The warship had guns, armor, and crews trained to fight. None of it could make the river deeper.
In the spring of 1864, Union vessels lay trapped above the rapids at Alexandria, La. The Red River was falling, the army was retreating, and Confederate forces threatened to cut off the withdrawal. Rear Adm. David Porter faced the possible loss of much of his fleet. Lt. Col. Joseph Bailey believed he could save it.
Bailey had worked with Wisconsin timber and water long before this emergency. His life intersected with the development of Kilbourn City, the community now called Wisconsin Dells. In 1861, he recruited men who became Company D of the 4th Wisconsin Infantry.
For someone who grew up in Altoona, this story feels especially satisfying. Knowledge gained through physical work, far from military headquarters, suddenly became essential to men whose lives depended on an answer.
From the Army Corps of Engineers:
After a series of sharp engagements, notably the Battle of Sabine Cross Roads on 8 April and another at Pleasant Hill the following day, Banks decided that he could not capture Shreveport within the allotted time, and he ordered his troops to withdraw downriver. However, when the general arrived in Alexandria he found that 10 warships of Rear Admiral David Porter’s Mississippi Squadron, along with 12 transports, were stranded above the city—the river had dropped 6 feet during the previous month, and as a result the ships could not pass over the two sets of rapids above the city.
With his ships bottled up deep in Confederate territory, Porter was in danger of losing much of his fleet. Recognizing the admiral’s plight, Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Bailey, the XIX Corps senior engineer, proposed a daring solution—dam the river to raise the water level, while at the same time concentrating the river’s flow through a narrow sluiceway, thus creating a torrent of water which the warships could ride over the rapids. A former Wisconsin lumberman, Bailey had used a similar tactic for floating logs downstream during periods of low water.
Bailey understood how dams could raise water and move heavy loads. He proposed applying that knowledge to the stranded vessels. Build across the river, increase the depth upstream, and give the gunboats enough water to clear the rocks.
Porter later described the proposal as looking like madness. With few alternatives, the commanders authorized the work, which began April 30.
From the Army Corps of Engineers:
Although Porter later said that Bailey’s plan was a "proposition that looked like madness…," the admiral had few alternatives. At Porter’s request, on 30 April 1864, General Banks ordered his soldiers to work. Working in water that often came up to their necks, over the next week, 3,000 weary soldiers built the dam. In a later report, Bailey described construction of the dam by the lower rapids:
"At this point where the main dam was constructed, the river is 758 feet wide, with from four to six feet of water running at about ten miles per hour.
The river measured 758 feet across at the main dam. Soldiers hauled timber and stone, built wooden cribs, and used loaded barges as part of the barrier. Roughly 3,000 men worked to turn Bailey’s calculations into something strong enough to hold back a river.
The work belonged to many hands. Bailey’s report names Wisconsin detachments, men from other states, and the 97th and 99th U.S. Colored Infantry. He credited his assistant, Lt. Col. Uri Pearsall, and praised the laborers who worked day and night, standing waist-deep in water under a punishing sun.
It’s easy to remember the officer whose name survives on a monument. Those men deserve a place beside him. An ingenious plan still required tired backs, skilled hands, and soldiers willing to keep working when the outcome remained uncertain.
There’s a kind of courage in accepting responsibility for a solution everyone can see might fail. Bailey had to trust his experience, persuade his superiors, and keep adjusting the work. The men building beside him needed something solid to stand on.
Then, on May 9, water pressure displaced two barges. Water surged through the opening, and the gunboat Lexington headed toward the gap. Its passage dramatically tested the scheme on which so much depended.
The vessel made it through. Other ships followed, but the job wasn’t finished.
Bailey and the troops continued their work, building upstream dams to help the remaining vessels cross the shallow stretches. By May 13, the trapped gunboats had escaped. A campaign that had already gone badly wouldn’t end with those ships abandoned above Alexandria’s rapids.
Bailey’s own report captures the reward better than any later flourish. He described cheering crowds along the shore and the relief of an army and navy released from suspense. He also named the officers and units whose efforts made the escape possible.
I keep returning to the men on those decks, watching the water that had trapped them finally carry them away. The cheering was certainly for a successful engineering project, but it was also the sound of people getting another chance.
Wisconsin taught Bailey what a river could do. When others needed that knowledge, he offered it, and thousands of men supplied the labor.
We remember battles by the ground men took. Joseph Bailey deserves remembrance for the way out he helped give them.
