Red River Campaign - Battles

Battles

Maj. Gen. William B. Franklin, commanding the advance divisions of Banks's Army of the Gulf, began his march from southern Louisiana on March 10. Meanwhile, A. J. Smith and his two corps traveled via boat from Vicksburg down to Simmesport. After an all-night march, Smith's men surprised and captured Fort de Russy on the Red River on March 14, capturing 317 Confederate prisoners and the only heavy guns available to the Confederates. This signaled the beginning of the campaign. Admiral Porter was then able to remove a giant raft blocking the river without much difficulty. Taylor was forced to retreat, abandoning Alexandria, Louisiana, and ceding south and central Louisiana to the Union forces.

A.J. Smith's force arrived at Alexandria on March 20, 1864, intending to rendezvous with Banks's forces, under the immediate command of Franklin. However, Franklin did not arrive at Alexandria until March 25, 1864, and Banks himself, travelling separately from his troops, did not arrive at Alexandria until March 26, 1864. Banks's failure to arrive in a timely manner for his rendezvous with Smith was the first of many logistical miscues that caused much acrimony between Banks and his subordinates during the campaign. While he waited for Banks to arrive, Smith sent Brigadier General Joseph Mower on a successful mission to capture much of Taylor's cavalry and his outpost upriver from Alexandria at Henderson's Hill on March 21. Nearly 250 Confederates and a four gun artillery battery were captured without a shot being fired.

When he arrived at Alexandria, Banks found an important message waiting for him. Two weeks earlier, on March 12, 1864, General Ulysses S. Grant had been named General-in-Chief of the Union Army, replacing Halleck. In Grant's message, he told Banks it was "important that Shreveport be taken as soon as possible" because A.J. Smith's command must be returned to Sherman by the middle of April "even if it leads to the abandonment of the main object of your expedition."

Kirby Smith had nearly 80,000 men to call upon but was yet undecided where to move them to counter the three Union forces now known to be moving toward Shreveport. Taylor would never fight with more than 18,500 men throughout the entire campaign.

By March 31, Banks's men had reached Natchitoches, only 65 miles south of Shreveport. Franklin's men had been delayed most of a week by rain, but it had not mattered because Admiral Porter had a similar delay trying to get his heaviest gunboats over the falls at Alexandria, which was covered with mines because the river had failed to achieve its seasonal rise in water level. Porter had also spent time gathering cotton in the interior, and Banks conducted an election in the interim. Taylor now stationed himself 25 miles northwest at Pleasant Hill, still with fewer than 20,000 men. Once Banks had assembled more supplies, he continued advancing a week later.

Constant cavalry and naval skirmishing had been going on since March 21. On April 2, Brig. Gen. Albert Lindley Lee's division of Union cavalry collided with 1,500 arriving Confederate Texas cavalrymen. These Confederates would continue to resist any Union advance. Union intelligence, meanwhile, had determined that there were additional forces besides Taylor and the cavalry up the road from them. All the senior Union officers expressed doubts that there would be any serious Confederate opposition, except for the naval flotilla. Banks' army followed Taylor and the cavalry into a dense pine forest area away from the river, probably to keep them in their front. Approaching Pleasant Hill, the Union army was excessively long due both to the existence of only a few camping areas with water, and there was no monitoring of the position of the rear elements. Taylor kept moving back toward Shreveport.