From This Valley They Say You Are Leaving
by
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INTRODUCTION
From the upper reaches of the Mississippi, which
were in Federal hands, and from the Gulf of Mexico, Union gunboats came at the
Confederacy in a two-pronged attack.
Doggedly the Federal forces fought up and down the river, capturing
Memphis, New Orleans, and Baton Rouge.
Confederate land forces stood them off at Vicksburg and Port Hudson,
Louisiana until they were silenced in mid 1863 and the Union stood victorious
along the entire waterway.
It was then that Admiral David Farragut, in concert
with meagre land forces, decided to push west along the Red River so as to
return Texas to the Union. He had
command of a formidable Naval force and was virtually unopposed by any
Confederate naval force.
Farragut set off up the Red River seeking fame and
glory. His fleet was formidable – half
a hundred steamers, supported all along the way by following land forces. His main opponent was the river, navigable
only by small “plantation-visiting” steamers, but incapable of floating, in all
seasons, ships of the draft of Farragut’s fleet.
The Union fleet made it past Alexandria, Louisiana,
ninety miles upstream winning and fending off Confederate ground attack until a
stalemate ensued. At this critical
point the water level in the Red River had fallen so low that the Union Fleet
was trapped. The Yankees were in
command of a river that they could not leave, unable to pin down and defeat
Confederate ground forces and in the unenviable position of being victorious on
the river, being at risk on the ground and being unable to remedy the
situation.
There was a stalemate for a time, which remained
until General Grant, commanding the Union army and in charge of the campaign in
Northern Virginia, found himself in need of additional troops. He decided to withdraw both naval and land
forces from the Red River for better use elsewhere. And so his order went out in 1864, “Abandon the campaign, return
to the Mississippi, and send the troops to Virginia”.
Obeying these orders was difficult, yea, nigh onto
impossible. The river was at a seasonal low and the gunboats lay trapped. The rocky shoals at Alexandria were most
formidable obstacles.
An ingenious Major Joseph Brown, 4th
Wisconsin, the civil engineer on Admiral Farragut’s staff conceived the plan of
constructing stone cribs and timber dams in the river so as to restrict the
width of the waterway. This would serve
to increase the depth of water and the current in the remaining opening between
the cribs and the shore, so that the trapped gunboats could safely pass the
shoals. The plans were set in motion
and the timber and stone structures built, destroyed by the river and built
again. Finally, on the chosen day, the
fleet hurtled the cataract, slipped downstream and made its way to the safety
of the Mississippi.
To the Confederate, the Red River was once again
free of the Yankee invader. So ended
the Red River Campaign, never won nor lost, but abandoned. This is the story.
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About the Book
The bastions of Port Hudson and Vicksburg on the
Mississippi River having fallen to Union forces, and the Confederacy being cut
in half. Congress began to fulminate
for a westward campaign to return Texas to the Union. The Union Admiral Farrigut dreamed up a combined campaign,
up the Red River. with the Army on land and the Navy (in river gunboats)
keeping abrest of the land force.
Having set into motion this scheme it was followed. Though defeated once the Union land force
advanced up river from Alexandria, Louisiana while the Navy steamed abrest but
on the river. Once past the falls at
Alexandria the Federal gunboats upstream of the falls would have to wait until
the river level before there was sufficient depth of water to allow the
gunboats to move downstream. The Union
Navy was trapped in the river.
It was then that President Lincoln ordered the Union
forces to quit the river so that the forces freed from the Red River Campaign
could be Used to fight the Confederates elsewhere. But the order could not be obeyed for there was not enough water
in the river to float the gunboats. An
ingenious civil engineer. Joseph Bailey designed a dam (wing walls protruding
from each bank, but not meeting) which dam had as its purpose to raise the
level of the river. With plenty of
strong hands at his disposal the structures were built and were awaiting an
auspicious moment to move the fleet when one of the wing walls broke. As the water began to rush through the break
the trapped Union gunboats rushed along with the water and safely passed the
falls. Once downstream of the
previous impedance the Union Navy and Army hastily beat a retreat to the
Mississippi. The famed Red River
Campaign had ended with neither side the better nor the worse. But the campaign had made one hero: the
engineer Joseph Bailey, who became a General officer as reward for his
exploits.
About the Author
Benjamin S. Persons is a consulting civil engineer
and geologist in Atlanta, Georgia. An
ROTC student from the Georgia Military Academy and Georgia Institute of
Technology he was commissioned a Second Lieutenant of Infantry at 19. During
World War II he served through activation and training as an anti-tank platoon
leader in the 42nd Infantry (Rainbow) Division. Before the Division departed for France, Persons transferred to
the Division Engineers.
In combat in France, Germany and Austria, he led an
Engineer platoon attached to the 2nd Battalion of the 232nd Infantry. He was awarded the Bronze and the Silver
Stars. After the war, in occupation, he
was the S-3 of an Engineer combat group in Austria.
Returning to the Georgia Institute of Technology,
Persons received his degree in civil engineering and entered the practice with
Dames & Moore in California. He
later worked in Illinois and established the firm's engineering practice in the
Southeast and then managed the firm's offices in Australia and the Pacific. Captain Persons has worked extensively in
North America, Central America, Africa, and the Pacific. As an inactive Reserve Engineer officer in
the United States Public Health Service he has seen engineering duty on the
Navajo, Hopi, Ogalala Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, Blackfeet, Crow, Santo Domingo,
San ildefonso, Gros Vente, and Assinibone Reservations. He has received the Unit Commendation for an
innovative revision of the foundation design for the Crow Reservation Hospital
in Montana. He is a member of the
Geology Board of Georgia.
Persons has written of his boyhood for a weekly
newspaper in Georgia and has written the definitive work
LATERITE,GENESIS,LOCATION,USE,(Plenum 1970) and the historical books RELIEVED
OF COMMAND (Sunflower University Press 1997) and COURT OF INQUIRY (Sunflower
University Press,2001).
He hunts upland game and waterfowl and is a fresh-
and saltwater boater at home and abroad.