all sides. Captain
Cailloux[23] was killed with the colors in his hands; the column seemed
to melt away like snow in sunshine, before the enemy's murderous fire;
the pride, the flower of the Phalanx, had fallen. Then, with a daring
that veterans only can exhibit, the blacks rushed forward and up to the
brink and base of the fortified elevation, with a shout that rose above
it. The defenders emptied their rifles, cannon and mortars upon the very
heads of the brave assaulters, making of them a human hecatomb. Those
who escaped found their way back to shelter as best they could.

[Illustration: PORT HUDSON.

Brilliant charge of the Phalanx upon the Confederate works.]

The battery was not captured; the battle was lost to all except the
black soldiers; they, with their terrible loss, had won and conquered a
much greater and stronger battery than that upon the bluff. Nature seems
to have selected the place and appointed the time for the negro to prove
his manhood and to disarm the prejudice that at one time prompted the
white troops to insult and assault the negro soldiers in New Orleans. It
was all forgotten and they mingled together that day on terms of perfect
equality. The whites were only too glad to take a drink from a negro
soldier's canteen, for in that trying hour they found a brave and
determined ally, ready to sacrifice all for liberty and country. If
greater heroism could be shown than that of the regiments of the Phalanx
already named, surely the 1st Regiment of Engineers displayed it during
the siege at Port Hudson. This regiment, provided with picks and spades
for the purpose of "mining" the enemy's works, often went forward to
their labor without any armed support except the cover of heavy guns, or
as other troops happened to advance, to throw up breastworks for their
own protection. It takes men of more than ordinary courage to engage in
such work, without even a revolver or a bayonet to defend themselves
against the sallies of an enemy's troops. Nevertheless this Engineer
Regiment of the black Phalanx performed the duty under such trying and
perilous circumstances. Many times they went forward at a double-quick
to do duty in the most dangerous place during an engagement, perhaps to
build a redoubt or breastworks behind a brigade, or to blow up a bastion
of the enemy's. "They but reminded the lookers on," said a correspondent
of a Western newspaper, "of just so many cattle going to a
slaughterhouse."

A