th skirmishers thrown well forward, was preceded by sixty volunteers
from the 8th Vermont and the same number from the 75th New York,
whose orders were to move directly up to the _Cotton_ and pick off
her gunners. The line of battle moved forward steadily with the
column of gunboats. Between the Union gunboats and the _Cotton_
the bayou had been obstructed so as to prevent any hostile vessel
from ascending the stream beyond that point. A brisk fight followed.
Under cover of the guns of the navy and of the raking and broadside
fire of the batteries, the 8th Vermont and 75th New York first
drove off the land supports and then moving swiftly on the _Cotton_
silenced her. In this advance the Vermonters captured one lieutenant
and forty-one men. The _Cotton_ retreated out of range. That
night her crew applied the match and let her swing across the bayou
to serve as an additional obstruction. In a few moments she was
completely destroyed.

Then, having thus easily gained his object, Weitzel returned to La
Fourche. His losses in the movement were 1 officer and 5 men
killed, and 2 officers and 25 men wounded. Lieutenant James E.
Whiteside, of the 75th New York, who had volunteered to lead the
sharpshooters on the right bank, was killed close to the _Cotton_,
in the act of ordering the crew to haul down her flag. Among the
killed, also, was the gallant Buchanan--a serious loss, not less
to the army than to the navy.

During a lull in the naval operations above Vicksburg, occasioned
by the want of coal, eleven steamboats that had been in use by the
Confederates on the Mississippi between Vicksburg and Port Hudson,
took advantage of Porter's absence to slip up the Yazoo for supplies.
There Porter's return caught them as in a trap.

Toward the end of January Grant landed on the long neck opposite
Vicksburg, and once more set to work on the canal. Porter now
determined to let a detachment of his fleet run the gauntlet of
the batteries of Vicksburg for the purpose of destroying every
thing the Confederates had afloat below the town. The ran _Queen
of the West_, Colonel Charles R. Ellet, protected by two tiers of
cotton bales, was told off to lead the adventure. On the 2d of
February she performed the feat; then passing on down the river,
on the 3d, ran fifteen miles below the mouth of the Red River, and
the same distance up that stream, took and burned three Confederate
supply steamboats, and got safely back to Vicks