The Battle of Baton Rouge (2024)

While New Orleans suffered under the rule of Gen. Benjamin “Beast” Butler in August 1862, it avoided the anguish of actual fighting. Not so its upriver neighbor, Baton Rouge.

The Union Navy captured the city in May 1862, a few days after New Orleans was occupied, meeting little resistance as the state government fled to Opelousas, about 60 miles west. No longer presenting a military threat, the city was left to its own devices. But a few weeks later, when Confederate guerrillas fired on Union sailors rowing ashore to get their laundry done, the fleet commander, David Farragut, decided to bombard the city.

Sarah Morgan, a young woman in Baton Rouge, fled, alongside many others, when the shells began to fall. Afterward, she described the mass exodus in her diary: “It was a heartrending scene. Women searching for their babies along the road, where they had been lost, others sitting in the dust crying and wringing their hands, for by this time, we had not an idea but what Baton Rouge was either in ashes, or being plundered, and we had saved nothing.” Miraculously, only one person was killed in the bombardment, though several others were wounded. A number of buildings were destroyed and many more were damaged, including the Capitol and St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, a neo-Gothic masterpiece in the center of downtown.

Gen. Thomas Williams then landed 2,600 Union soldiers and occupied the city. But unlike the turmoil that occurred in New Orleans under Butler’s rule, the people of Baton Rouge came to respect General Williams because he sometimes provided armed guards to protect private homes from looters. On the other hand, Williams treated his own men cruelly and often ordered harsh punishments for even the smallest infraction. It was said that the soldiers got even by digging hidden pits around town so Williams would fall into them when he made inspections.

The summer in occupied Baton Rouge passed uneventfully, until early August, when Confederates tried to recapture the city. Gen. John C. Breckinridge (James Buchanan’s vice president and the 1860 Southern Democratic presidential nominee) took a small army from Camp Moore, La., near the Mississippi border, to attack the city from the east. At the same time, the Confederate gunboat Arkansas was to steam down the Mississippi and attack the Union ships in the river. If all went well for the rebels, General Williams and his Yankees would be crushed between them.

Library of Congress The Battle of Baton Rouge

Breckinridge attacked on the foggy morning of Aug. 5 and began pushing the enemy back toward the river. Unfortunately for the Confederates, the Arkansas never arrived because its engines malfunctioned on the way to the battle. The Union soldiers finally made a defensive stand near the modern-day Capitol, and with the help of three gunboats forced Breckinridge to retreat.

The Battle of Baton Rouge was small by Civil War standards. The Confederates lost 467 men killed, wounded or captured, the Union 382. Among the latter was General Williams, who was killed in the fighting (it was rumored that his own men killed him). Two of the first Confederates to fall were Lt. A. H. Todd and Brig. Gen. Benjamin Hardin Helm, Mary Lincoln’s half-brother and brother-in-law, respectively. As the Confederates approached Baton Rouge before daylight two units mistakenly fired on each other. Todd, who served as General Helm’s aide, was shot and killed, and Helm suffered a crushed leg when his horse reared and fell on top of him.

When the Arkansas’s crew was unable to restart the ship’s engines, they decided to destroy the vessel rather than allow the enemy to capture it. The men set fire to the ironclad, set it adrift in the river and scrambled ashore. When the fires reached the powder magazine, the Arkansas exploded and sank near the modern-day US 190 highway bridge at Baton Rouge.

But as a symbolic defeat, the Battle of Baton Rouge was devastating. Sarah Morgan witnessed the burning of the Arkansas and wrote in her diary,

I had no words or tears; I could only look at our sole hope burning, going, and pray silently. O it was so sad! Think it was our sole dependence! And we five girls looked at her as the smoke rolled over her, watched the flames burst from her decks, and the shells as they exploded one by one beneath the water, coming up in jets of steam. And we watched until down the road we saw crowds of men toiling along towards us. Then we knew they were those who had escaped [the Arkansas], and the girls sent up a shriek of pity. On they came, dirty, half dressed, some with only their guns, a few with bundles and knapsacks on their backs, grimy and tired, but still laughing.

Approximately a third of Baton Rouge was destroyed in the battle, largely because Union soldiers burned or knocked down nearly all of the houses and buildings close to the river to give their gunboats a clear field of fire. But the city’s troubles were not over. On Aug. 21, the Federals left the city, but not before going on a looting and burning spree that destroyed more of the town. The Yankees returned in December, burned down the Capitol, and remained in the Baton Rouge area for the rest of the war.

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Sources: Charles East, ed., “The Civil War Diary of Sarah Morgan”; Terry L. Jones, “The Louisiana Journey”; John D. Winters, “The Civil War in Louisiana.”

Terry L. Jones is a professor of history at the University of Louisiana, Monroe and the author of six books on the Civil War.