Don Wildman

It's a fairly small force coming up here.

There's not a major land battle to face, is it?

Right.

So May 9th is what we're talking about when the Union sails up with USS Iroquois as 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.

Starts with guerrilla attacks against the Union troops, which were led by David Farragut, right?

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 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.

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.