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Hartwell[?].

[Manuscript map of Union operations during the Siege of Port Hudson, showing fortifications, batteries, rifle pits, covered ways, etc., heavily annotated by its maker.]

[Port Hudson or vicinity, likely July 1863]. Ink on blue-lined notebook paper, 9.5” x 7.75” (sheet size). Docketed “Hartwell” in ink on verso. CONDITION: Very good, old folds, crease along lower edge of map.

An extensively annotated manuscript map documenting an aspect of the Union operations against Confederate defenses shortly before the end of the Siege of Port Hudson, attesting to the remarkable effort and peril involved in the Union’s construction of “covered ways” and an associated tunnel made to plant explosives beneath Confederate works.

This engrossing map, almost certainly made by a member of General William J. Dwight’s division (which was positioned along the southern end of Port Hudson, closest to the Mississippi), shows the Union’s advance upon the “Citadel,” identified here as one of the strongest Confederate forts. Opposite the Citadel and an additional “Large Rebel Fort” is the Union Army’s “17 gun battery,” upon which the maker of the map “was at work for so long,” and to the east of which is a portion of a rifle pit that extended around Port Hudson. Also to the east of the battery is a Union mortar battery at the edge of a deep ravine to the north, west of which, extending along the Mississippi, is a network of “covered areas” ten feet wide and six deep for “artillery and troops to pass through.” As the author of this map indicates, the construction of these was an exceptionally hazardous challenge: 

Three guns were playing on us with shot, shell, shrapnel, all the time we were digging between AA and BB [the area to be crossed] which took us four or five days…we were all exposed, every time they fired we had to lay flat down while digging, we were often fired at by rebel sharpshooters situated at X, a place then in their possession. 

The position marked X is

a bluff about 30 feet high. We took it from the rebs and built a rifle pit over the top so that our sharp shooters could protect us as we dug the covered way up the hill to the rebel works — the one marked QQ. Every time a reb tries to fire a gun our sharp shooters fire at them.

Near the Citadel, the Union constructed another “rifle pit for our sharp shooters,” to provide additional cover for those who were “mining,” i.e., digging a tunnel under the fort. An associated note reads: “We had got two mines under the rebel works for nearly a 100 feet when they surrendered. We were just going to blow them up.” Further emphasizing the hazards endured by the trench and tunnel diggers, the mapmaker identifies the tunnel digging location as “the place where I was standing when the man was killed near me.”

The Siege of Port Hudson was the longest siege on American soil, resulting in at least 1000 Union men killed or wounded by just the third day of the forty-eight day operation. Along with the siege of Vicksburg, the siege of Port Hudson was part of the Union’s “Anaconda Plan” to take control of the Mississippi River and sever Confederate supply lines, particularly the Red River, which served as a supply route from Texas and elsewhere in the west. The Union forces at Port Hudson, led by General Nathaniel Banks, were 35,000 strong against a mere 7,500 Confederates led by General Franklin Gardner. However, due to poor communication, the general incompetence of Banks, and the strong Rebel position, direct assaults upon the Confederate fortifications failed throughout late May and early June. As the siege ran into July and Confederate and Union supplies began to dwindle, a Union Captain, Joseph Bailey, an “untutored engineering officer, began a vast tunnel under the Citadel hill. Thirty barrels of powder were then placed inside to blow up the Citadel. A second tunnel was started on Grover’s front on the right near the Priest Cap [on the north side of Port Hudson]. By July 7, the mine under the Priest Cap was completed and twelve hundred pounds of powder placed inside. At dawn on July 9, Banks intended to explode the mines under the Citadel and Priest Cap…Port Hudson would then be his. His preparations were unnecessary. On July 7, a gunboat arrived at the upper fleet bringing news of the surrender of Vicksburg on July 4, 1864” (“Battle Description”) leading to Gardner’s surrender.

REFERENCES: “Battle description of Port Hudson” and “Port Hudson Map” at The Battle of Port Hudson online.

Item #9141

Price: $3,000.00

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