EASTPORT Before Fort de Russy
12-14 MARCH 1864
EASTPORT BEFORE FORT DE RUSSY
The year 1863 had seen a turn in the Civil War in favor of the Union. A Confederate foray into the north had been reversed at Gettysburg and the last Rebel stronghold on the Mississippi River at Vicksburg had fallen. With the Mississippi now in Union hands attention turned to Confederate activities west of the river in Louisiana and Arkansas. Here the Red River provided the main thoroughfare for cotton and other supplies shipping eastward. As the spring rains swelled the Red River in 1864, combined Union Naval and ground forces planned an assault.
Their first obstacle was Fort de Russy, named for its builder, Confederate Army engineer COL Lewis G. de Russy. This fort lay 45 miles up the river from the mouth at the Mississippi, a course over which the Red River forms a northward-projecting loop into northeastern Louisiana. Fort de Russy lay on the western leg of that loop. Union troops under BGENs Andrew Jackson Smith and Joseph Mower would land on the eastern leg of the loop at Simmesport and march the 28 miles across the bottom of the loop along what is modern Louisiana State Route 1. They would envelope the rear of the fort while the ironclad warships of RADM David Dixon Porter would proceed up the Red River to support the assault. On the morning of March 13th Porter’s transports began disembarking 10,000 Union troops at Simmesport while the ironclad USS EASTPORT under LCDR Seth L. Phelps, along with NEOSHO, LAFAYETTE, CHOCTAW, OSAGE, OZARK, FORT HINDMAN and CRICKET were sent upriver. Ahead of the main gunboat force, they were to remove obstructions eight miles below the fort. Their progress was slowed by LAFAYETTE and CHOCTAW, whose long keels plagued negotiation of the channel.
The obstructions proved formidable. Arriving on this day Phelps found a row of pilings driven into the river bottom across the channel, braced against a second tier of shorter pilings. Ties and iron plates bridged each piling creating an impassable, anchored “wall.” Sunken logs blocked access to the downstream side, and from above, trees had been cut and floated down the river to jam up the pilings. Phelps’ sailors attached tow lines to the pilings, axes swung, and several of the gunboats repeatedly rammed the obstruction. For several hours they labored, finally breaking a passage open around 1600. OSAGE, FORT HINDMAN and CRICKET followed EASTPORT the final miles to Fort de Russy. Here they found Union troops already engaged.
The battle proved one-sided. The Confederate defender, MGEN John G. Walker, had marched 5000 rebels out to stall the advancing Federals, and most of these escaped to fight another day. The 300 garrisoned in the fort surrendered after only a brief engagement.
Watch for more “Today in Naval History” 19 MAR 25
CAPT James Bloom, Ret.
Department of the Navy, Naval History Division. Civil War Naval Chronology 1861-1865. Washington, DC: GPO, 1961, pp. IV-31-32.
Porter, David D. The Naval History of the Civil War. Mineola, NY: Dover Pub., 1886, pp. 495-97.
“Report of Rear-Admiral Porter, U.S. Navy, regarding combined movement up the river and capture of Fort de Russy by forces under Brigadier-General Smith, U.S. Army, March 14, 1864.” IN: Stewart, Charles W. Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol 26, Naval Forces on Western Waters from March 1 to December 31, 1864. Washington, DC: GPO, 1914, pp. 24-27.
“Report of Rear-Admiral Porter, U.S. Navy, transmitting report of Lieutenant Commander Phelps, U.S. Navy, regarding removal of obstructions and capture of Fort De Russy.” IN: Stewart, Charles W. Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol 26, Naval Forces on Western Waters from March 1 to December 31, 1864. Washington, DC: GPO, 1914, pp. 29-31.
ADDITIONAL NOTES: Among the guns captured at Fort de Russy were three Naval guns, two 9-inch Dahlgren smoothbores formerly in service on USS NDIANOLA and USS HARRIET LANE (both lost earlier in the war) and a 32-pounder cast in the 1820s.
EASTPORT was originally a rebel ironclad, started by the Confederates in the upper Tennessee River in 1862, but captured on the ways by Union forces.
John George Walker, above, was a seasoned and able combat commander. He had served with the US Army before the Civil War in the Mexican and Apache Wars. During the Rebellion he saw action in the Peninsular Campaign, at Antietam, and at Vicksburg before commanding in the Trans-Mississippi. He fled to Mexico after the war but eventually returned to the United States, serving as consul to Bogota in the post-war years. His narrative history of the Confederacy west of the Mississippi is still in print today.
