Third Annual Baton Rouge Civil War Symposium,April 5-7, 2019

The next stop on the Hallowed Ground Tour was called the "Hospital Ravine". About 8 years ago a man by the last name of "Siegel"(can't remember his first name) and his wife bought 30 acres of property inside the Port Hudson siege lines. He opened up his property to our group last Sunday. The tour started at he and his wife's house. They built it using locally made war-era bricks that they bought somewhere locally. Scattered throughout the walls in the mortar are minie balls,grape shot and shell fragments found on the property. The windows are insulated and tinted. There are shelves next to the windows in the interior full of CW-era bottles found on the property. He said the property was heavily hunted by relic hunters in the 1960's but he still finds stuff on the property all the time. I didn't take pics of his house. As a matter of fact,I didn't take a lot of pics at his property. I stayed right next to him at the head of the column and listened intently to everything he said. In his yard is a pile of artifacts/relics and the leftover bricks.

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The Port Hudson - Clinton R.R. ran through the Siegel property. The next place Mr. Siegel took us was a place on his property where you could see the railroad bed. The rail irons and cross-ties, such as they were,are long gone but part of the railroad bed is still visible. I think he said that he had found small pieces of the rail iron. He had mowed a path for us to walk on and cleared back stands of huge bamboo that dot his property. As we were talking down the path he kept pointing to the woods to the right and saying Confederate camps were there. In the woods you could see small mounds fairly regularly spaced. He described the camps as looking like the dugouts you see in the famous picture of the front of the Shirley House at Vicksburg. His property slopes down as you walk towards the railroad bed and the hospital ravine. Mr. Siegel said the troops would dig small dugouts to crawl into to escape exploding shell and case shot from artillery rounds and the occasional minie balls fired by Union sharpshooters. It was still a little brushy where the railroad bed is. You could see it but not really get any good pictures. I couldn't anyway. The path to the railroad bed:

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From the railroad bed spot,we went down into the "Hospital Ravine" and the ground really sloped down going into it. Mr. Siegel said Confederate wounded and Union prisoners were kept down in the ravine. Not sure if they had hospital tents down there and I'm guessing the surgical facilities were as crude as they get. It had to have been miserable down there for everyone in May-July 1863. It's like being in a creek bottom. Being that low,there was some protection from artillery but no air blowing on those hot summer days. Confederates and Union soldiers were buried down there. Don't know if all the Union troops were later disinterred and reburied at Port Hudson National Cemetery. As far as I know,unless their families came to get them,the Confederate dead are still there in unmarked graves. Mr. Siegel said he goes down there a lot. I would too if it was my property. We didn't have long down there,but at some point I just had to walk away from the group and look around and try to slow down. I really wish we'd had more time there. That's not something you get to do often. Mr. Siegel is the 3rd from the right.

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The 3rd stop was the Rist- McCallum house with the UDC Monument in it's yard. I have been there twice before but had to view it from outside the fence in the front yard. A young couple purchased it not long ago and opened the yard up for our group to see it. The house was originally in the town of Port Hudson and is the only remaining town structure from and after the siege.

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I have posted pictures of the UDC monument in other threads after previous visits. There were quite a few of us on the Tour that Sunday and it was hard to get pics of it. As a matter of fact,there were some there that didn't attend the Symposium. I believe the Friends Of Port Hudson promoted the "Hallowed Ground Tour" also and it was a joint event with the Baton Rouge CWRT.
 
The 4th stop on the Hallowed Ground Tour was the "Surrender Oak". The tree is in the yard of a private home and the tree is believed to be where General Gardner surrendered to General Banks ending the Port Hudson siege. A highlight of this stop was a short talk by a BRCWRT member regarding a paranormal activity experience she had had in the area. She is the UDC member I talked about in post #60 in this thread. I have posted pics of the Surrender Oak from other visits in other threads but those were taken from the public road in front of the house. The landowner gave us access to the grounds. I posted a pic of me and @Ole Miss by the tree in post #29. These pics were taken by a member of the BRCWRT. The one thing I regret now is that on the other side of the private road leading up to the house were some very nice earthworks constructed by Union troops AFTER the siege. I didn't take a single picture of them because they were post-siege but I wish I had now. Probably never get a chance to do that again.


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The 5th stop was the Gibbons House and 6-pounder Sawyer rifled cannon. The Gibbons House was opened and accessible. I had only seen it from the road before. This is the only house remaining that was outside the Town of Port Hudson and on the battlefield. Civil War re-enactors of the Second Vermont Artillery told us about the history of the Sawyer Cannon and its presence at the Port Hudson siege.

@Ole Miss posted an excellent thread about the cannon here:

https://civilwartalk.com/threads/th...-rifled-6-pounder-cannon.156766/#post-2025737

Myself and @J. D. Stevens have already posted some picture of the house and cannon in this thread.
 
A couple more pictures of the cannon. The re-enactor in the red suspenders is a relic hunter from Marshall,TX. He was one of the exhibitors/vendors at the Symposium and did the same at the Annual Jefferson Civil War Symposium last August. Nice guy.

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One more thing about the Gibbons House before we move on. One of our guides at that Tour Stop said that he once owned another historical home about 2 houses down the road. He said that at one point he had it rented to a retired Army Major and his wife. The wife had a paranormal sighting there. She claimed that she saw a unifomed Confederate soldier with a musket kneeling in their front yard and looking in the direction of the Gibbons House. She apparently told someone about it but not her husband. A couple years later he told her that he wanted to tell her something but had hesitated because he thought she would think he was crazy. Guess what? He saw the same thing some time after she had seen it. I think I got the gist of the story right. Maybe @Ole Miss or @J. D. Stevens can confirm or correct that.
 
The last stop on the Hallowed Ground Tour was a place on the Port Hudson Siege lines called the Devil's Elbow. It's on the southern end of the siege lines. I posted some pics from my cellphone while we were there in post #34 of this thread. The property is fenced and gated and owned by Georgia Pacific. On the property next to the road is a pavilion for company events I guess and trail out to the Devil's Elbow begins there. This part of the battlefield is very well preserved. The guide I talked about earlier in the thread who helped with The General's Tour of the Blue & Gray Magazine issue on Port Hudson was with us and said that Georgia Pacific has no plans to do anything with the property which is good news. The bad news is that he said if Georgia Pacific ever tried to donate it to the State Historic Site, the State Of Louisiana would probably turn them down because of lack of funds to maintain it. As it is,Port Hudson State Historic Site is basically a 3 man operation with a very limited budget. The annual re-enactment they have there and monthly special programs are basically what keeps it afloat.
 
Here are a couple of pictures from my camera. The cool thing about the trail markers is that they were made and put on the Devil's Elbow trail in 1999 by an Eagle Scout as some kind of scout project. I never made it past Cub Scouts so I don't know much about the Eagle Scouts. Those trail signs have weathered the Louisiana river bottom climate quite well.

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One of our guides on the Devil's Elbow was a Park Ranger. That's him in the center of our group wearing the uniform of a Confederate Artillery Sergeant. There was a lotta artillery on that part of the line. Just below the Devil's Elbow was the The Citadel,the southernmost part of the Confederate lines. It has since eroded away and fallen into the old Mississippi River bed. Because of the flooding,the river was below us on that tour stop.

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After the guides finished their presentations they gave us a few minutes to look around before we had to head back on the trail and back to the pavilion. All around that part of the line there are rifle pits and other defensive works lower down the bluffs.

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I was standing there with another guy looking at them. I don't think he was at the Symposium. I think he was just there for the Hallowed Ground Tour. He had his camera and he said something like "Why don't you go over there?" I said "What? So you can take pics and give it some scale?" or something like that. The terrain there is pretty steep and he said he was just kidding or something like that. Well...he didn't know who he was talking to. :D I live for stuff like that and down I went. He emailed the pictures to me later that day. That was fun.

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I was standing there with another guy looking at them. I don't think he was at the Symposium. I think he was just there for the Hallowed Ground Tour. He had his camera and he said something like "Why don't you go over there?" I said "What? So you can take pics and give it some scale?" or something like that. The terrain there is pretty steep and he said he was just kidding or something like that. Well...he didn't know who he was talking to. :D I live for stuff like that and down I went. He emailed the pictures to me later that day. That was fun.

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It seems I am finally gonna finish this thread. After we got back to the Georgia Pacific Pavilion at the Devil's Elbow,the Park Ranger gave each of the participants in The Hallowed Ground Tour a bag of Port Hudson dirt with permission from The State Of Louisiana. The Program Director of the Baton Rouge CWRT Symposium then produced a cup of dug bullets and minie balls from Port Hudson for us to pick from. I got one with a hole in it which I am guessing was used for a fishing weight,a minie ball that hit something and a third one that I am not too sure about. Didn't think to take a pic right then. Took one in my bedroom this afternoon. The gentleman on the left was not at Port Hudson but he's in my pic just because I can. :D

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