ard for the opening of the Mississippi, and have reduced the naval
forces of the rebels in this quarter to two vessels. If we have to
destroy what we have here, there will be material enough to build half a
dozen iron-clads, and the Red River, which is now of no further dread to
us, will require half the Mississippi squadron to watch it. I am
apprehensive that the turrets of the monitors will defy any efforts we
can make to destroy them. Our prestige will receive a shock from which
it will be long in recovering; and if the calamities I dread should
overtake us, the annals of this war will not present so dire a one as
will have befallen us."

Thus Admiral Porter, who even understates the facts.

In vain had all this been pointed out to General Kirby Smith, when he
came to me at Pleasant Hill in the night after the battle. Granted that
he was alarmed for Shreveport, sacred to him and his huge staff as
Benares, dwelling-place of many gods, to the Hindoo; yet, when he
marched from that place on the 16th of April against Steele, the latter,
already discomfited by Price's horse, was retreating, and, with less
than a third of Banks's force at Grand Ecore, was then further from
Shreveport than was Banks. To pursue a retreating foe, numbering six
thousand men, he took over seven thousand infantry, and left me twelve
hundred to operate against twenty odd thousand and a powerful fleet.
From the evening of the 21st of April, when I returned to the front near
Grand Ecore, to the 13th of May, the day on which Porter and Banks
escaped from Alexandria, I kept him advised of the enemy's movements and
condition. Couriers and staff officers were sent to implore him to
return and reap the fruits of Mansfield and Pleasant Hill, whose price
had been paid in blood. Not a man was sent me; even the four-gun battery
with Liddell on the north of the river was, without my knowledge,
withdrawn toward Arkansas. From first to last, General Kirby Smith
seemed determined to throw a protecting shield around the Federal army
and fleet.

In all the ages since the establishment of the Assyrian monarchy no
commander has possessed equal power to destroy a cause. Far away from
the great centers of conflict in Virginia and Georgia, on a remote
theatre, the opportunity of striking a blow decisive of the war was
afforded. An army that included the strength of every garrison from
Memphis to the Gulf had been routed, and, by the incompetency of its
commander, w