Chapter Thirteen
Milliken's Bend, Louisiana: 1863


The small town of Milliken's Bend lay embraced on three sides by the Mississippi river. Clay arrived in the middle of May with Lucian and Jacob, and were assigned to Company G of the Ninth Louisiana Infantry, Lucian as captain and Clay as his first lieutenant. Lucian, prohibited by Army directives from promoting him any higher, gave Jacob the rank of duty sergeant.

There were four black regiments forming at the Bend – the Ninth Louisiana, commanded by Colonel Hermann Lieb, a Swiss formerly of the Eighth Illinois Infantry; the Eleventh Louisiana, commanded by Colonel Chamberlain; the Thirteenth Louisiana and the First Mississippi. Colonel Lieb, being senior officer, was in command of the garrison.

The Ninth was full of Illinois men – Company B, especially. Captain Corydon Heath was from the Second Illinois Light Artillery, as was his First Lieutenant, David Cornwell. Cornwell had started his army career as a private in the Eighth Illinois Infantry along with Colonel Lieb, and technically he was still a private, as neither he, nor any of the other officers, would be officially promoted until the regiment was mustered in, and the regiment could not be mustered in until it had filled the ranks.

And that might be a problem – the officers were responsible for recruiting soldiers from the nearby abandoned plantations and from ‘contraband’ – escaped slaves who had made their way to the Union lines. These men, only recently released from lives of forced labor, were reluctant to take up arms and needed much persuasion.

At this, Lieutenant Cornwell seemed to excel. Accompanied by his duty sergeant, Big Jack Jackson – a giant of a man that Cornwell had befriended after the battle of Corinth, Mississippi – he sometimes returned from recruiting with more than a dozen men in tow, whereas the other officers seemed lucky to recruit more than one or two, if any.

Lucian had more success than most. Leaving Clay in camp to drill what recruits they had, he and Jacob would travel by horseback to the neighboring plantations and talk to the slaves whose masters had abandoned them to the Union advance. Although impressed by the uniforms, the servants were mistrustful of Lucian, and only somewhat less so of Jacob’s mulatto complexion. The Southern caste system that moved light skinned slaves into the comparatively easy life of the house and left the dark skinned slaves in the fields certainly took its toll here, but the two men’s trust and reliance on each other eventually won some of them over.

Milliken's Bend had been General Grant’s base before he left to attack Vicksburg, and he left behind the black regiments to garrison the town and guard his supply lines. However, it was obvious that the army had yet to take the black regiments seriously, for they were left with the worst of everything – shoddy uniforms and outdated Austrian muskets.

Still, the officers made do with what they had – poor equipment and the greenest possible recruits, men who had never even held a rifle, much less knew how to shoot one. Lucian and Jacob returned from recruiting one day to find Lieutenant Cornwell engaged in drilling the regiment in target practice.

Colonel Lieb had moved the garrison from the town to an open field two miles away. The camp was defended by a levee about six feet high and wide enough to drive a wagon on. In front of the levee was a twelve foot high hedge of osage orange, a shrub the Louisianans called ‘bodarc’, with long sharp thorns. Cornwell had cut a few narrow gaps in the hedge and set up targets on the other side for the men to shoot at. They were no good at it, as was to be expected, and Lieutenant Cornwell was letting them know it. “Get it right next time, you woolly headed nincompoop,” he was yelling at one recruit, “or I will kill you!”

Lucian raised his eyebrows, but did not remark on it. It would not do to undermine a fellow officer’s authority in front of the recruits, but he took it up with him later in the officer’s mess. “I’m not sure you should be speaking to the men that way, Cornwell. Many of them have been abused on the plantations – you should speak to them with more respect.”

Cornwell appeared nonplussed. “Just what are you objecting to, Captain?”

“Threatening to kill them, and calling them ‘woolly headed’.”

Cornwell tutted. “They know I’m not going to kill them, and by ‘woolly headed’ I meant they weren’t thinking. They’re pretty useless now, but don’t worry, I’ll make them sharpshooters inside a month.”

“It’s funny,” Clay pointed out as he and Lucian enjoyed an after dinner cigar in Lucian’s tent, “but the more Cornwell yells at the men, the more they seem to like it.”

“He’d yell the same way at white men,” Jacob said, “because he believes they can be real soldiers. It may look like he shows them no respect, but the opposite is true. He’ll be in command of this place before long, you mark my words.”

However, Cornwell was never to get his chance to turn the Ninth into sharpshooters. The next day Colonel Lieb got word that several brigades of rebels had moved into the area, and he called out the Ninth to reconnoiter. General Dennis, in charge of the area, had also sent down two companies of the Tenth Illinois Cavalry for the purpose, and as the Ninth marched southwest toward the village of Richmond, Louisiana, the cavalry followed some distance behind. Coming up on the rail depot at Tallulah, the Ninth was fired upon by rebels from behind a levee. Colonel Lieb ordered a charge which drove the rebels back, and the regiment was very proud to have survived its first skirmish without a loss and with this small victory. However, they were warned by a freedman that the rebels were nearby in force, so Lieb turned the regiment back toward Milliken's Bend. As they marched back up the road, the cavalry passed through them, and they could overhear the white cavalrymen muttering. “Niggers won’t fight. See how they’re running already.”

After the cavalry had passed, Lucian and Clay turned to their company. “Don’t you listen to them, men,” Lucian said. “You’re as good as they are, you’d better believe it.”

They had a chance to prove it in a few minutes, for the cavalry soon dashed back up the road, pursued by Confederates on horseback, with cries of, “Save us! For God’s sake, save us!”

The Ninth hid behind a house that was near the road, and as the rebel cavalry drew near, let off a volley that surprised and frightened them into turning around and heading back to Richmond. Lucian and the rest of the officers thought it was fortunate the rebels had no idea how green the regiment was, and that none of them could hit the broad side of a cotton gin. Still, they were all proud of their men for the way they had fought that day.

The Union cavalry was grateful, and said so. “No one can tell me now that colored men can’t fight,” one of them said. There was general agreement to this sentiment, and the two regiments went back to Milliken's Bend in happy camaraderie.

The Tenth Illinois Cavalry had made camp about a quarter mile from the levee that demarcated the camp of the African Brigade, so the two regiments parted ways a little distance from the Bend. Lieb and the other officers were horrified to find that someone had ordered the bodarc hedge cut down, and about thirty yards of it were gone on the left side of the levee. The men of the Eleventh Louisiana had done the cutting down, but none of their officers would own up to having ordered it. With a rebel attack apparently imminent, Lieb hailed a passing riverboat and sent a message to General Dennis at Helena, Arkansas, to send reinforcement. The number of men in camp able to fight numbered about eight hundred, and Lieb figured there were two to three times as many rebels in the brigade to the south.

That evening a gunboat, the Choctaw, arrived with one company of infantry from the Twenty Third Iowa, numbering only one hundred men, and Lieb had to hide his dismay at this small reinforcement. The Mississippi was fifteen feet below its banks, so the gunboat did not have a clear shot at the field, and did not seem to be of much use. What was needed was artillery, and they had none.

Colonel Lieb put his battallion into place behind the levee well before dawn, the Ninth holding the left, the Eleventh holding the right, and the other three regiments spread out along the middle. Lucian and Clay, standing with Jacob near Captain Heath at the corner of the levee, had a moment to reflect on the irony. Once again they were fighting with green troops near a town called Richmond. Would these men, many of them only days out of slavery, fare any better than the privileged whites who had deserted them at Big Hill only a few months before?

About three o’clock in the morning, the rebels attacked. The first volley from the defenders surprised them, and the cavalry troops that were in front of their line turned and retreated, some being shot by their own side in the confusion. The Confederates soon righted themselves, however, and met their first obstacle, the bodarc hedge. Flowing around the missing left side, they gained the levee and tried to swarm over it, crying, “No quarter!” but met more resistance than they were expecting.

The Ninth, being nearest the missing hedge, bore the brunt of the assault. Lieutenant Cornwell had been given two companies to command in reserve, and he brought them into action now, shouting, “Now bounce them bullies!”

It was bayonet work and using muskets as clubs after the first, nearly useless volley. Big Jack pounced on the top of the levee, clubbing every rebel he could find, yelling, “Come and get me!”

The rebels cried, “Someone shoot that big nigger!” and several of them did, but it made no difference to Big Jack, who fought like a tiger until he finally took a bullet to the head and fell full length on the levee.

It was not much better behind the levee – soldiers were falling left and right. Lucian was clubbed with a musket and fell, but Jacob bayoneted the offending rebel and drove him back. A musket shot too near Clay’s face blinded him momentarily, and he was only saved from death by the quick action of Captain Heath, standing nearby.

The hand-to-hand fight lasted about fifteen minutes, but it seemed like hours before the rebels withdrew behind the hedge. As the sun rose, the two sides continually shot at each other, but as the green Union soldiers could not shoot, and did not know enough to keep their heads down, many were killed during the next couple of hours, although they continued to hold the levee.

Colonel Lieb, on his horse, was shot in the hip during the first attack, but he stayed in the saddle and in command. Colonel Chamberlain of the Eleventh Louisiana rowed himself out to the gunboat before the attack, leaving his regiment to his Lieutenant Colonel, who was also nowhere to be seen during the battle. The Twenty Third Iowa and most of the Eleventh deserted the field, except for two companies who managed to hold their end of the levee until the rebels tried a second attack, sweeping through the cleared hedge and around the end of the levee, where they laid down a heavy fire, targeting the white officers especially. It was then that Colonel Lieb gave the order to retreat to the riverbank. Lucian was hit, sprawling along the side of the levee, and Clay and Lieutenant Cornwell were also hit, but managed to make it to the riverbank in safety.

The rebels might have finished them off then if they had followed them quickly, but most of them paused to rifle through the Union camp, taking whatever they could steal. Once secure behind the riverbank, however, the Union soldiers were able to signal to the gunboat where to fire, and although they could not accurately hit anything, the shelling was enough to cause the rebels to retreat back to Richmond.

Clay wrapped up his wounded arm and ran back to the levee. Dead and wounded lay in great confusion. Nearly a quarter of the Ninth had been killed in the attack, even more wounded, and the flies were already beginning to gather in the oppressive Louisiana heat. He looked for his friends – Lucian lay in a pool of blood, but his eyelids fluttered, and Clay pulled him away from the levee and examined him. He’d been shot in the shoulder and was pale with shock, so Clay called for help. The wounded were being moved to the gunboat for treatment, and Clay sent Lucian off before taking stock. As remaining ranking officer, it was his duty to assess his losses, and he set about this grim task.

He could not find Jacob, or Captain Heath. After counting up the dead and wounded, it seemed that the rebels had taken around twenty prisoners from the Ninth. This was grim news indeed. Jefferson Davis had decreed that any white officer found commanding black troops would be treated as an insurrectionist and executed, and any black troops captured would be returned to slavery. That Jacob was not a slave would not matter to them much, he thought.

He went to the gunboat to make his report to Colonel Lieb and found Lucian conscious but pale from loss of blood. Clay hated to give him such grim news, and Lucian turned even paler. Although Lucian had lost a lot of blood, his was only a flesh wound and should not turn fatal, so he got up from his cot and sought out Colonel Lieb while Clay had his own wounds tended.

Colonel Lieb was in the gunboat captain’s cabin being harangued by Lieutenant Cornwell. “Where was the Tenth Cavalry?” Cornwell demanded. “We saved their lives yesterday, and today they watch us get slaughtered and don’t lift a finger to help us!”

“Where is Colonel Chamberlain?” Lieb retorted. “I’m more concerned about my own battalion. The Eleventh was left alone, hardly an officer in sight – it’s no wonder most of them deserted.”

“And the Twenty Third!” Cornwell continued. “They were no help at all, either. It’s a poor show when untrained blacks fight harder than battle seasoned whites!”

“May I interrupt, sir?” Lucian asked.

“Cornwell, go find Chamberlain and bring him to me,” Lieb ordered. Cornwell left, not saluting as his right arm hung limply from his shoulder. “What do you need, Captain?” Lieb asked.

“Lieutenant Palmer reports that the Ninth has had twenty one men taken prisoner, sir,” Lucian began.

“I know,” Lieb replied. “I’ve just had his report.”

“You know what the rebs have promised to do,” Lucian said. “I think we should go after them.”

“With what, Captain?” Lieb asked testily. “We may have won today, but this was a slaughter. It’s only through the hand of Providence that we’re here now.”

“I understand that, sir,” Lucian replied. “But they’ve taken Captain Heath, and Sergeant Butler.”

Lieb squinted at him. “I can understand wanting to go after a captain, but a sergeant?”

Lucian paused. “He’s my brother. Sir.”

Lieb regarded him a moment. “I see,” he said quietly. “Nevertheless,” he said sternly, “you are not to leave camp, do you understand?” He paused. “And if you do, I don’t want to know about it.”

Lucian smiled grimly. “Understood, sir.” He saluted, turned on his heel, and walked out.

He went back to camp to find his tent rifled and many of his belongings missing. Fortunately, he had his pistols and his rifle with him, and it was merely a matter of scrounging up some cartridges and food before setting out. Clay found him as he was stuffing his few supplies into his rucksack. “You’ve lost too much blood, Lucian,” he scolded. “Stay here, I’ll find him for you.”

“What could you do all alone?” Lucian said.

“What could you do all alone?” Clay retorted. Both his right arm and right eye were bandaged, and both men looked a sight - bandaged, dirty from the fight, weary and haggard.

“He’s my brother, my responsibility,” Lucian said.

“He’s my friend, as are you,” Clay said. He sighed. “There’s no talking you out of it, I see. Well then, we’ll go together. We can prop each other up.”

Lucian smiled. “I’m ordered to remain in camp.”

“I’m not,” Clay said. “When do we leave?”

“Now,” Lucian said. He took up his rucksack and walked out of the tent. A detail was digging a long trench behind the levee and burying the dead. Both Clay and Lucian shuddered as they walked past the levee and down the road toward Richmond.