I think it was on the 20th of March that we left for the Red River. We marched the whole distance, arriving at Natchitoches about the 3d of April. From Alexandria to Natchitoches we followed the Red River. Here began our mistakes. Banks arrived from New Orleans, and ordered us to take the inland road to Shreveport. Franklin suggested the river road, where the army and the fleet could render mutual support. Banks said no; that the other was the shorter route. It was the shorter in distance, but for the greater part of the way it was a narrow wood road, unfitted for the march of troops and the movement of artillery and wagons. We marched two or three days without interruption. Lee, who commanded the cavalry in advance, had often applied for a brigade of infantry to support him. Franklin had always declined to separate his infantry, answering that if Lee found the enemy too strong for him, to fall back, and we would come up with the whole infantry force and disperse them. On the evening of the 6th of April, I think it was, Banks came up at Pleasant Hill, and assumed command. The next day we were beaten; for that evening Lee again applied for his infantry, and got them. Franklin sent in a written remonstrance against the danger of separating the infantry, and having it beaten in detail. He was disregarded; and we marched to certain defeat.

The battle of Sabine Forks—Mansfield, the rebels call it; and as they won it, they have a right to name it—scarcely rises to the dignity of a battle. We had our cavalry and one brigade of infantry only engaged. We lost heavily, however, in guns and wagons, for the wagon-train of the cavalry followed close upon its heels, and blocked up the narrow road, so that the guns could not be got off. When Franklin heard from Banks that the cavalry and infantry brigade were seriously engaged, and that he must send re-enforcements, he at once ordered Emory up with the First Division of the Nineteenth Corps, and then rode forward himself to the scene of action. Here he lost his horse and was wounded in the leg, while one of our staff officers was killed. When our cavalry and brigade were finally defeated, the rebels advanced upon us. It was a striking and beautiful sight to see a column of their best infantry—the "Crescent City Regiment," I think it was—marching steadily down the road upon us, while their skirmishers swarmed through the woods and cotton fields. The column offered so beautiful a mark for a shell or two, that the general rode up to a retreating gun, and tried hard to get it into position, but the stampede was too general, and we had to look to our own safety. When he found how things were likely to turn out, Franklin had sent an aid-de-camp to Emory with orders to select a good position, come into line, and check the advancing enemy. Meantime, we retreated, abandoning the road—it was too blocked up—and taking to the woods and across the cotton fields, not knowing our whereabouts, or whether we should land in the rebel lines or in our own. At length we caught sight of Emory's red division flag, and a joyful sight it was. We soon reached it, and found that "Bold Emory" had chosen an excellent position on the summit of a gentle eminence, called Peach Hill, and had already got his men into line. His division had behaved admirably. In face of cavalry and infantry retreating in disorder—and every officer knows how contagious is a panic—the First Division of the Nineteenth Army Corps steadily advanced, not a man falling out, fell into line, and quietly awaited the enemy. They did not keep us waiting long. In less than half an hour after we had joined the division, they appeared, marching steadily to the attack. But they were received with a fusillade they had not counted upon, and retreated in confusion. Again they attempted an attack on our right, but with no better success. They were definitively repulsed.

In this skirmish Franklin had another horse killed under him, shot in the shoulder, for the enemy's fire was very sharp for a few minutes. I offered him my horse, but he refused it. The captain of our head-quarters cavalry company offered him his, and he accepted it. The captain dismounted a private.

I saw here a striking instance of the effect produced by the imagination when exalted by the excitement of battle. A staff officer by my side dropped his bridle, threw up his arms, and said, "I am hit." I helped him from his horse. He said, "My boot is full of blood." We sent him to the ambulance. I said to myself, "Good-bye to —— I shall go to his funeral to-morrow." Next day he appeared at head-quarters as well as ever. He had been struck by a spent ball. It had broken the skin and drawn a few drops of blood, but inflicted no serious injury. At Port Hudson I saw the same effect produced by a spent ball. A man came limping off the field supported by two others. He said his leg was broken. The surgeon was rather surprised to find no hole in his stocking. Cutting it off, however, he found a black-and-blue mark on the leg—nothing more. The chaplain was reading to him, and the man was pale as death. I comforted him by telling him to send the stocking to his sweetheart as a trophy.

As we lay on our arms that night at Peach Hill without fire, for we were permitted to light none, lest we should reveal our small numbers to the enemy, we could hear distinctly the yells of the rebels as they found a fresh "cache" of the good things of the cavalry. It was very aggravating. They got our head-quarters ambulance too, but there was precious little in it. Expecting to bivouac, we had thrown a few things hastily into it. All they got of mine was a tooth-brush. I comforted myself with the reflection that they would not know what use to put it to.

Banks now sent for Franklin, and communicated to him his intention to remain on the battle-field all night, and renew the fight in the morning. Franklin represented that we had six thousand men at most, and the rebels thirteen thousand. Banks replied that A. J. Smith would be up. (Smith was thirteen miles in the rear, with eight thousand men.) "But how is he to get up, sir? The road is blocked up with the retreating troops and wagons, and is but a path, after all. He can't get up." "Oh! he'll be up—he'll be up;" and the interview ended. On his return to head-quarters, partly under a tree and partly on a rail fence, Franklin told me what had happened.

General William Dwight, of Boston, commanded the First Brigade of Emory's division. I knew Dwight well, for he had succeeded Sherman in command of our division at Port Hudson. I had recommended him highly to Franklin, when he was offered his choice of two or three generals for commands in the Nineteenth Corps, as an officer who could be thoroughly relied upon in an emergency. Dwight had said to me, "Major, if Franklin ever wants Banks to do any thing, and he won't do it, do you come to me." I thought that the time had arrived to go to him; so I found my way through the darkness. "Well, general, we've got to stay here all night, and fight it out to-morrow." Dwight, who is quick as a flash, and whose own soldierly instinct told him what ought to be done, said at once, "Does Franklin think Banks ought to fall back upon A. J. Smith?" "Yes, he does." "Then I'll be d—d if he sha'n't do it. Wait here a minute." Dwight disappeared in the darkness. In ten minutes he returned and said, "It's all right; the order is given."

That night we fell back upon Pleasant Hill, Dwight bringing up the rear with his brigade. Franklin asked him if he could hold his position till half-past ten. "Till morning," he replied, "if you say so."

At Pleasant Hill we found General Smith with his "gorillas," as they were profanely called. Smith's command boasted that they had been in many a fight, and had never been defeated. I believe it was a true boast. It was partly luck, partly their own courage, and partly the skill with which they were handled. They were a rough lot, but good soldiers. I have seen them straggling along, one with a chicken hung to his bayonet, another with a pig on his back: turkeys, ducks, any thing of the kind came handy to them. The alarm sounded, and in an instant every man was in the ranks, silent, watchful, orderly, the very models of good soldiers.

The battle which now ensued at Pleasant Hill formed no exception to the rule which Smith's corps had established. The rebels, too, had been re-enforced, and attacked us in the afternoon with great spirit. But they soon found the difference between an affair with a single brigade of infantry, and one with three divisions fully prepared and admirably handled; for Franklin and Smith had made all the dispositions. They drove in the left of our first line, where we had a Five Points New York regiment (rowdies, by-the-way, always make the poorest troops); but they could make no impression on the second line, composed of Smith's "gorillas," and were beaten off with considerable loss.

General Dick Taylor, son of the President, commanded the rebel army in these engagements, and received much credit, and deservedly, for the manner in which he had defeated us at Mansfield. It was reported that General Smith, who commanded the Trans-Mississippi Department of the Confederacy, found fault with Taylor for attacking us, as he had intended to draw us on to Shreveport, and there, with the help of Magruder from Texas, and Price from Arkansas, overwhelm us disastrously. Perhaps it was as well that we had it out at Mansfield. As regards the affair at Pleasant Hill, it was a mistake of the rebels. They were not strong enough to attack us in position. Taylor has since said that the attack was against his better judgment, but that the officers who had come up the night before wanted their share of glory. Perhaps, too, they had tasted the cavalry Champagne, and liked the brand. They might not have been quite so eager for the fray had they known what force they had to deal with at Mansfield, and what lay before them at Pleasant Hill.

The writer has since met General Taylor in London, and a most agreeable companion he is. He is a great favorite in court circles, largely for his own merits, but partly as "Prince Dick." In monarchical countries they can not divest themselves of the idea that our presidents are monarchs, and their children princes. "Prince John," "Prince Dick," "Prince Fred," all received quasi-royal honors. At Constantinople, when Fred Grant was with Sherman, a lieutenant on his staff, it was to Grant that the Sultan addressed his remarks. Grant tried to stop it, but could not.

They tell an amusing story of Dick Taylor in London. Taylor plays a good game of whist. The King of Denmark was on a visit to his daughter, and she sent for Taylor to make up a game with her father. Taylor won largely, and laughingly said to the king, "Your majesty can not find fault; I am only getting back those 'Sound Dues' my country paid Denmark for so many years."

Banks now wanted to continue his onward march to Shreveport, but A. J. Smith opposed it. He said that he belonged to Sherman's command, and had been lent to Banks for a season only; that he was under orders to return to Sherman by a certain day; that much time had been lost; and that if he undertook the march to Shreveport, he could not return by the date appointed. Our supplies, too, were rather short, the cavalry having lost their wagon-train. We fell back, therefore, upon Grand Ecore, where we rejoined the fleet. And here a curious incident occurred. An officer in high position came to Franklin and said that the army was in a very critical situation; that it required generalship to extricate it; that under Banks it would probably be captured or destroyed; and proposed to put Banks on board of a steamer, and send him to New Orleans, and that Franklin should take command. "And my men, general," he said, "will stand by you to the last man." Of course Franklin treated it as a joke, and laughed it off. But there can be no doubt that the officer was in earnest.

General Banks did not command the confidence of his troops, especially of the Western men. They generally spoke of him as "Mr. Banks." It was a great pity that his undoubted talent could not have been utilized in the civil service. As it turned out, he was perhaps the most striking instance in our service of the grave, almost fatal, mistake we made at the beginning of the war. He had been a good Speaker, so we made him a major-general; he had roused a certain interest in Massachusetts in her militia, so we gave him command of armies, and sent him out to meet trained soldiers like Stonewall Jackson and Dick Taylor. The result was a foregone conclusion.