Near the end of February, while Farragut held the river between Port Hudson and Vicksburg, Porter tried to get in behind Vicksburg by the way of the Yazoo swamps once more. He took a different route from that of the first expedition, but he could not drive the tin-clads over the willows, and the Confederates cut trees across the bayous both in front of and behind his steamers until he was well-nigh lost. And at the last he found his way blocked by the hulk of the Star of the West, the steamer at which the first shot of the war was fired—the shot that turned her back when she was carrying supplies to Fort Sumter. After the Sumter event she had gone to New Orleans, was there taken forcibly by the Confederates, and ended her existence as a barrier hulk in a Yazoo bayou.

This expedition having failed, Grant determined to go down the westerly bank of the Mississippi to New Carthage, and then cross and surround Vicksburg. On the night of April 16, 1863, Porter took the following vessels down past Vicksburg to cover Grant when crossing: The flagship Benton, sixteen guns, Lieut.-commander James A. Greer, leading, and the other vessels in the following order: Lafayette, eight guns, Capt. Henry Walke; Louisville, twelve guns, Lieut.-commander Elias K. Owen; Mound City, fourteen guns, Lieut. Byron Wilson; Pittsburg, thirteen guns, Lieut. W. R. Hoel; Carondelet, eleven guns, Lieut. J. McLeod Murphy; Tuscumbia, five guns, Lieut.-commander James W. Shirk. The Lafayette carried with her, lashed to the other side of her coal barge, the ram General Price, Lieut. S. E. Woodworth, which had continued in the service after being taken from the Confederates at Memphis. After the Carondelet, between her and the Tuscumbia, came three army transports, the Silver Wave, Henry Clay, and Forest Queen, unprotected except by bales of hay and cotton round the boilers. They carried stores, but no troops.

The armed vessels were repeatedly hulled, but were in no way disabled. One transport, the Henry Clay, caught fire and sank. On the 22d of April a number of transports ran the batteries, and on the 29th, the plans having been changed somewhat, the squadron attacked the works at Grand Gulf. Here there were four of the best rifled cannon of the day, two eight-inch smooth-bores, two old thirty-twos, and some light guns—a battery of not a fourth of the power of the fleet, but it was seventy-five feet above the water, and the fleet pounded it all day and accomplished nothing. They lost eighteen killed and fifty-six wounded at that.

However, the work of carrying the army across the river at Bruinsburg, below Grand Gulf, began next day. This was on April 30th. On that day the gunboats left above Vicksburg made such a determined attack on the works there that no reinforcements were sent down to Grand Gulf. Having carried the Union army over at Bruinsburg, Porter, on May 3d, attacked the works at Grand Gulf and found them evacuated. Then Grant made Grand Gulf his base of supplies, and the surrounding of Vicksburg was accomplished by May 21, 1863. From that time on a steady advance was made by the army, and the flotilla supported every movement by shelling the river batteries. There was no great conflict on the part of the navy, but the help of the ships in keeping open the water route for supplies and in covering the movements of the army was fully appreciated by General Grant and by the whole nation. The writer hereof, who was a lad in the backwoods of Ohio at the time, remembers that when, on the afternoon of the 4th day of July, the people of the village where he lived, half crazy with joy over the news, were piling up dry rails fifty feet high for a bonfire to celebrate the fall of Vicksburg, the name of Porter was frequently mentioned by the shouting crowd, with that of Grant, although the people there didn’t know a warship from a coal barge.

Meantime, while Grant was before Vicksburg the French troops were in Mexico, and on June 10, 1863, they entered Mexico City, the capital. The French Emperor, Napoleon III, had shown an unfriendly disposition toward the United States, and, as already intimated, had been trying, through his diplomatic agents, to get Texas to secede from the Confederacy and establish an independent government. The operations of the French led the Administration at Washington to send General Banks on an expedition that had Shreveport, on the Red River, near the boundary between Louisiana and Texas, and about 400 miles from the Mississippi River, for its destination. It may be briefly said that the expedition won some battles and accomplished nothing. Admiral Porter, with the following vessels, accompanied the expedition:

Essex, Commander Robert Townsend; Eastport, Lieut.-commander S. L. Phelps; Black Hawk, Lieut-commander K. R. Breese; Lafayette, Lieut.-commander J. P. Foster; Benton, Lieut.-commander J. A. Greer; Louisville, Lieut.-commander E. K. Owen; Carondelet, Lieut.-commander J. G. Mitchell; Osage, Lieut.-commander T. O. Selfredge; Ouachita, Lieut.-commander Byron Wilson; Lexington, Lieut. G. M. Bache; Chillicothe, Lieut. S. P. Couthouy; Pittsburg, Lieut. W. R. Hoel; Mound City, Lieut A. R. Langthorne; Neosho, Lieut. Samuel Howard; Ozark, Lieut. G. W. Browne; Fort Hindman, Lieut. John Pearce; Cricket, Master H. H. Gorringe; Gazelle, Master Charles Thatcher.

It was on March 12, 1863, that Porter’s command started up Red River. The advanced vessels of the fleet reached Alexandria on the 15th, and all the fleet was there on the 16th. It was an easy voyage so far, but above Alexandria were (and are) two rapids not to be passed during low water, and in the spring of 1863 the water was exceptionally low.

However, the Eastport, Mound City, Carondelet, Pittsburg, Louisville, Chillicothe, Ozark, Neosho, Lexington, and Hindman were dragged over with some thirty transports. These went up the river and rendered considerable aid to the army, but the real interest in the expedition lies in the backwoods scheme by which the whole squadron above the falls was saved from destruction.

Instead of finding high water at the season when it was naturally expected, the river fell, and ten gunboats and two tugs were left helpless above the falls. Nevertheless, help came when Lieut.-col. Joseph Bailey, of the Fourth Wisconsin Volunteers, saw the situation. Bailey was a log-driver, and knew how to lift a jam over any kind of rifts or obstructions. Nearly everybody who heard of his plan, doubted and many jeered at the idea; “but Bailey had the faith that moves mountains.” Moreover, there were right at hand two regiments of men from Maine—nearly 2,000 men, of whom Jeremiah O’Brien, who captured the Margaretta, would have been proud.

The rifts were a mile long, and at a point below them the high banks were 758 feet apart. The water between the high banks was deep enough to float any gunboat, but not too deep for building a dam. Bailey said he would build a dam there that would flood the rifts to navigating depth, and he did it. The men from Maine swung their axes in the forest near by, and the teamsters hauled the cut trees, branches and all, and dumped them into the water. Here other Maine men piled the trees up with their butts down-stream, cross-tied with logs and their branches interlacing above. Similar dams can be seen in any of the logging regions of the United States in these days. This dam extended from the north bank, a little more than half-way across the stream. From the south bank, for lack of trees, a crib dam—cribs of logs filled with stone—was built. When the opening between the ends of these dams was small enough—when it was but 150 feet wide—it was filled with four coal barges that were loaded with brick and sunk there.

Astonishing as it seems to one who has seen such dams built, Bailey and his men from Maine had completed the dam in eight days, deepening the water on the rifts by more than six feet—the water was deep enough on the rifts for the Osage, the Neosho, and Hindman to pass down and anchor in the still water between the foot of the rifts and the dam.

But just as this success had been attained two of the sunken coal barges in the centre of the dam were shoved out of line by the weight of water, and in an instant the backwater above the dam began to pour through the opening in a mighty torrent.

At that moment the gunboat Lexington, with steam up, was at the head of the rifts, ready to follow the gunboats that had passed down to safety, while Admiral Porter stood on the bank, overseeing the operation. One glance at the broken dam showed that the level of the water must quickly fall, and Porter shouted to the Lexington to go ahead over the rifts and through the break in the dam to the still water below. Instantly her pilot rang the bell to start the engines.

Up to this moment the thousands of soldiers who lined the banks had been shouting and talking to each other, and making a most confused noise; but when the Lexington entered the growing current on the rifts a hush fell upon the great throng, until no sound was heard save the beating of her paddles and the rush of the current as the pilot drove her straight at the opening. There the current took her from his hands, lifted her up on the leaping waves, and, rolling her heavily from side to side, dashed her down into the pool below.

The mighty cheer that the great host of spectators raised seems to echo in the ear to this day as one reads the story of the incident, for the ship was safe.

The Neosho, Hindman, and Osage passed through the dam after the Lexington, but there were others still above the rifts, and these could not pass. But after a while it was found that, even with the break unrepaired, the dam still raised the water more than five feet, and so, instead of repairing the break, Bailey built two wing dams on the rifts above, and these gave the needed depth, and the remainder of the squadron passed down in safety. Bailey received the thanks of Congress, and was made a brigadier-general.

And to conclude the story of the Mississippi squadron, we may quote the words of Mahan in his admirable “Gulf and Inland Waters”: “After the Red River expedition little is left to say of the operations of the Mississippi squadron during the rest of the war.”