Confederates storm Baton Rouge at daybreak; Union guns on the river hold the line

Baton Rouge had been under Union occupation since May, and Confederate commanders wanted it back to threaten New Orleans and open the Red River. Before dawn on August 5, 1862, Major General John C. Breckinridge sent two divisions against the raw, two-week-old Union garrison, and fighting broke out around Florida Street and Magnolia Cemetery. Brigadier General Thomas Williams was killed leading the Union center; Colonel Thomas W. Cahill took over and pulled the survivors back to the Penitentiary lines, where Union gunboats on the Mississippi shelled the attackers into retreat. The Confederate ironclad Arkansas, meant to clear those gunboats away, never arrived; its engines failed four miles above the city and its crew burned it rather than let it fall into Union hands…