resumed their
work. Col. Hall, who always had perfect control of his men, ordered the
guns stacked, put on a double guard, and the men of the 2nd Regiment
resumed their labor of loading the transport. Of course this was early
in the struggle, and before a general enlistment of the blacks.

The first, second and third regiments of the Phalanx were the nucleus of
the one hundred and eighty that eventually did so much for the
suppression of the rebellion and the abolition of slavery. The 1st and
3rd Regiments went up the Mississippi; the 2nd garrisoned Ship Island
and Fort Pike, on Lake Pontchartrain, after protecting for several
months the Opelousa railroad, so much coveted by the confederates.

A few weeks after the fight of the 2nd Regiment at Pascagoula, General
Banks laid siege to Port Hudson, and gathered there all the available
forces in his department. Among these were the 1st and 3rd Infantry
Regiments of the Phalanx. On the 23rd of May the federal forces, having
completely invested the enemy's works and made due preparation, were
ordered to make a general assault along the whole line. The attack was
intended to be simultaneous, but in this it failed. The Union batteries
opened early in the morning, and after a vigorous bombardment Generals
Weitzel, Grover and Paine, on the right, assaulted with vigor at 10 A.
M., while Gen. Augur in the center, and General W. T. Sherman on the
left, did not attack till 2 P. M.

Never was fighting more heroic than that of the federal army and
especially that of the Phalanx regiments If valor could have triumphed
over such odds, the assaulting forces would have carried the works, but
only abject cowardice or pitiable imbecility could have lost such a
position under existing circumstances. The negro regiments on the north
side of the works vied with the bravest, making three desperate charges
on the confederate batteries, losing heavily, but maintaining their
position in the advance all the while.

The column in moving to the attack went through the woods in their
immediate front, and then upon a plane, on the farther side of which,
half a mile distant, were the enemy's batteries. The field was covered
with recently felled trees, through the interlaced branches of which the
column moved, and for two or more hours struggled through the obstacles,
stepping over their comrades who fell among the entangled brushwood
pierced by bullets or torn by flying missiles, and braved the hurric