ough only the day before the
_Albatross, Estrella_, and _Arizona_ had been driven off after a
sharp fight of forty minutes, when, on the 5th of May, Porter
arrived at Fort De Russy, he found the place deserted and the guns
gone.(2)

On the 8th of May, finding that the river was falling, Porter,
after conferring freely with Banks, withdrew all his vessels except
the _Lafayette_, and descending the Red River, sent four of the
gunboats seventy miles up the Black and its principal affluent,
the Washita, to Harrisonburg. This latter expedition had no
immediate result, but it served to show the ease with which the
original plan of campaign might have been followed to its end.

While Banks was still at Opelousas, Kirby Smith, taking Dwight's
approach to signify a general advance of the Union army, had arranged
to retire up the Red River and to concentrate at Shreveport.
Thither, on the 24th of April, he removed his headquarters from
Alexandria and called in not only Taylor but a division of infantry
under Walker, and three regiments of Texans already on the Red
River. All the troops that Magruder could spare from the 8,000
serving in Eastern Texas he was at once to put in march to the
Sabine. These orders, though too late for the emergency, brought
about the concentration that was presently to threaten the ruin of
Banks's main campaign on the Mississippi.

Weitzel, with Dwight, followed the Confederate rear-guard to Lawson's
Ferry, forty-one miles by the river beyond Alexandria, taking a
few prisoners. Taylor himself appears to have had a narrow escape
from being among them.

During the week spent at Alexandria, Banks was for the first time
in direct and comparatively rapid communication with Grant, now in
the very heart of his Vicksburg campaign, and here, as we have
seen, the correspondence was brought to a point. When he first
learned that Grant had given up all intention of sending to him
any portion of the Army of the Tennessee, Banks was greatly cast
down, and his plans rapidly underwent many changes and perturbations.
At first he was disposed to think that nothing remained but to
retrace his steps over the whole toilsome way by Opelousas, the
Teche, Brashear, New Orleans, and the Mississippi River to Baton
Rouge, and thence to conduct a separate attack upon Port Hudson.
This movement would probably have consumed two months, and long
before the expiration of that time it was fair to suppose the object
of such