American History Hit - Battle of Baton Rouge: Civil War on the Mississippi

Episode Date: February 5, 2026

The Civil War along the Mississippi was reaching a critical moment by the Summer of 1862. The Union had advanced and planted its flag in Louisiana’s state capital without firing a shot. To many observers, Confederate grip seemed to be slipping away for good. But before that was for certain, one desperate gamble remained...Today, we’re telling the story of the lesser known Battle of Baton Rouge: why it happened, how it unfolded, and the accounts of those who witnessed it. On today's show, Don welcomes Prof. Aaron Sheehan-Dean of Louisiana State University back onto the show. His works include ‘Why Confederates Fought: Family and a Nation in Civil War Virginia’ and most recently ‘Fighting with the Past: How Seventeenth Century History Shaped the American Civil War’.Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Produced by Tom Delargy. Senior Producer is Freddy Chick.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  All music from Epidemic Sounds.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries, with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. The road to Baton Rouge lies quiet beneath a veil of fog and heavy summer air. Soldiers, clad in gray, move stealthily through the darkness.

Boots sinking into the damp earth, their breath shallow and controlled. Somewhere ahead, beyond the trees and the low fields are the Union positions. Months earlier, disaster had unfurled for the Confederates. New Orleans had fallen to Union gunboats, a loss that stunned. the south. With it went trade, confidence, and strategic control of the lower Mississippi. One by one, river towns had followed. Baton Rouge, the state capital of Louisiana, had been abandoned and occupied without resistance. For these advancing Confederate troops, weeks of drilling, marching, and waiting have led to this moment. They are to be supported by a powerful ironclad

ship that will soon thunder down river, aiding their attack. Together, as the Army and Navy strike, the Lower Mississippi will be Confederate once more. In the humid silence, rifles are checked, and officers whisper orders. The men understand this plan is a bold strategy, but soon will come sunrise, and with it, the precious opportunity to reclaim what has slipped away. And welcome to American History Yet, I'm Don Wildman. The American Civil War War lasted four years, from 1861 to 1865. Usually when we consider the earlier years of the war, we think of the Upper South, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, the fabled clashes at Shiloh, seven days battle, the battles of Bull Run. For the Union, these were mostly discouraging days under

George McClellan's lackluster leadership, while the Confederates grew ever more emboldened under Robert Lee. But all this time, a quieter, though arguably more strategic, struggle was unfolding along the Mississippi River in Louisiana, the deepest part of the deep south, where control of a single city would help determine whether the Confederacy could survive as a nation at all. On August 5, 1862, that struggle exploded into violence at the Battle of Baton Rouge. A small battle with outsized consequences, and we'll discuss how so in the company of Aaron Sheandine, Professor of History, at Louisiana State University, LSU, regularly listeners will have had the pleasure of his insights on several episodes over the years. Welcome

again, Aaron. Welcome back to American History yet. Thanks for having me. I say early days, of course, a lot has happened in the war by the summer of 1862. Can we give this battle we're about to discuss some greater context? Where are we at in the steamy heat of the Bayou summer? Well, I would actually start it in the spring, which is when the Union launches its invasion up the Mississippi River. They had already launched an invasion down. mounting the Navy in Cairo, Illinois, and coming down, they reach Memphis by June of 62. But this is a more formidable effort coming out of the Gulf of Mexico. They capture New Orleans in April of 1862.

And it's important to remember, as you pointed out, although people are looking to the east, New Orleans is the most populous city in the south. It's the wealthiest city in the south. And strategically, it's the most important as the mouth of the Mississippi River. So the capture of New Orleans is tremendously good news for northern audiences, as you know, sort of starved in that early spring for good news. And then the effort is to push that effort upriver with the goal of connecting with the Union forces coming down river.

This whole episode really is about shifting the focus from what is so famously going on in those early years to this really important couple of battles really starts with the New Orleans, the takeover of New Orleans. But then this one we're going to discuss. It was all part of what was called for the union, the Anaconda Plan, right? Well, that's the, initially that's the pejorative name given to it by critics. It's Winfield Scott's idea. And actually, the Anaconda captures it because what Scott says, and Scott, remember, had been

the general in command of U.S. forces of the Mexican-American War. He's by far the most distinguished and lauded military mind. He is also viewed by many as old and doddering and out of touch. I mean, he is a corpulent man, as they said in the 19th century. well over 300 pounds had to be sort of winched onto his horse for parades. But he actually has a pretty acute sense here, which is that this war is going to take years and that the most effective way to pursue this is to send forces along the rivers and along the coast and confine the Confederacy and then squeeze resources moving inwards. And initially, as I say,

a lot of northerners are impatient and they reject that idea, but by 1862, it's quite clear that the war will last for years, possibly. And so the effort then is to really try to cut the Confederacy in two by capturing control of the Mississippi River, leaving the trans-Mississippi states of Texas and Arkansas and Louisiana, big beef producers, resources for those Eastern soldiers, leaving those isolated on the western side of the Mississippi River. So controlling that whole river is really key,

and it starts at New Orleans and then begins moving up. But southern Louisiana is among the wealthiest section. of the United States and certainly in the South. But controlling that is really an essential objective. April 25th, they've captured New Orleans. The union has moved in. Like, that was an extraordinary moment where there really wasn't a defense against that.

Wasn't that kind of surprising? So the real defense, New Orleans, at the time when the union arrives downriver, they only have about 8,000 soldiers in the city itself. And the city has 160,000 residents. So it is pretty clear to everybody that the actual soldiery is totally, insufficient to protect the city. The real defense lays down river. There's a long channel from

New Orleans. It's about 60 miles to the Gulf. And there are two forts at a narrow point in that river, St. Philip and Jackson on either side of the passage. And they have a dense field of fire. And New Orleans believe no ship will be able to pass through beyond those forts. So that's our defense. And what happens in April of 1862 is David Farragut pushes his ships past those. He takes hits and he loses ships, but he is able to move past them. And once he does, the route to New Orleans is unobstructed. And as you say, the city is essentially undefended. Those 8,000 soldiers are evacuated immediately. And so when the union arrives, the city is effectively surrendered without firing a shot, something that creates a great deal of dissension, certainly among the women of New Orleans,

who complain bitterly and very creatively to their men about the sort of humiliation of having the South's richest place just handed up to the Union Army as it's coming up river. It is the Union outpost that eventually U.S. Grant will fight his way down, Pass Vicksford, and link up that whole north-south of the Mississippi River, which is such a key part of this whole thing. In the context of this strategy is a very small place, but a very important one, the capital of Louisiana, Baton Rouge. What was strategic about this place particularly? Well, it's the next. largest city moving up river. As you know, Grant is going to be fighting downriver, and of course,

his chief obstacle is Vicksburg. The Confederate Gibraltar, as they called it, a place that Confederates believed was really untakeable. And in fact, the north does get bottled up north of there. So it puts a lot more pressure on the effort to go south and to move up river. Just above Baton Rouge is a small place called Port Hudson, like Vicksburg and elevated cliff that presents a very thorny obstacle. So Baton Rouge becomes essential to hold as a launching pad for attacks at Port Hudson and then to move upriver to Vicksburg. The Confederate government, the state government evacuates and moves to the west. But as I say, Baton Rouge was sort of the next largest space in this area capturing the capital was a publicity coup for the north. And so it is essential to kind of anchor a control of this larger southern Louisiana region, enormously wealthy from sugar and cotton planters.

Right. who had been trading, and the union immediately begins thinking about making deals with these men to return to the union, take a oath of loyalty. Many of them are old school businessmen, kind of wig types, who were not keen for secession in the first place, and many do sign loyalty oaths. So there are multiple strategies. The union is using, I would say, both the carrot and the stick here, to try to recruit people back to the union. That's always Lincoln's goal here, even before he's necessarily thinking about a complete military victory.

if he can sort of bring people back. And these wealthy planters, some of them do return up and down the river on both sides, really. How far is Baton Rouge from New Orleans? What's the distance that we're covering here? It's about 60 miles. So the river at this point, actually, New Orleans is more east than south of us, although we all talk about it is downriver. We're talking about 60 miles or so between New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

Okay. But it's a day's sale or what a day is. a night's sail, I suppose, yeah? Yeah, it's very smooth sailing, as I say, the two forts were the key obstacle. And north of here, the river, at this point, the river is very wide and very easy to navigate. The union is bringing very big ships, you know, triple-masted naval ships up river here with reasonably deep holes. The river can accommodate that even much farther north.

The Union forces are coming from New Orleans, obviously. It's a fairly small force coming up here. There's not a major land battle to face. is it? No, and the number of troops here in Baton Rouge, even by mid-summer of 1862, is only around 3,000. Again, there are no Confederate soldiers at all. The Confederates evacuate from New Orleans and move east into the Florida parishes above Lake Pontchantrain. And so with no obstacles, it requires relatively a small force. What's important is that there are Union warships in the river. And listeners need to remember that those warships carry very heavy guns, not the

small field artillery pieces that they may have seen if they've been to Civil War battlefields. The gunships have 9,000-pound cast iron cannons that hurl huge projectiles, two miles. And so that's really the kind of the firepower that they have is much greater than a force of 3,000 infantry with one or two regiments of field artillery might sort of present. Right. So May 9th is what we're talking about when the union sails up with USS Iroquois, as their, their main battleship. They arrive at Baton Rouge. They basically take the city without resistance, and they set up their whole shop here. But it's late May that we're going to be talking about

when there's a struggle backwards. The Confederates come knocking at the door. It starts with guerrilla attacks against the Union troops, which were led by David Farragut, right? David Farragut is in command of the naval part of this campaign. Benjamin Butler was his army counterpart in Butler is down in New Orleans, earning the disfavor of New Orleans. Right. for his occupation. That's a whole other show. But yes, Farragut is commanding the naval side. And the incident that you're referring to happens on the morning of May 28th. One of the officers on Farragut's ships needs to come ashore and he gets into a rowboat. He's got four cabin boys sort of rowing him in and as they reach the shore, a group of guerrillas ride to the edge and fire on the ship and

they injure the officer, perhaps kill him. They can't tell from the ships. And Farragut has to make a very quick decision about the right way to respond to this. One option is to organize a platoon of men, lower rowboats, row in, climb the bank, find horses and give chase to guerrillas, who by this point are miles away. Or to use the guns that he has, those huge heavy artillery guns, and he turns his ships. That takes about 10 minutes and begins an artillery barrage. It only lasts maybe 10 or 15 minutes, but it does enormous damage to Baton Rouge. The old state capital is damaged, the cathedral, the citizens downtown, of course, fly into a panic. One person is sort of killed in the stampede of civilians rushing away from downtown. And it gives us an insight into

the mismatch between the threat posed by guerrillas, which is quite precise and singular, and the very blunt tools that the Union Navy has to counteract it. And this is the very beginning of a guerrilla conflict that, as your listeners know, will spread, goes all over the Confederacy. but in some ways takes very sharp shape down here along the Mississippi River. Both sides see the proliferation of guerrillas in 1862 and these very clumsy, heavy union efforts to suppress them. And that, of course, inflames civilian animosity and all of the things that we know with insurgencies and counterinsurgencies. You have the same feeling about this, I do anyway, of the city of Washington, Washington, D.C., sitting smack in the south. How would they possibly resist this, you know, being enveloped in the, in the Confederacy?

Same down here. And yet there's so many different situations and geographies involved that it succeeds. May 29th, Brigadier General Thomas Williams arrives to take command. He brings in a further six regiments, two artillery batteries and a cavalry force. Things have gotten very serious in Baton Rouge for the Union. True. And I mean, it's important to note a couple of things. One is that Williams's troops are very new. They are untrained. It's a kind of assortment of some Midwestern troops and I think a Vermont regiment. And they come down with very little experience. And they're coming into a very foreign place. As we've just said, there is a kind of active and growing guerrilla war, which unsettles them. And Williams himself is something of a martinet. He is a strict disciplinarian.

He does not earn the love of many of his soldiers. Now, he has good reason to try. try to impose discipline and to train them and drill. On the other hand, sort of new soldiers don't like, there's a kind of rough seasoning that goes on as you, you know, these are all volunteer men and they don't like entering the army and having officers ordering them about. So there is, I would say it's not the most well organized and sort of knowledgeable force that the union has. And this is true all the way through the summer.

There's sort of, there's a lot of tension within the ranks. And with local civilians. It doesn't earn. Yeah. And with local civilians, the provost marshal here passes repeated orders trying to kind of keep civilians and soldiers separate. I mean, I've been over to the LSU archives. And there are at least two or three separate proclamations compelling civilians not to sell alcohol to soldiers. And of course, this is because the civilians need a way to make money. Soldiers are happy to buy

alcohol, but drunk soldiers armed amidst a hostile enemy is not a good mix. And from the provost Marshall's perspective, I don't want drunk soldiers sort of roaming the city at night. And the only place they're getting alcohol is from locals, you know, and it's sort of bad for everybody, but everybody does it anyway. So the main action of what we're about to talk about happens later in the summertime. So at this point, early in the late in the spring, early in the summer, we have the union digging in. We have a whole society of problems going on between the occupying force and the local civilian population. New soldiers, as you say, trying to figure this thing out. and the beginning of the real strategy of hooking up the north and south along the Mississippi River.

But it's important to understand Baton Rouge Falls without cannon fire, without bayonite charges. It's a fairly quiet affair for the Union gunboats and moving up river. But whether that will stay that way remains to be seen. We'll come back after this break to cover that. Welcome back. We're speaking with Professor Aaron Sheean Dean. So to recap, we have this small but strategic city on the banks of the Mississippi River, recently falling into Union hands without much of a fight. But Confederates are plotting to take it back.

So, Aaron, let's start with the state of opposing forces prior to this battle. The Confederates in particular. So the Confederates are well-enskinned in Vicksburg, which is quite a ways upriver. As I said earlier, they are very confident of that position, but they are also watching the Union advance upriver from the south. And Earl Van Doren in command at that moment at Vicksburg details, John Breckenridge to take several divisions and move south to Baton Rouge to try to clear out the union from Baton Rouge and then push south and liberate New Orleans. What he wants to do is relieve

what he anticipates will be a union attack coming from the south at Vicksburg. He's already contending with Grant coming down from the north. And so Breckenridge's orders are part of this larger strategic vision of protecting the Confederate position at Vicksburg. And for furthermore liberating southern Louisiana from Yankee occupation, which already by July and August of 1862, there are horrible stories about what's happening there. And so there is a need, I think, to kind of reinforce a sense of protecting the South's largest city. Yeah. Troops are commanded by General John C. Breckenridge. He's advanced from the east. The idea is to surprise the Union troops. It is. Breckenridge leaves with about 4,000 troops. He

He comes down to Camp Moore in Tangipahoa, which is sort of just below the Mississippi-Louisiana line on the sort of toe of the boot of Louisiana. And as you note, he's trying to attack without them being aware. He is marching in August. It is a hot and humid and horrible time to be in Louisiana. I can testify from personal experience. And he loses a lot of soldiers to attrition so that by the time he reaches Baton Rouge, he's coming from the east.

He's actually only got about 2,600 effectives, and they have also lost the element of surprise. There's a pretty noisy, disorganized movement coming from Camp Moore towards the river, that is, towards the West, towards Baton Rouge. And so by the time they are there, August 4th, the battles on August 5th, the Union knows that the Confederate attack is imminent. And so they can dig in and entrench themselves, the infantry and the gunboats can get ready. It's important to realize, while things are going very strongly for the Confederates up north, We've just had the Battle of Shiloh in April up there in Tennessee, and Grant is a presence moving down the Mississippi towards Vicksburg, as you know.

So things are tipping differently out west. I'm curious about the status of this situation, given the fact that so much resources have to go up north. Is that where the Confederates are struggling because they just don't have the men and the materials? Well, that is really one of the key logistical problems for Davis for this whole war. So, you know, remember that the Confederacy is three quarters of a million square miles. That's bigger than continental Europe. It has a 3,000 mile coastline. And the first enlistment authorization by the Confederate Congress calls for a 100,000-man army. Now, by 1862, they probably have 600,000 men under arms.

But even still, that's not nearly enough to cover this much space. And so the vast majority of those troops have been positioned in that pivotal corridor between Richmond and Washington. Washington, and then more recently in central Tennessee, and the West in a way does not get the manpower that it needs. And if it's a short war, that's not a problem, but this is a much longer war. And this is where I think historians today would argue that in many respects, the Union wins the war strategically by capturing parts of the West and then moving south through Georgia and then up the coast, of course, connecting as Sherman and Grant do in 1864, 65.

But sort of like a lot of, you know, readers today, it's important to keep an eye on the West because not everybody was at the time. But those union victories are really changing the landscape, literally, in the sense of the resources and manpower. And has everything to do with owning the river and being able to use your gunboats on that river, which is also what the Confederates are thinking and they have a strategy in mind, right? They do. They have a very powerful ironclad ram. This is the CSS Arkansas. the ironclads are a brand new technology. Listeners may know about the famous battle between the monitor and the Virginia,

also known as the Merrimack, in Hampton Roads, which had happened in the spring of 1862, a reasonably inconclusive sort of two hours of firing back and forth, but it brought to people's public attention the fact that there is a new technology, ironclad ships that have these very low profiles with huge iron plating that can deflect cannon shot. And if it's paired with a ram, as it is in the case of the Arkansas, even a single ship like that can be devastating to the union

holds ships of the Union Navy. It can just sort of slowly go from ship to ship punching holes and watching them sink. And the Arkansas is sent from Vicksburg down to Baton Rouge to disable those Union ships while hopefully Breckenridge's troops move coming from the east, pushing Union troops up against the river, capturing or killing them. That's the kind of plan is to pinch them between the river and this crush of troops coming from the east. April 5th, 1862, the battle will begin. Now, I just want to remind listeners, you are standing. I mean, you are located pretty much on that battlefield where you sit right now, right?

It's true. So the Union formed a defensive line. The Union infantry forms a defensive line in a kind of concave shape about a mile and a half from the river. That is a mile and a half east of the Mississippi River. That's our hard western boundary. If readers want to draw on their minds a kind of straight line on the left-hand side of the page, that's the Mississippi River.

And then there's this open sea shape, the bottom edge of which is just actually about a block from me. The main fighting happens at a place called Magnolia Cemetery, about a half a mile north of where I am. Breckenridge's troops, as you say, have marched in from the east along the Greenwell Springs Road and what's the day, Florida Avenue. And those 2,600 men hit the Union line, and there was terrific fighting. for much of the early morning and the midday in this private cemetery called Magnolia Cemetery. You mentioned before they've completely lost the element of surprise, which is important.

How big are the sizes of these forces in comparison to each other? Williams has about 3,000 men and probably fewer effectives than that when the battle actually starts. Breckenridge comes down with 4,000 but 2,600 effectives. I mean, one regiment of his has 45 men in it, a usual regimen. of mental size would have been a thousand men or 800 if they're all healthy and for duty. So they're actually reasonably evenly balanced. The key here is still the Union naval capacity, those Union gunships. And because the Union knows that this battle is going to happen, they begin clearing

obstructions to create lines of sight. That is, they're knocking down Holmes in Baton Rouge so that the gunners on those boats have even ways to calculate their trajectory out to where the battle is happening about a mile and a half east of the river. And that, of course, the burden of that falls on the civilians whose homes are destroyed, lawful under the laws of war. The Confederates have chosen to come bring battle here, and so we use the landscape we're given. But losing the element of surprise is key because the union does have several ships there

with heavy artillery. Interesting. Those are the target of the CSS Arkansas, and that's the kind of bigger part of their strategy. They must know that there's Arkansas is on its way, right? They do. and there is a lot of apprehension about that. The fighting during the midday, the Confederates are actually effective. The Confederate infantry at pushing the Union back.

Thomas Williams, the commanding general for the Union, is killed. Basically in the middle of the fighting there, he is shot in the chest, falls from his horse. He has deputies that basically have to reorganize very quickly and take command of two separate divisions. And they are beginning a retreat back towards the river. And the Confederates at this point are quite optimistic. because the Confederate infantry is doing what it should, which is sort of rolling the union up against the river, what they are relying on again is the Arkansas

disabling those union ships. And really the key point in the battle comes in the afternoon. The Arkansas had been having engine trouble already before it left Vicksburg, and the engineer had warned about this, and they sort of got it going, but they have more engine trouble just a mile or two north of Baton Rouge, and then they hit a kind of Cyprus jam

in the river and the engine snarl. And he's not going anywhere. And so the captain of the Arkansas has to make a very quick decision about whether he simply abandons the ship because the union has an ironclad, the Essex that is coming to engage, or whether he fires the ship. And his decision is whether or not he will let the union capture this very valuable piece of military technology and he fires the ship. That is, he explodes the ship.

His men evacuate to safety and then he explodes the ship. and there are a lot of lithographs and images of this that go in the Union newspaper, because with that ship disabled, then, the Confederate attack on the Union ships collapses. So goes the great strategy of winning the river back. Yeah, and this is key. There's a brilliant diarist, a woman named Sarah Morgan, very young, a girl, really, 16 years old in 1860, who leaves a brilliant diary. Her father is a judge here in Baton Rouge.

It's actually called a Southern Girls diary, and it's been in print since the 1960s, if listeners are interested in war diaries or women's Civil War Diaries, in particular hers is one of the best. And she's on the river bank and she sees the Arkansas fired. And she says, there go all our hopes.

We knew we watched the explosion. We watched shells detonating. And we cheered when we saw the men run to safety. They're on the West Bank. The crew gets off. But she says, our sole dependence, she says, was on the Arkansas.

And, you know, she's young, but a very acute observer, which is, we're not going to win this battle without that ship. And I'll just quote her, ever since I commenced to write, the sound of a furious bombardment

has been ringing in my ears, and beyond an occasional run to see the shells fly through the air, their white smoke, rather. I have not said a word of it, but here I sit listening, and I wonder which report precedes the knocking down of our home,

which shell is killing someone I know and love. Wow, what a great writer she is. How old is this girl? She's 16 in 1860, and she is really a brilliant writer, and the diary is a remarkable object. It's really one of the best diaries that we have for the war, certainly from a civilian observer. And as you know, she watches. She sees most of what's happening in both this battle and in the occupation of Baton Rouge, and she writes with a very sharp pen about it.

There are numerous casualties in this war of very important officers. Brigadier General Williams, who's in charge of the union there, rides personally along the lines. He is fatally shot while leading the troops, a huge psychological blow, obviously. Colonel Thomas W.K. Hill took over the command, leads a retreat back to the prepared defensive lines, which came within the protective range of warships. That's generally what's going on here. I'm trying to sketch this out broadly for listeners.

You've got the Navy over there with all their guns, and they've cleared their paths. They've got a lot of strategy there with all of that. The Army can move accordingly. And so they've prepared the option of going back towards the shore because they know that fire from the ships is going to protect them. The Confederates were expecting the help of the Arkansas to preoccupy those ships or even take them out. That's not happening. So the union's in pretty good shape as this day moves on, correct? That is correct.

They have men posted on the roof of the old state capital trying to help gunners on the ships get their trajectory. That's all prepared in advance. and, as you say, defensive lines in front of the river. So it's a measured retreat, a kind of retreat into a position already secured. And really at that point, it is impossible for the Confederate infantry to overcome the artillery advantage presented by those ships. Once the Union soldiers are sort of within the effective range of those guns, the Confederate infantry cannot break through.

And so at that point, they basically retreat. And the battle concludes as a Union victory, it's, hard fought, as you note, the commanding officer is killed there in it. Much of Baton Rouge has seen destruction. And were it not for those gunships, probably the Confederates would have won. That is, were it not for the Arkansas being disabled and destroyed, the Confederates might well have recaptured Baton Rouge, whether they would have been able to move all the way south and accomplish the full strategic goal, we don't know. Yeah, right. Well, Confederate momentum stalls. Breckenridge decides he can't hold that city and decides to disengage in the battle.

orders of withdrawal and avoids destruction. After the break, we'll come back with Professor Aaron Chandine to discuss the immediate aftermath of this important battle and the implications for the war. So we're back with Professor Aaron Chianne Dean discussing the battle of Baton Rouge and its conclusion. So, Aaron, the battle has ended. Confederate forces are withdrawing from the field, having realized they can't take this city. What now? What's going to happen? Well, there's a couple of things strategically. I want to point out as well in terms of the casual You had mentioned Thomas Williams on the Union side. There is a signally important casualty on the Confederate side, which is Alexander Todd, Todd,

who is part of the Orphan Brigade under the command of John Breckenridge out of Kentucky. And this is Mary Todd Lincoln's brother. Her youngest and closest brother is killed in this battle. That's one of the pieces of news that sort of draws public attention in both the north and the south to this relatively small engagement. listeners may remember an episode that you and I did talking about the brothers war and the kind of divisions within the United States, particularly along the border states. And this is the clearest illustration of that is that Abraham Lincoln's wife's brother is fighting in behalf of the Confederacy in Baton Rouge and killed in action. His body is then brought back to Kentucky.

Most of the Confederates are buried in Magnolia Cemetery, the scene of the fighting, or many of them are buried there in Magnolia Cemetery. Union soldiers are buried across the street and what will later become a national cemetery, a very small one that we have here in Baton Rouge, which houses about half Civil War dead. Let me just cover some numbers. 800 casualties for both sides, dead, wounding, missing. Confederates suffer 478, Union 371. Again, nothing compared to the huge battles up north that we always talk about. But it's such an interesting battle because it's small, but it's mighty.

having the Confederates withdrawal now, how permanent is this withdrawal? Did they expect to come back and fight again? They never do, and that's part of what I want to reinforce here, which is the significance of this, is that the Confederates will never again mount a serious effort to recapture southern Louisiana. So this sort of richest part of the South remains for the remainder of the war in permanent union occupation. Both Baton Rouge and New Orleans are under union occupation for the next three years. And even more importantly, that is what allows Lincoln to begin pursuing reconstruction in Louisiana.

Louisiana is really the first state reconstructed. And there is a friendly unionist government brought into power in 1864. And we can talk more about this. But Confederates may have hoped that they would have been able to return. But as Breckenridge withdraws, you noted the pressure that Grant is putting having come all the way down. Even past Corinth by the middle of 1862, he's down into northern Mississippi. it makes this whole region very vulnerable, and they don't have the manpower to recapture it. That being said, in the immediate aftermath, the union is as disorganized by victory as the

Confederacy is by defeat. This happens at almost every Civil War battle. And the Union forces actually withdraw from Baton Rouge and pull back downriver. They're going to reinvest with a larger force later in the year. And as I say, occupy Baton Rouge permanently throughout the war. Yeah. But it does require a reorganization on both sides. having now fully, by let's say late 1862, solidified its control of southern Louisiana,

they're pushing on Port Hudson and again trying to get north to Vicksburg, which, as your listeners probably know, isn't finally successful until the middle of 1863. But this is key to that effort that Grant's going to make to capture full control of the Mississippi River. The irony is, you know, despite all the buildup, both sides gain very little from this battle. It kind of just sets the table for the bigger battles to come in other places, doesn't it? It does. I mean, I think it's a discouraging effort, certainly for Breckenridge and for what turns out to be the last hope of seriously recapturing ground lost in southern Louisiana. And Lincoln is thinking about how to capitalize on that politically and Grant is thinking about how to capitalize on it strategically.

Port Hudson to the north remains a real difficult spot. So the union control actually doesn't go much farther up river beyond Baton Rouge. But as far as a staging ground for that, Baton Rouge is essential in that sense. Right. It will further isolate these deeper south places, Louisiana, Texas, all these, you know, from all the resources that are happening up north as Lee is pursuing his own northern strategy up there. What this says to me is that the grand plan, this Anaconda plan, they call it, is going to work.

Winfield Scott, God bless him, has the idea. And this stranglehold is now even more of a strangle because we've got this problem of the Mississippi River down in its southernmost point taking care of. It is. I think, I mean, you know, the campaign to capture Vicksburg still takes another nine months. I mean, really 12 months after the, nearly 12 months after the battle of Baton Rouge. And it's all focused on Port Hudson and Vicks. but the union can see clearly that this is an essential part of their overall strategy. Vicksburg falls on the same day that Gettysburg falls.

The profusion of literature about Gettysburg in the Eastern Theater has led many, I would say, kind of casual Civil War readers and historians to imagine that that's the more important battle, finally a defeat or at least a rebuke of Lee. At the time, the capture of Vicksburg and the control of the Mississippi had much greater sway. Lincoln famously says about it, the father of waters flows unvexed to the sea, that finally again, we have control of this mighty river that runs through the heart of the continent. He has cleaved the Confederacy in half. So all of those resources from the Western states, Arkansas and Louisiana and Texas, can no longer get to the soldiers in the East who need them. And that changes the

logistical landscape enormously for the war. People at the time saw it. And it's something that listeners today really need to keep in mind, even as we focus on the climactic battles, you know, of the Overland campaign in 1864, that's because the scope of war has shrunk. There's a whole theater that's basically been taken out of action. Yeah. Well, it's that divine moment when both Gettysburg and Vicksburg were won on the same week and things really shift in that regard. We will talk about Vicksburg soon. And when we do, this will have been a very important conversation. So I hope those listeners will keep that in mind when we get around to that in short order.

And when we do, I hope we'll be talking to you, Professor Aaron Shee and Dean, who has joined us so many times on this podcast and so grateful for it. His scholarship covers a range of Civil War subjects, books like Why the Confederates fought, which we've discussed at length on another episode, The Calculus of Violence, great title. What's new on your horizon, Aaron? So I just published a book last fall called Fighting with the Past, How 17th Century History Shaped the American Civil War. War. So really about how Civil War Americans were using the past to think about their own conflict, the way we use the Civil War today to think about contemporary politics. Thanks so much. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Hey, thanks for listening to American History Hit. You know, every week we release new episodes,

two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays, all kinds of content from mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode. By hitting like and follow, you help us out, which is great, but you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, share it with a friend. American History Hit with me, Don Wildman. So grateful for your support.