or's, together with the batteries that had lately been annoying
the transports and drawing the attention of the gunboats on the
river. When, on the 10th, Green saw the transports coming down
the Mississippi laden with troops, it did not at once occur to him
that Port Hudson was lost; he simply thought these troops were
coming to attack him. Concentrating his whole force, he posted
Major with four regiments and four guns on the left or east bank
of the bayou, and on the right or west bank three regiments and
two guns of his own brigade. Green's pickets were within two miles
of Donaldsonville. As Grover developed and took more ground in
his front, Green drew back toward Paincourtville.

On the morning of the 13th of July, without any intention of bringing
on a battle or of hastening the enemy's movements, but merely to
gain a little more elbow-room and to find new fields for forage
for his animals, Grover moved out an advance guard on either side
of the bayou. "The enemy is evidently making preparation," he said
in his despatch of the 12th before ordering this movement, "to
escape if pursued by a strong force or to resist a small one. Our
gunboats can hardly be expected at Brashear City for some days,
and it is evidently injudicious to press them until their retreat
is cut off." Dudley, with two sections of Carruth's battery under
Phelps and with Barrett's troop, marched on the right bank of the
bayou, supported by Charles J. Paine's brigade with Haley's battery.
Morgan, under the orders of Birge, temporarily commanding Grover's
division, moved in line with Dudley on the opposite bank. They
went forward slowly until, about six miles out, they found themselves
upon the estate of the planter whose name is variously spelled Cox,
Koch, and Kock. Here, as Dudley and Morgan showed no disposition
to attack, Green took the initiative, and, favored by a narrow
field, a rank growth of corn, dense thickets of willows, the deep
ditches common to all sugar plantations in these lowlands, and his
own superior knowledge of the country, he fell suddenly with his
whole force upon the heads of Dudley's and Morgan's columns, and
drove them in almost before they were aware of the presence in
their front of anything more than the pickets, whom they had been
seeing for two days and who had been falling back before them.
Morgan handled his brigade badly, and soon got it, or suffered it
to fall, into a tangle whence it could only extric