippi made it necessary to concentrate my
small force in the immediate valley of Red River. Indeed, when we lost
Vicksburg and Port Hudson, we lost not only control of the river but of
the valley from the Washita and Atchafalaya on the west to Pearl River
on the east. An army of forty odd thousand men, with all its material,
was surrendered in the two places, and the fatal consequences were felt
to the end of the struggle. The policy of shutting up large bodies of
troops in fortifications, without a relieving army near at hand, can not
be too strongly reprobated. Vicksburg should have been garrisoned by not
more than twenty-five hundred men, and Port Hudson by a thousand. These
would have been ample to protect the batteries against a sudden _coup_,
and forty thousand men added to General Joseph Johnston's force would
have prevented the inv