Red River Campaign Overview

By the spring of 1864, the outcome of the U.S. Civil War seemed to be decided. The agrarian South had fought long and hard for the right to leave the United States, but it appeared that they could not prevail against the military industrial northern states. The Red River Campaign that spring produced the largest combined army/navy operation of the war. It also featured the last decisive victory of the beleaguered Rebel army.

At that time Shreveport was the Confederate capital of the State of Louisiana. Shreveport was located on the Red River in the northwest corner of Louisiana, just miles away from the Texas and Arkansas borders, far from Union control in the New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Shreveport included armories, foundries, and a naval shipyard, and was considered the perfect gateway for an invasion of Texas. U.S. President Abraham Lincoln believed that a successful invasion of Texas would be the final blow to the Confederacy. He wanted General William Tecumsah Sherman to lead the campaign but felt he could not afford to take Sherman away from the planned campaign in Atlanta.

Leaders

Union General Nathaniel P. Banks, a politician from Massachusetts with no formal military training, was a contender for the Republic nomination for President in 1864. Banks knew President Lincoln wanted the campaign up the Red River and he believed he could be successful. As Banks saw it, he had not only the advantage of seasoned Union troops borrowed from Sherman but the firepower of the inland water navy under Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter. He also expected help from Major General Frederick Steele, oving from Little Rock to join him and the naval fleet for an attack on the Louisiana Confederate capital.

The Confederate army west of the Mississippi River was commanded by General Edmund Kirby Smith and encompassed three military districts. The Western district was under the leadership of General Richard Taylor, son of Zachary Taylor who was a former president of the U.S. and a hero of the Mexican War. Smith and Taylor were at odds from the beginning of the campaign. Kirby instructed his engineers to create fortifications at and near Shreveport, at the bluffs at Grand Ecore 60 miles to the south, at the mouth of the Red River further to the South and even to upstream to the north in Arkansas. Engineers were prepared to destroy a dam to move water from the Red River into an old channel and to trap the Union navy.

Battle of Mansfield

The Battle of Mansfield was fought April 8, 1864. It was the last major Confederate victory of the U.S. Civil War, which gives it historical significance. Without that victory at Mansfield, the history of Northwest Louisiana, East Texas and Southwest Arkansas would be dramatically different because it prevented the capture of the Confederate Capital of Louisiana at Shreveport. Shreveport remained intact and able to conduct commerce, unlike Alexandria and other towns ravaged by Union troops.

Union forces were led by Major General Nathaniel P. Banks, a political general from Massachusetts. Accompanying his 30,000 men was the Union Navy’s Mississippi Squadron with 108 vessels under Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter. The Union plan was to capture Shreveport and then to invade Texas for the fifth time.

Opposing the Union forces was the Confederate Army of the Trans Mississippi (also called the Army of Western Louisiana) which consisted of units from Louisiana and Texas. Troops were under the command of Confederate Major General Richard Taylor. Taylor’s memoir, “Destruction and Reconstruction,” is widely considered to be one of the ten best autobiographies of the Civil War.

March from New Orleans

Beginning in early March, Union forces consisting of 20,000 men from New Orleans crossed southern Louisiana to Opelousas in the southwest and then marched north to Alexandria, which is located in the middle of the state. The Mississippi Squadron ascended the Red River accompanied by 10,000 soldiers under Brigadier Gen A.J. Smith from Maj. William Tecum Sherman’s forces.

Banks and his men took a leisurely pace for their march to Alexandria, where the naval squadron had been waiting for them for seven days. Admiral Porter wanted to scout ahead and then have the army parallel the river bank to ascend to Shreveport. Banks had other plans, having been convinced by a Union spy to approach Shreveport from the southwest. The Union army marched north to Natchitoches where Banks abandoned the fleet.

The Union troops marched west and then north along what is now Louisiana Highway 175 while the Navy ascended the river. They moved north at a snail’s pace thwarted by a single road surrounded by a dark virgin forest and Confederate holding actions which gave General Taylor time to assemble his forces at Mansfield by April 6.

Preparations

On April 7 a sharp delaying action occurred at Wilson’s Farm, and this gave Taylor additional time to prepare for battle. Texas cavalry under Brigadier General Tom Green had moved rapidly north along what is now U.S. Highway 59 in that state, moving through Logansport and Keatchie before arriving at Mansfield.

Walker’s Texas Division under Maj. Gen. John G. Walker was already in place. Confederate Brigadier General and French prince, Camille Armand Jules Marie, Prince de Polignac, and his Texas troops had arrived from northeast Louisiana. Richard Taylor and the remainder marched from Shreveport. Taylor had originally planned to stop the Union forces south of Shreveport at Tone’s Bayou, but Banks’ leisurely pace thwarted Taylor’s plan.

The Union army was hampered because Banks decided to approach Shreveport on a single road, with his supply wagons near the front of his column and the bulk of his infantry behind them. This forced his column to stretch more than 20 miles along the narrow road. One reporter following the column called it a “howling wilderness.”

The Setting

North of Mansfield, three roads separated to approach Shreveport and Taylor recognized he had to stop the Union forces below Mansfield. He picked an ideal spot three miles south of the town and arrayed his forces on either side of what was then called the Natchitoches Stage Coach Road. He formed his army in the shape of an “L,” with the road at the center point. On his right was Walker’s Texas Division and a small Texas cavalry component under General Barnard Bee. On the Confederate left were the Texas brigade led by Polignac, the Louisiana Brigade under General Alfred Mouton and large cavalry component under Gen. Tom Green.

Taylor aligned his forces and patiently waited for four hours after General Green’s scouts had reported the location of Union forces. He had placed his artillery units, interspersed with the infantry and cavalry, to wait for the Union advance up the road. Taylor believed that Banks would act impetuously as he had done when the two had met in the Shenandoah Valley in 1862. While some believed Taylor’s father had helped him develop prowess as a military commander, it was in the Shenandoah that generalship skills as a brigadier general under Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson.

Banks did not lead his column at the head. He was several miles back and did not know or see what the Confederates had done. At the front of the column was the 5,000-man cavalry division under Brigadier General Albert Lee. Lee came out of a swampy bottom, crossed a small stream, Chapman’s Bayou, ascended a long sloping ridge called Honeycutt Hill. He halted there, saw the Confederates and sent a courier back past the cavalry, past the wagon train, to General Banks with his 15,000 infantrymen. He told them that every Confederate west of the Mississippi river seemed to be in front of him. Although Banks was not a good general, he good subordinates but did not always heed their advice. He told Lee to charge against the Rebels, thinking they would scatter.

A courier returned to Lee and, over a period of two hours from 2 pm. to 4 p.m., Banks sent up a relatively small infantry detachment under Brigadier General T. E. G. Ransom to assist. Ransom agreed with Lee that something had to be done and quickly. The infantry and cavalry regiments formed up into a smaller L, based on the ridgeline of Honeycutt Hill and sent word back to request the reinforcements that were hampered by the wagon train and unable to get past it.

Ready to Attack

At 4 p.m. Taylor rode along the line of the Louisiana and Texas troops on his left and told them that the Louisiana troops would have the honor of beginning the day because they were fighting to protect their homes and families. He instructed General Walker to wait until he heard the noise of the Louisianians attack and then to march straight into the union on his side of the road. Taylor’s plan was to have the two sides move upon the road from opposite sides in a swinging motion like a clamshell closing. However, either through nervousness or perhaps an incorrect signal, the Louisianians did not attack in line; they attacked in echelon, a formation similar to a flight of geese. The first unit out was the Louisiana Consolidated Crescent Regiment and General Mouton. As they approached from a mile away, the Union forces were able to concentrate their fire from regiment to regiment in this approach. The Crescent took the vast amount of this punishment.

Instead of charging straight into the mouth of this Green’s cavalry moved to their left through he woods to try to come behind the Union position. As the Confederate artillery opened on the center point of the union line and the Louisiana were making their attack, creating much noise with the Rebel yell, Walker’s Texans approach in line as they had been instructed and the Union forces at the center of their line began to take with blast after blast. Though the Louisianians were heavily punished, they still made it up near the apex of the Union line.

On Taylor’s right, Walker’s Texas curled up the Union forces. Gen. Ransom was wounded in the knee immediately after his adjutant was killed and although Banks and his infantry could hear the commotion from roughly three miles away, they believed that everything was going their way until the road was choked with men returning, many without their weapons. This was the beginning of a route.

Drawing to the End

As Taylor’s forces clamped down on the road, a secondary holding position under Gen. Robert Cameron at the foot of Honneycutt Hill was nearly annihilated by Green’s cavalry. The first phase of the battle on Honneycutt Hill is the location of today’s Mansfield State Historic Site. The second phase where Cameron’s forces collapsed was at a road called Sabine Crossroads and that is why Northern accounts use that name as opposed to the Battle of Mansfield.

Union forces led by Major General William Buell Franklin dug in on a ridge south of where Cameron was routed and these fresh troops had not participated in the earlier fights. Taylor’s troops, as the sun dipped closer to the horizon, Taylor’s troops, pumped up on adrenaline though exhausted, attacked up the ridge but were checked. As night fell, Taylor and his men held the field, expecting to continue the gith the next mornings; however, during the night, Union forces retreated 17 miles to the small village of Pleasant Hill.

After the bulk of the fighting in the first phase, while General Muton was gathering his troops for the next pulse of fighting, he was shot, apparently by a group of Ohio soldiers who had not retreated. He died on the battlefield. Confederate forces lost approximately 1,000 men, mostly Louisiana troops. The Union lost more than twice that number.

Battle of Pleasant Hill

The next day, on April 9, Taylor thought he would attack at dawn, but there were no Union forces on the ridge. They had moved back to the small village of Pleasant Hill, 17 miles to the south. Banks did not expect the Confederates to attack. He and his subordinates disagreed over what should happen next. Gen. A.J. Smith’s scrappy western troops men who had been at the tail of the Union column and had not engaged at Mansfield, were held in disdain by the Eastern troops. Smith’s men were placed far out on the left flank because Banks did not want them near him. General Franklin’s men held the village and the right wing. Franklin positioned many of his men facing north instead of west where the road entered town.

Smith decided to put a small contingent of his men centered on an Iowa brigade a mile up the road. No reconnaissance had occurred, so they were surprised when the Confederates showed up. Walker’s and Polignac’s men, still exhausted from the previous days, led the way down the road from Mansfield. Taylor had been waiting on fresh troops comprised of Arkansas and Missouri men under Gen. Churchill. They arrived at noon and were not fresh at all, having hurriedly marched from Shreveport after the long trek from Arkansas. Taylor gave them time to rest, and the battle commenced at 4 p.m., 24 hours after the previous day’s encounter.

Ready to Fight

Taylor placed General Green’s cavalry to his left, just as he had the day before. The tired and bloodied Louisiana and Texas troops were at the center, and the fresher Arkansas and Missouri troops were on the right wing. At the beginning of the charge, the Louisiana and Texas forces encountered the Iowa Brigade who fought so hard that the Confederate line was disrupted. The left wing under Green had to move through unbroken, wooded terrain, which slowed them. The right wing under the Arkansas and Missouri units also encountered rough ground and initially fought in woods and a small ravine. The Louisiana and Texas troops drove right through the Union line to the west side of the village at Pleasant Hill, and the Union lines on that side all but collapsed after being hammered between Tom Green’s Texans and Polignac and Walker’s men.

In the rush to crush the Union line, the Arkansas and Missouri troops actually passed Smith’s division. Once Smith’s westerners were hit from the right flank and from behind a terrific struggle ensued for four hours, resulting in a stalemate. Banks had little to do with what was happening. His subordinates, fighting separate battles independently, were able to hold the ground. Both sides realized they could not disengage until nightfall and they mutually broke apart, Taylor holding the north and west side and Banks holding the south and smaller east side.

Even though Taylor’s men had been fighting over two hard days, he planned to attack the next morning. Banks held a council of war. Smith’s men wanted to attack again and drive all the way to Shreveport, believing that Confederate forces were too exhausted to be successful. However, Banks overruled Smith and ordered the men to retreat down the road to Natchitoches and Grand Ecore. There they would meet with Admiral Porter to decide whether they should attempt to go to Shreveport or to hold lines where they were.

Red River Campaign Louisiana

In addition to the action at Mansfield and Pleasant Hill, forces also fought at Fort DeRussy, south of Alexandria in Avoyelles Parish on March 14, 1864. Remnants remain of the Civil War fort built there in 1863. Interpretive trails educate visitors about the fort’s defensive role during the Civil War.

Red River Campaign Arkansas

Union and Confederate forces engaged at Prairie D’Ane in Nevada County, Arkansas, April 9–13, 1864. This historic site include 800 acres open to the public. Nevada County residents sponsor living history programs and reenactments under the auspices of the Nevada County Depot Museum.

—TBS