On May 27, 1863, two units of African-American soldiers — the 1st and 3rd Louisiana Native Guards, among the first to serve under African-American field commanders — attacked Confederate batteries at Port Hudson and reached within fifty feet of the guns three times before being repulsed. Out of just over a thousand men deployed, thirty-seven were killed, one hundred fifty-five wounded, one hundred sixteen went missing. The siege they fought in lasted forty-eight days, the longest in American military history, ending July 9 when Confederate General Franklin Gardner surrendered after learning Vicksburg had fallen. The Union held the Mississippi without contest. Back in Baton Rouge, every major building had already been turned into a hospital; the institution that grew from those arrangements became Baton Rouge General, still operating on the Florida Boulevard site. Six miles of earthworks remain at Port Hudson. The ground kept what the record made.
