ouisiana,
but there is good reason to believe that the famous Red River expedition
was little more than a huge cotton speculation. Immense quantities were
stored along the river and could it have been secured would have been
worth many hundred thousand dollars to the captors. The charge has been
made, with apparent reason, that several Confederate leaders were
concerned in the "deal," seeing as they did, that the end of the
Confederacy was at hand. The trouble, however, was that other
Confederates like General Dick Taylor did all they could to defeat the
purpose of General Banks and they succeeded to perfection.

The Union commander had an army of 30,000 men with which he began the
ascent of the Red River. He captured Fort de Russy March 14 and then
marched against Shreveport. His forces were strewn along for miles, with
no thought of danger, when at Sabine Cross Roads they were furiously
attacked by General Dick Taylor and routed as utterly as was the first
advance upon Manassas in July, 1861. The demoralized men were rallied at
Pleasant Hill, where they were again attacked and routed by Taylor.
Banks succeeded at last in reaching New Orleans, where he was relieved
of his command.

When Porter had waited a short time at the appointed place of meeting
for Banks's army a messenger reached him with news of that General's
defeat and his hurried retreat. Porter saw that it would not do for him
to delay an hour. He had had great difficulty in getting his fifty
vessels up the narrow stream, whose current was falling so rapidly that
it already appeared impossible to get the fleet past the snags and
shoals to the point of safety two hundred miles below.

Improving every moment and under a continual fire from the shore, Porter
managed to descend something more than half way down the river to Grand
Ecore, where he found Banks and his demoralized army. Porter advised the
commander to remain where he was until the spring rains would enable the
fleet to ascend the river again, but Banks was too frightened to do
anything but retreat, and he kept it up until he arrived at New Orleans.

The river fell so rapidly that all the fleet would have been stranded
above the falls but for the genius of Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Bailey,
of Wisconsin, a military engineer who accompanied Banks's expedition.
Under his direction several thousand men were set to work, and, at the
end of twelve days, they had constructed a series of wing dams, throu