Fort de Russy

“Capture of Fort De Russy, La., on the 14th of March, 1864, by the Federal forces under General Andrew Jackson Smith. This fort was captured, March 14th, 1864, by the Federal forces under General A. J. Smith. The expedition left Vicksburg on March 10th, landed at Summerville, La., on the 13th, and marched to Bayou Glace, where General Scurri’s Confederate brigade had been encamped, which fled on the approach of the transports, leaving considerable camp equipage and commissary stores. General Smith pushed forward to Yellow Bayou, where strong fortifications had been erected; but the Confederates again fled. As he came up the enemy was pressed, and some skirmishing occurred, resulting in the capture of several prisoners and a small wagon train. At daylight the entire command started for Fort de Russy, twenty-eight miles distant, hotly pursued by General Dick Taylor, who hoped to save the fort; but Smith had the lead, and at four o’clock in the afternoon the Third and Ninth Indiana Batteries opened on the fort, which replied vigorously with three of its heaviest guns. The cannonade continued an hour, when General Smith ordered the First and Second illinois Regiments, Sixteenth Corps, under General Mower, to charge the enemy’s rifle pits and storm the fort. The Eighty-ninth and One Hundred and Nineteenth Indiana and Twenty-fourth Missouri Regiments charged over deep ditches and a thick abatis in the face of a galling fire, and within twenty minutes after the order was given the [African American] sergeant of the Fifty-eighth Illinois Volunteers planted the American flag upon the enemy’s works."— Frank Leslie, 1896

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