Monett's Ferry

On April 23, 1864, Confederate forces under Brigadier General Hamilton P. Bee clashed with a larger Union column at Monett's Ferry, also known as Monett's Bluff, in an episode of the Red River Campaign during the American Civil War. Bee's men had been positioned to halt Brigadier General William H. Emory's advancing troops, who outnumbered them. This engagement stemmed from a scheme devised by Confederate Major General Richard Taylor, who sought to ensnare the withdrawing forces of Major General Nathaniel P. Banks close to where the Cane River meets the Red River. Bee had been given the task of sealing the single escape route from this trap, while Taylor's remaining units pressed inward from behind and both flanks.

In response, Emory dispatched an infantry brigade across the river at a point upstream, aiming to outflank Bee on his left side. As the fighting unfolded, Bee, worried his men faced encirclement, gave the order to pull back. Because of this withdrawal, Banks and his army managed to slip free of the intended trap and reach a temporary haven in Alexandria, Louisiana. Taylor's frustration with this outcome ran deep enough that he stripped Bee of his command, even though the officers serving under Bee had backed his choice to retreat.

Background

Lincoln's motive for launching the Red River campaign centered on securing a foothold for Union forces in Texas, a move meant to discourage Maximilian I, the French-backed ruler of Mexico, from interfering in the conflict. Halleck, holding the rank of Major General, gave Banks orders to carry out the operation, which sought to open a route along the Red River all the way to Texas. Franklin, also a Major General, marched 17,000 Union troops along Bayou Teche toward Alexandria, where they were to join forces with Andrew Jackson Smith's 10,000 men along with Porter's gunboats and river transports, Porter holding the rank of Rear Admiral. At the same time, Steele, a Major General commanding 15,000 soldiers, pushed southward from Little Rock, Arkansas, intending to link up with Banks in the vicinity of Shreveport, Louisiana.

On 8 April 1864, Taylor's Confederate forces handed Banks a defeat at Mansfield, yet the following day, at Pleasant Hill, Union troops managed to throw back Taylor's assault. Around this same period, Kirby Smith, who outranked Taylor, pulled away the bulk of Taylor's infantry to confront Steele's advancing column, leaving Taylor with a mere 5,200 men under his command. Banks halted his army at Grand Ecore, near Natchitoches, remaining there until 15 April, when Porter's fleet, now heading back downriver, rejoined him. With Smith's men already behind schedule in returning to Sherman, also a Major General, and with little hope that Steele would still arrive, Banks chose to call off the campaign entirely. His forces pulled out of Grand Ecore on 21 April, marching toward Alexandria, while Porter found his fleet's passage downriver hampered by falling water levels.

Operations

Banks had no idea that Taylor's infantry had largely departed the area. According to historian John D. Winter, this ignorance may have cost Banks a chance to seize Shreveport. In getting ready to head toward Alexandria, the Federal troops set fire to whatever blankets, overcoats, and equipment they no longer required. Their departure got underway on the afternoon of April 21. Cavalry units rode at the front of the column, guarding its forward edge as well as both flanks and the tail end. Behind them marched the XIX Corps, then the XIII Corps, followed by the XVII Corps, with the XVI Corps bringing up the rear. Franklin, who had been given command of the march, insisted on pushing the pace hard. The lead elements had covered more than 40 miles (64 km) and reached Cloutierville by 7:00 pm on April 22. Smith's troops, guarding the rear, did not arrive until 3:00 am the following morning, having exchanged fire with Confederates chasing them the whole way. Along the entire route, structures were put to the torch. A soldier serving with the Union recalled seeing as many as 15 houses or mills ablaze at once.

By 1864, a waterway known as the Cane River, sometimes called the Old River, broke away from the Red River close to Grand Ecore and traveled in a generally southeastern direction. For much of its course the Cane River stayed west of and roughly parallel to the Red River before finally rejoining it near Colfax. When Banks' forces moved on from Grand Ecore, they crossed the Cane at Natchitoches and entered what amounted to a stretch of land surrounded by water. There was just one way out at its southeastern tip, and that was Monett's Ferry.

Although Banks held an enormous numerical edge over Taylor, with 25,000 troops against Taylor's mere 5,000, Taylor nonetheless worked out a scheme to catch the Federal army in a trap. He recognized that the terrain around Monett's Ferry, with its steep hills, lakes, and thick woods on the southern bank, offered a strong defensive position. By the evening of April 20, Taylor had already sent Bee's cavalry division marching toward that spot. He also directed Brigadier General James Patrick Major to bring his cavalry to reinforce Bee, while assigning Brigadier General William Steele's horsemen to keep chasing the retreating Federals. Meanwhile, the infantry under Brigadier General Camille de Polignac took up a position to seal off a western escape route from the island near Cloutierville, and Brigadier General St. John Richardson Liddell's troops were stationed close to Colfax to prevent Banks' men from crossing over to the Red River's eastern bank. Command of Taylor's cavalry corps had passed to Bee following the death of Brigadier General Thomas Green at the Battle of Blair's Landing on April 12, since Bee held higher rank than Major despite Major's greater experience.

Aftermath

Once Bee's men began falling back, Emory dispatched three cavalry regiments after them. As dusk settled, the pursuing Federal horsemen made an error, following a small Confederate detachment toward Alexandria instead of tracking Bee's principal force as it headed for Beasley's along the Fort Jesup road. Since Confederate forces no longer blocked the crossing, Banks' brigade of African-American troops constructed a pontoon bridge over the Cane River, finishing the work shortly after dark fell. Throughout the entire night, Banks' soldiers filed across this span. Come morning, Wharton's horsemen exchanged fire with Smith's command, though the Confederates withdrew after roughly sixty minutes of fighting. By two in the afternoon on April 24, Smith's final rearguard elements had crossed, allowing the pontoons to be dismantled. Banks' vanguard reached Alexandria the following morning, April 25. The Federal side counted 300 casualties from this entire operation, 153 of them from Fessenden's brigade alone, whereas Bee acknowledged only fifty losses on the Confederate side.

The narrow escape of Banks' army, which Taylor believed had come close to panic, left him enraged, and he directed his anger squarely at Bee. Taylor's official account catalogued Bee's failures in detail: dispatching Terrell's whole brigade back toward Beasley's to guard a supply train that already had adequate protection; failing to strengthen his defensive position through any artificial means; concentrating his forces at the center, the naturally strongest point and one the enemy had no real intention of attacking hard, rather than reinforcing the flanks anchored by the lakes; and finally, once pushed back, retreating his entire command thirty miles to Beasley's rather than striking the enemy column as it struggled through thirteen miles of dense pine forest toward Cotile, weighed down by wagons and cannon and thoroughly shaken by Wharton's relentless pressure from behind. Taylor conceded that Bee showed considerable personal courage, yet judged that he lacked any real skill as a commander.

Bee countered this criticism by noting that low water in the Cane River had allowed Union forces to flank his positions, and that given the overwhelming size of Banks' army, holding his ground had simply been impossible. Bagby, Major, and Wharton all spoke up in Bee's favor, but Taylor dismissed their arguments and stripped Bee of his cavalry command.

The historian William Riley Brooksher later concluded that Taylor's harsh assessment carried real weight, though he identified Bee's gravest mistake as falling for the ruse involving Davis' movement against his right and Emory's feint at his center, both of which Bee wrongly interpreted as serious threats. Even granting that Bee might have kept Terrell's brigade in place, built up his defenses, and seen through Emory's deception, Brooksher argued the outcome would have been the same, since Banks commanded far too large a force for Bee to contain under any circumstances.

Though he had failed to trap his quarry at Monett's Ferry, Taylor had not given up on cornering Banks along the Red River. To seal off Alexandria, he positioned Steele with 1,000 men to the north and west of town, Bagby with another 1,000 to the south, Polignac's 1,200 infantry backing up both Steele and Bagby, Major with 1,000 troops stationed at David's Ferry downstream on the Red River, and Liddell with 700 men holding the river's eastern bank. Meanwhile, Porter's fleet found itself stranded by shallow water above the falls near Alexandria, forcing Banks' army to remain in place until the ships could either be rescued or deliberately destroyed.