led."[33]

The battle which settled for all time the bravery of black troops, and
ought as well to silence all question about the capacity of colored
officers, was the storming of Port Hudson, May 27, 1863. For months
the Confederates had had uninterrupted opportunity to strengthen their
works at Port Hudson at a time when an abundance of slave labor was at
their disposal. They had constructed defenses of remarkable strength.
On a bluff, eighty feet above the river, was a series of batteries
mounting in all twenty siege guns. For land defenses they had a
continuous line of parapet of strong profile, beginning at a point on
the river a mile from Port Hudson and extending in a semi-circle for
three or four miles over a country for the most part rough and broken,
and ending again at the river, a half mile north of Port Hudson. At
appropriate positions along this line four bastion works were
constructed and thirty pieces of field artillery were posted. The
average thickness of the parapet was twenty feet, and the depth of the
ditch below the top of the parapet was fifteen feet. The ground behind
the parapet was well adapted for the prompt movement of troops.[34]

On the 24th of May General Banks reached the immediate vicinity of
Port Hudson, and proceeded at once to invest the place.

On the 27th the assault was ordered. Two colored regiments of
Louisiana Native Guards, the First Regiment with all line officers
colored, and the Third with white officers throughout, were put under
command of Colonel John A. Nelson, of the Third Regiment, and assigned
to position on the right of the line, where the assault was begun. The
right began the assault in the morning; for some reason the left did
not assault until late in the afternoon. Six companies of the First
Louisiana and nine companies of the Third, in all 1080 men, were
formed in column of attack. Even now, one cannot contemplate unmoved
the desperate valor of these black troops and the terrible slaughter
among them as they were sent to their impossible task that day in May.
Moving forward in double quick time the column emerged from the woods,
and passing over the plain strewn with felled trees and entangled
brushwood, plunged into a fury of shot and shell as they charged for
the batteries on the rebel left. Again and again that unsupported
column of black troops held to their hopeless mission by the
unrelenting order of the brigade commander, hurled itself literally
into