While at Opelousas, Banks had applied to Halleck to order Brigadier-General Charles P. Stone to duty in the Department of the Gulf. Stone had been without assignment since his release, in the preceding August, from his long and lonely imprisonment in the casemates of the harbor forts of New York, and, up to this moment, every suggestion looking to his employment had met the stern disapproval of the Secretary of War. Even when in the first flush of finding himself at last at the top notch of his career, Hooker, in firm possession, as he believed, of the post he had long coveted, as commander of the Army of the Potomac, had asked for Stone as his Chief of Staff, the request had been met by a flat refusal. A different fate awaited Banks's application. On the 7th of May Halleck issued the orders asked for, and in the last days of the month Stone reported for duty before Port Hudson. At first Banks was rather embarrassed by the gift he had solicited, for he saw that he himself was falling into disfavor at Washington; the moment was critical; and it was easy to perceive how disaster, or even the slightest check, might be magnified in the shadows of Ball's Bluff and Fort Lafayette. Moreover, Stone was equally unknown to and unknown by the troops of the Nineteenth Army Corps. Instead, therefore, of giving him the command of Sherman's division, for which his rank indicated him, Banks kept Stone at headquarters without special assignment, and made every use of his activity, as well as of his special knowledge and ready skill in all matters relating to ordnance and gunnery. On the evening of the 26th of June a strange thing happened. While it was yet broad daylight Colonel Provence of the 16th Arkansas, posted in rear of the position of battery XXIV, discovering and annoyed by the progress made on battery 16 in his front, sent out, one at a time, two bold men, named Mieres and Parker, to see what was going on. After nightfall, on their report, he despatched thirty volunteers, under Lieutenant McKennon, to drive off the guard and the working party and destroy the works. The position was held by the advance guard of the 21st Maine, under Lieutenant Bartlett, who, for some reason hard to understand, ordered his men not to fire. The Arkansas party, therefore, accomplished its purpose, without further casualty than having one man knocked down, as he was leaping the parapet of the trench, by a soldier who happened to consider his orders as inapplicable to this method of defence. Then Major Merry, with the reserves of the 21st, coming promptly to the rescue, easily drove out the enterprising assailants, with whom went as prisoners Lieutenant Bartlett and five of his men, with fourteen muskets that had not been fired.(2)