In May 1863, Major General Nathaniel F. Banks turned his Union army away from its northwesterly advance on Shreveport, Louisiana, toward the Mississippi River. His new goal was the capture of Port Hudson. Banks felt confident that he would have an easy victory over Major General Franklin Gardner’s Confederate forces there. After bagging Gardner’s army, Banks believed, he could sweep north to the aid of Major General Ulysses S. Grant, and together they would capture Vicksburg.

As Banks moved his main field army eastward, he sent orders to Baton Rouge and New Orleans to prepare all available troops for the field. This order included all the 20-pounder and 30-pounder Parrott rifle batteries and the rifled 12-pounder battery of the 1st Indiana Heavy Artillery. On May 19, A, B, G, H and K companies broke camp at Brashear City, La. They loaded their eight 30-pounder Parrott rifles and two 4.62-inch rifled bronze 12-pounders aboard a waiting New Orleans Great Western Railroad train. Without delay, the artillerists got underway for Algiers, La., across the Mississippi River.

The gunners arrived at Algiers within a few hours and quickly unloaded their equipment. Company A found four 20-pounder Parrott rifles waiting for them in Algiers. The Hoosiers made a spirited game of moving their guns and siege equipment through the streets to the riverfront dock. River steamers were waiting to transport men, guns, equipment, 100 mules and 50 wagons to Baton Rouge. In a short time the steamers were loaded and underway. Arriving at Baton Rouge, the force disembarked, hitched their mules to their limbers, caissons and wagons, and set off. Their trip took them northward along the route traveled two days before by Maj. Gen. Christopher C. Augur’s infantry division.

Augur’s forces had met with stiff opposition at the village of Plains Store, a few miles away from Port Hudson. On May 21, a fierce engagement of several hours took place. As often happened throughout the war, the outnumbered and outgunned Confederates gave a splendid account of themselves. They fought Augur’s army to a halt and held them off for more than six hours. Finally, in danger of having their flanks turned, and running low on ammunition, the Rebels withdrew to Port Hudson. They dragged off some of their cannons by hand rather than abandon them to the Yankees.

The heavy artillerists coming up the same road two days later noticed the number of dead artillery horses, the battle debris and the stench of death in the fields. They sensed that they soon would be in for a similarly hard fight. On May 23, Colonel John A. Keith’s command of five companies of the 1st Indiana Heavy Artillery arrived at Port Hudson and reported to General Augur.

That night, in preparation for a general assault against Port Hudson the next morning, Keith positioned all but one of his heavy batteries on Augur’s front. Keith detached Captain William Roy’s Battery A from his command, sending it farther left to support Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Sherman’s assaulting columns. Under cover of darkness, Keith had his heaviest guns rolled into position.

Shortly before dawn on May 27, one of Battery A’s 20-pounder Parrotts fired the signal round to begin the initial bombardment of Port Hudson. The two-gun section occupied a position on the south-central portion of the Union lines. Sherman, commanding that part of the lines, watched the effect of the shot; then, with his staff, he retired to the rear to wait.

At the signal, all the light batteries opened fire at Port Hudson. About half an hour later, as soon as the sun rose, the heavy guns opened on the fortifications. Thirty-eight guns on Augur’s front belched forth their iron missiles. Twenty-four pieces of light artillery joined the fray from Brig. Gens. Cuvier Grover’s and Godfrey Weitzel’s fronts on the Federal right. Twenty Federal cannons simultaneously spewed flames on Sherman’s front.

The Confederate gunners accepted the challenge, and the contest was on to see who could disable more guns. The Confederates had 16 guns on their left. These included two rifled 24-pounder siege guns, two 3.5-inch Blakely rifles and one 2-pounder breech-loading Hughes gun. The rest of the line mounted 6-pounder bronze guns and 12-pounder bronze howitzers. These pieces occupied nine battery emplacements. The Confederate center mounted 16 cannons, including two 24-pounder smoothbore siege guns, one 24-pounder rifled siege gun and a rifled 12-pounder bronze gun. Eight gun emplacements held the center’s guns. Five emplacements on the right of the defenses held 11 light guns, including one Confederate 3.3-inch rifle, two Confederate 10-pounder Parrotts and one 20-pounder Parrott.

As the contest heated up, the Hoosier gunners sent spotters to climb the nearest tall trees and report the effects of their shots. The sun climbed higher, and tempers rose with the temperature. The infantry assault against the left of the Confederate lines had started, but the assault on the lines in front of Augur and the Hoosier gunners had not begun. Nor had the assault upon the Rebel right.

Blue-clad and gray-clad sharpshooters blazed away, and soldiers on both sides had to keep their heads down. On Augur’s front, the Union light guns moved into exposed positions in an open field less than half a mile from the Confederate defenses. They had no shelter from the sharpshooters’ savage fire. The artillerists were constantly changing position to avoid enemy rifle and cannon fire. As if the enemy fire were not enough trouble, they also had to contend with whirring iron fragments from premature shellbursts and the concussion from a Federal 20-pounder Parrott battery.

The large siege guns could not be easily moved around, although they did have hastily built earthworks to shelter behind. With that limited protection, their crews prayed the earthworks would keep out most of the enemy’s iron. The more intense fire did not reach the rearmost line of guns, which were nearly out of range of the lighter Rebel guns. Captain Edward McLaflin’s Battery G was in a more exposed position. His tong-range rifled cannons were within a smoothbore gun’s shorter range, and they were also within range of sharpshooters. just after they started firing, Southern riflemen made it too hot for McLaflin’s men to work their guns.

A regular hail of bullets and cannon shot spattered the blue-jacketed Hoosiers’ works. Several shots hit the center 30-pounder Parrott, and balls from 24-pounder siege guns and 6-pounder tight guns plowed into the battery. Many of the damaging rounds came from a 6-pounder battery on the right. A hissing slier splintered the right wheel of the center gun. Working under heavy fire, the gun’s crew managed to get a wheel from the limber. They rolled the wheel into the emplacement, jacked UP the Parrott rifle and changed the wheel. Then they heaved the gun back into action.

Another shot blasted a sponge rod out of one crewman’s hands as he swabbed out the gun. The sponge end remained in the muzzle. Sweating and swearing, the crew removed the sponge. Relief crewmen helped the injured man to the rear, and firing resumed. As the crews moved the heavy rifles into position, the maneuvering handspikes were shot from their bands; many in the battery received wounds from large splinters. The flying lead, iron and wood killed two men during the day’s fighting. In spite of this punishment, Battery G dismounted two heavy enemy guns.

While this was going on, Captain James Connelly’s Battery H, more than three-fourths of a mile to the rear of Battery 0, was maintaining a steady fire from its position behind an earthwork in the middle of a field. Due to the range, the Confederates’ light guns were not much of a threat to Connelly’s battery, but the heavier pieces were troublesome. The crews nevertheless succeeded in dodging the incoming rounds and served their 30-pounders well. As they labored they worked up a hearty thirst, which they slaked by consuming dippers of whiskey from buckets provided by the quartermaster. The relief details found time to read letters from home without being too bothered by the incoming rounds. In spite of the whiskey-or perhaps because of it-the battery’s crews silenced two guns and dismounted a third.

Captain James Grimsley’s Battery B also maintained a steady fire throughout the action. His three 30pounder Parrotts occupied a position well screened by trees, and the battery did not receive a heavy return fire. The trees, likewise, screened Grimsley’s targets and protected them in turn. Captain Clayton Cox’s Battery K was also in a wooded area, but his battery was three-fourths of a mile closer to the thundering Rebel guns. It came under a galling fire from its front and right flank, similar to the punishment being handed out to McLaflin’s battery.

By now it was early afternoon, and the assault on the northern lines had ended in disaster for the Federals. A tangle of cut trees and underbrush, as well as swamplands and deep ravines, stowed the assaulting troops’ advance. The natural barriers were quite formidable, especially since the Confederate rifle pits were atop bluffs overlooking the swamps and ravines. As the tired bluecoats piled up at the base of the bluffs, they were met with a withering blast of buck and ball from the shotguns of the 1st Alabama and the rifles of the 39th Mississippi and the 10th and 18th Arkansas. The Federal ranks broke and ran.

A fortified semidetached works at the northeast corner of the enemy lines earned the name ‘Fort Desperate.’ The 15th Arkansas held this outpost against several attacks during the day. Two 12-pounder howitzers from Captain Andrew Herod’s 1st Mississippi Battery B, mounted in the salient points of the works and charged with canister, helped in its defense. The Union soldiers held onto the ground they had won only because they faced certain death if they tried to retreat. Others managed to crawl off under cover of logs and stumps. Some sought safety in the lee edges of die same bullet- spattered ravines that had tangled their advance.

More than six hours tardy, at 2 p.m. Sherman finally led his men forward, This happened only after Banks threatened his recalcitrant subordinate with a replacement. Sherman personally led his men across a long, wide field. Sherman’s men moved out in good order across the field, battle flags flying. They were supported by two light batteries in the center and Battery As 20-pounders, separated into two sections. Their exploding shells forced Captain George Abbay to pull his Mississippi Battery’s guns from their embrasures to behind the thick dirt parapet for safety. There, Abbay doubled the canister in his guns and waited.

As the Union infantry neared the earthworks, a scythe of lead and iron mowed them down. Abbay ran his guns out of hiding and at point-blank range blasted gaping holes in the Yankee ranks. A ball dropped Sherman’s horse. Sherman recovered from the fall and rose, waving his sword to encourage his men. Another ball shattered one of Sherman’s legs, and he was carried from the field. As they advanced through the cannonade, the Federals also came under rifle and shotgun fire from the defenders. Sherman’s delayed attack had allowed the Confederates time to shift men from other parts of the defenses and concentrate a heavy fire upon the attackers. Southern cannons poured round after round of shell and canister into the advancing, and then faltering, blue ranks. The retreating troops ran off the field into gullies and ravines under cover of Battery As thundering Parrott rifles.

Augur, under orders to wait for Sherman’s attack before starting his own, sent his men into action shortly after 2 p.m. The heavy guns in the rear fell silent for fear of hitting their own attacking men. The closer light batteries were running low on ammunition, but they kept up a covering fire until they were passed by the advancing foot soldiers. Augur’s infantry moved rapidly across the first few hundred yards of level ground, then slowed as it crossed furrowed fields and came upon enemy abatis. A little farther on, a heavy fusillade of lead from the Confederate guns brought the Union line to a complete stop. Augur withdrew his men and artillery, and the distant guns of Indiana batteries B, H and E provided covering fire.

During the day, Battery K had expended 300 rounds from its two guns in an eight-hour period. Battery G had fired 450 rounds from its three 30-pounders, and Battery H had fired more than 250 rounds from its two 30pounder rifles. Battery E joined Batteries G and K in moving to the rear for a few days of well-earned rest. The men in Batteries B and H maintained their positions and kept up a desultory fire for the next 10 days.

The heavy and light guns had done their cruel jobs well. Only one man out of the entire 1st Alabama crew manning the 12-pounder gun at the Jackson Road redan escaped death or injury. A 24-pounder smoothbore siege gun near the railroad line through the defenses had its muzzle shattered by iron bolts. Federal fire had dismounted two other 24-pounder siege guns and several light guns, too. Flying iron smashed a 12-pounder howitzer and killed its commander, Lieutenant Jesse Edrington, in Fort Desperate. Atop Commissary Hill to the rear of Fort Desperate, Captain James Sparkman received a mortal wound while directing the fire of his 3.5 -inch Blakely rifles. Also wounded was Captain J.L. Bradford of Battery F, 1st Mississippi. In most cases, the dismounted pieces had repairs made and were back in service in one or two days.

Confederate iron had taken its toll, too. First Indiana’s Battery G lost two men killed, and Battery B had one man blinded by an exploding shell. The 1st Maine Battery had one man killed and several men wounded, as did Battery A, 1st U.S. Artillery, and Battery G, 5th U.S. Artillery. The other Federal batteries reported a few men wounded but no deaths. Many of the Union infantry casualties were due to the sweeping fire of cannister from the Rebel guns.

After the failure of the May 27 assault on Port Hudson, what was to become the longest siege on U.S. soil commenced. The two opposing infantry forces settled into sharpshooting contests. Attacks were limited to probes by skirmishing parties along the line. A timed, heavy artillery fire began, its purpose to harass the enemy, destroy his facilities and prevent repair of damages.

General Banks sent to Baton Rouge and New Orleans for the rest of his siege guns. He ordered his pioneers (military engineers) to construct artillery emplacements encircling Port Hudson. Eight- and 10-inch mortars that had not been fully equipped for service in May were now supplied and sent from New Orleans. The 1st Indiana’s Batteries C and D arrived from Baton Rouge on June 1. Battery C brought four 8- inch siege howitzers, and Battery D brought five 24-pounder siege guns.

Battery B detached one gun under Lieutenant William Blankenship to serve with Captain McLaflin’s Battery G. McLaflin then moved Blankenship’s and his own 30-pounder Parrott rifles to the northern front. He detached one Parrott rifle Linder Lieutenant Benjamin Harrower to a position about 100 yards west of Taylor’s mortars. He placed two of his big rifles 400 yards north of Fort Desperate. Blankenship’s piece went into position about 100 yards west of his own two guns.

Facing this formidable amount of weaponry, the Confederates mounted, from their left, two 2-pounder breech-loading guns, then a four-gun 6-pounder battery. Next came a battery composed of one 6-pounder gun, one 12-pounder howitzer and one rifled 24-pounder siege gun. At its right was a battery of two 3.5-inch Blakely rifles and a 12-pounder howitzer. Still, the number Of guns was less than had been in action on May 27. Yankee shot and shell had damaged some Confederate guns beyond repair.

The Navy loaned four 9-inch Dahlgren guns, with full crews, Linder Lt. Cmdr. Edward Terry, to the siege effort. He placed them into position opposite the ‘Priest Cap’ near the position held by the 1st Indiana’s Battery K on May 27. Terry’s men hoped to breech the Confederate earthworks with their 9-inch shells so that the infantrymen in the next assault would have a ready entrance. Besides targeting the Priest Cap, the mammoth DahIgrens targeted the salient at the Port Hudson and Clinton railroad cut in the lines, 1,080 yards away. They also drew a bead on the Jackson Road sally port, 920 yards away.

Captain Albert Mack’s 18th New York ‘Black Horse’ Battery moved into earthworks a few hundred yards forward of McLaflin’s old position of May 27. Mack’s six 20-pounder Parrotts bore on the sally ports at Plains Road, the railway and Jackson Road. Battery D moved three of its 24-pounder siege guns, commanded by Lieutenant Jesse Hadden, into an emplacement on the north side of the Plains Store-Port Hudson Road. Captain Pythagoras Holcomb moved his 2nd Vermont’s six 6-pounder Sawyer rifles into position across the road and a little forward of the siege guns.

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