Earlier that spring, 30,000 Union troops invaded Louisiana in an effort to end Confederate resistance in the West and seize valuable supplies.

They ascended the Red River on 60 transport ships accompanied by ironclad gunboats. When half the fleet got stranded on a mile-long rapids, the Union troops headed into combat on foot. The Confederates fought them off, though, and the Union soldiers rapidly retreated to their ships, expecting to get away.

While they were gone, however, the river had sunk even lower and they found their gunboats and transports completely grounded. There seemed no choice but to flee overland and destroy the country's finest ships so they wouldn't fall into enemy hands.

That's when Bailey proposed damming the river below the rapids to raise the water level. The idea struck most of the Union officers as a great joke. They apparently had never met a Wisconsin lumberjack.

Directing 3,000 men night and day, many of them working waist-deep in the Louisiana muck, Bailey constructed an earth and timber dam that raised the river depth to nearly 6 feet. But just after the first gunboat shot through, the dam partially collapsed and the skeptics all cheered.

Undaunted, Bailey's soldiers quickly built a series of wing dams upriver, such as loggers used to channel the current. The water rose again and, as thousands watched from shore, the remaining ironclads passed over the rapids to safety and the Union forces escaped downriver.

— Wisconsin Historical Society
www.wisconsinhistory.org

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