On June 23d, Taylor, with his usual activity, succeeded in capturing Brashear City with a small and picked command. Light marching was his word of order. With this capture was joined a large quantity of ordnance, ordnance stores, quartermaster and commissary supplies, and about 1,500 prisoners. The stores made a capture peculiarly valuable to our little ill-fed army of Louisianians. With this small success, Taylor, having spoiled the enemy, looked around for other gaps in his hedges. Brashear City was one gap; Berwick was to be another.
Taylor had needed a slight breeze of success. Before coming down to the Atchafalaya, under orders to operate in the relief of Vicksburg, he had planned attacks on Milliken's Bend and Young's Point. Without his usual caution, he had left to others the details of the movements. Taylor's fiery activity was not always shared in by his subordinates. On the wing from west Louisiana to the Teche, Taylor had ascribed the ‘meager results’ of the expedition to the lack of vigorous activity on the part of the leaders, and that ‘the officers and men were possessed of a dread of gunboats, such as foolishly pervaded our people at the commencement of the war.’
All this was in June, 1863—the year of Vicksburg's capture. Taylor had been hoping to make some diversion in north Louisiana to help Pemberton. Vicksburg falling, Taylor had then thought of Port Hudson, and of that Southern section which, needing him, had raised her mailed hand for help. Like himself, he had left unproductive valor in north Louisiana to tempt new and
