on on this point, Banks
counted the time from the muster-in of the field and staff, and
therefore wished to hold these regiments respectively eighty-one
and forty-two days longer, or at all events until the receipt of
instructions or the end of the siege. To this view officers and
men alike objected, many of them so strongly that whole companies
refused duty. They were within their lawful rights, yet, better
counsels quickly prevailing, all consented to stay, and did good
service to the last. Of seven other regiments the term of enlistment
was on the point of expiring. They were the 21st, 22d, 24th, and
26th Maine, the 52d Massachusetts, the 26th Connecticut, and the
16th New Hampshire. These nine regiments were now detached from
the divisions to which they belonged and placed under the orders
of Andrews to form part of the garrison of Port Hudson until the
transports should be ready to take them home by sea or river.

As soon as the river was opened, Grant responded freely to all the
urgent demands made upon him for steamboats, forage, beef, telegraph
operators, and so on. He sent Ransom to occupy Natchez, and about
the 25th of July Herron arrived at Port Hudson with his division
of two brigades, 3,605 effectives, with 18 guns. Herron's command,
the victor of Pea Ridge and Prairie Grove, formerly known as the
Army of the Frontier, had been called to the aid of Grant at
Vicksburg. It came to the Gulf as Herron's division, but was
presently, by Grant's orders, merged in the 13th Corps as its Second
Division.

At the close of July, in response to Banks's urgent appeals for
more troops to replace the nine-months' men, Halleck ordered Grant
to send down a corps of 10,000 or 12,000 men. Accordingly, between
the 10th and 26th of August, Grant sent the reorganized Thirteenth
Corps to Carrollton. Ord, the proper commander of the Thirteenth
Corps, took sick leave, and the corps came to Louisiana under the
command of Washburn, with Benton, Herron, Lee and Lawler commanding
the divisions, and Colonel Mudd the brigade of cavalry. All told,
the effective strength of the corps was 778 officers and 13,934 men;
total, 14,712.

Chiefly in July and August the twenty-one nine-months' regiments
and in November the nine-months' men of the 176th New York went
home to be mustered out. This left of the Nineteenth Corps
thirty-seven regiments, having an effective strength, daily
diminishing, of less than 350 men each; in all, l