In spite of his army’s loss of courage, Banks wanted to continue the attack. But realizing that the troops were discouraged, and that General Steele was not coming down from Arkansas to support the Union attack on Shreveport, Banks’s officers convinced him to fall back to Alexandria. With this turn of events, the campaign’s goal of capturing Shreveport was all but forgotten. Now the main concern of Banks and Porter was to get their troops and boats out of the Red River area while keeping their forces intact.

After Porter’s gunboats returned to Grand Ecore from their own advance upstream, the dispirited soldiers began their retreat. Confederate General Taylor was now in a position to do real damage to the Union expedition. Confederate cavalry constantly tormented the retreating Union forces along the road to Alexandria. Meanwhile, others ambushed the gunboats along the twisting riverbanks. The river itself resisted the Federals as the boats continually ran aground in the shallow stream. One gunboat, the Eastport, was sunk by a rebel mine, refloated, towed, run aground several times, and finally blown up by the navy, to prevent her from being captured by Taylor’s rebels. Frank Church, a Marine officer aboard the tinclad Cricket, described what must have been a typical skirmish during the retreat:

We had not been fired upon for some time and were all sitting down not thinking of guerrillas when we were opened on by about a hundred men. My men sprang to their feet and fired back. I put two shots through the front door of the house where there were several men. After I fired three shots our boat swung around and got aground leaving us without a breastwork. My men behaved splendidly standing up and firing away while they were sending a perfect shower of ball and shot over us. As we could not get any opportunity to use our rifles to advantage I ordered my men to lay down until we swung around. I sought protection behind the bell but some fellow saw me and fired at me—two bullets struck the bell and I concluded I had better get somewhere else (Jones and Keuchel 1975:48-50).

Eventually, the army and its naval support made their way back to Alexandria, where the rest of the Union forces waited. As the weary Yankees dragged into the town, an officer recorded in his diary:

April 25—At 3 o’clock P.M., to-day, we reached Alexandria, and encamped on the river, just above the town. The army presented the appearance of having seen hard service, and a long campaign. The men were dirty and ragged, some of them shoeless. Our trains were somewhat dilapidated, the snowy covers of a month ago were dust covered, and some in tatters; the horses and mules as nearly fagged out as the men. How unlike the army which a month ago marched so proudly through the streets of this town (Pellet 1866:229).

By April 28, Banks and Porter had reassembled their forces at Alexandria. Now the low water dilemma, which had teased and threatened the fleet throughout the campaign, became a crisis. The water in the Red had dropped so low that portions of the rocky rapids were exposed, and at some points, the water was only 3 feet deep. Even the lightest gunboats needed at least 7 feet of water to pass. Ten of Porter’s gunboats were trapped above the rapids. Unless some means were found to get them below the rapids, they would have to be destroyed like the Eastport, otherwise they would be lost to the rebels. While many officers, including the expedition’s formally trained engineers, were preparing for the disastrous loss of the backbone of Porter’s fleet, Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Bailey was proposing the solution—a dam.