At Simmesport the skill and readiness of Bailey were once more put to good use in improvising a bridge of steamboats across the Atchafalaya. In his report, Banks speaks of this as the first attempt of the kind, probably forgetting, since it did not fall under his personal observation, that when the army moved on Port Hudson the year before, the last of the troops and trains crossed the river at the same place in substantially the same way. However, the Atchafalaya was then low: it was now swollen to a width of six hundred or seven hundred yards by the back water from the Mississippi, and thus the floating bridge, which the year before was made by lashing together not more than nine boats, with their gangways in line, connected by means of the gangplanks and rough boards, now required twenty-two boats to close the gap. Over this bridge, on the 19th of May, the troops took up their march in retreat, and so brought the disastrous campaign of the Red River to an end just a year after they had begun, in the same way and on the same spot, the triumphant campaign of Port Hudson. On the 20th A. J. Smith crossed, the bridge was broken up, and in the evening the whole army marched for the Mississippi. On the 21st, at Red River landing, the Nineteenth Corps bade farewell to its brave comrades of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth. A. J. Smith landed at Vicksburg on the 23d of May too late for the part assigned him in the spring campaign of Sherman's army, and the operations on the Mississippi being now reduced to the defensive, he remained on the banks of the river until called on to repulse Price's invasion of Missouri. Then, having handsomely performed his share of this service, he joined Thomas just in time to take part in the decisive battle of Nashville. At Simmesport Banks was met by Canby, who on the 11th of May, at Cairo or on the way thence to Memphis, had assumed command of the new-made Military Division of West Mississippi, in virtue of orders from Washington, dated the 7th. The President still refused to yield to Grant's repeated requests that Banks might be altogether relieved from his command, nor did Grant longer persist in this; accordingly Banks remained the titular commander of the Department of the Gulf, with a junior officer present as his immediate superior and his next subordinate in actual command of his troops. The Thirteenth and Nineteenth Corps, the cavalry, and the trains continued the march, under Emory, and on the 22d of May went into camp at Morganza. From the Arkansas to the Gulf, from the Atchafalaya to the Rio Grande there was no longer a Union soldier, save the insignificant garrison kept at Brownsville to preserve the semblance of that foothold in Texas for the sake of which so much blood and treasure had been spilled into this sink of shame.