Battle of Fort Bisland: The Union Drive up Bayou Teche

The bayou country of south-central Louisiana saw some of the Civil War's most fluid and strategically creative fighting, and the two-day engagement at Fort Bisland in April of eighteen sixty-three was near the center of it.

Major General Nathaniel Banks commanded the Union forces occupying New Orleans and the lower Mississippi, and in the spring of eighteen sixty-three he needed to cut Confederate supply lines running through western Louisiana and open a route north toward Alexandria. His plan had an elegant flanking logic to it. Two divisions would advance directly up Bayou Teche, fixing the Confederate garrison at Fort Bisland while a third Union division moved up the Atchafalaya River to land behind Confederate lines near Franklin, threatening to cut off any retreat.

The Confederate commander, General Richard Taylor, son of President Zachary Taylor, had constructed Fort Bisland as an earthwork position on Bayou Teche. The fort's garrison included the gunboat Diana, recently captured from the Union, which added artillery support from the water. Fighting began with an artillery exchange on the evening of April twelfth, eighteen sixty-three, and the main clash came on April thirteenth, lasting from late morning into dusk, with the Confederate lines holding against frontal Union pressure.

But Taylor learned that night that the flanking Union division had landed behind him. He began withdrawing his forces under cover of darkness, leaving a skeleton force to slow any pursuit. When Union troops advanced the next morning, they found the fort abandoned. Confederate losses over the two days were roughly four hundred and fifty men; Union losses ran to about two hundred and fifty.

The Confederate escape frustrated Banks, but the campaign succeeded in its strategic objective. Union forces swept through the sugar country of the Teche region, destroying Confederate supply infrastructure and demonstrating that the interior of Louisiana was no longer defensible. The road to Alexandria, and eventually to the Red River country farther north, now lay open.