headquarters in the field until the evening of the
11th, when he returned to New Orleans. Stone stayed two days longer
and then followed his chief. This left Franklin in command of all
the forces in Western Louisiana, numbering about 19,500 for duty,
namely, 11,000 of the Thirteenth Corps, 6,000 of the Nineteenth
Corps, and 2,500 of the cavalry division. Banks's object in
returning to New Orleans was to organize a second expedition for
the coast of Texas. The advance to the Carencro had not only
brought his army face to face with Taylor's forces, but also with
the well-known conditions that would have to be met and overcome
in the movement beyond the Sabine. All idea of this march of more
than two hundred miles across a barren country, with no water in
the summer and fall, while in the winter and spring there is plenty
of water but no road, was now given up once for all. Besides the
natural obstacles, there was Magruder to be reckoned with at the
end of the march and Taylor in the rear.

Taylor had now about 11,000 effectives in the divisions of Mouton,
Walker, and Green, with eleven batteries. To occupy him and to
push him farther away, Franklin marched to Opelousas on the 21st
of October, skirmishing by the way, and until the end of the month
continued to occupy a position covering that town and Barre's
Landing.

On the 26th of October, with a force of about 4,000 effectives of
the Second division of the Thirteenth Corps under Dana, augmented
by the 13th and 15th Maine, the 1st Engineers and 16th infantry of
the Corps d'Afrique, and the 1st Texas cavalry, Banks embarked at
New Orleans for the mouth of the Rio Grande. After long delays
and great peril from bad weather, the expedition landed at Brazos
Santiago between the 3d and 5th of November, and on the 6th occupied
Point Isabel and Brownsville, distant thirty miles on the main land.

Having thus at last secured the foothold in Texas so urgently
desired by the government, Banks, who had now entered heartily into
the expansive scheme, set about occupying successively all the
passes or inlets that connect the Gulf of Mexico with the land-locked
lagoons or sounds of the Texas coast from the Rio Grande to the
Sabine.

Accordingly, he sent for the rest of the Thirteenth Corps, and by
the end of December had taken possession of the fringe of the coast
as far east and north as Matagorda Bay. So far he had met with
little opposition, the Confederate force in