Category: Trans-Mississippi Theater
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Counting US Forces at Mansfield
Even though I was able to count a sizable Confederates force that Taylor had at the Battle of Mansfield, wasn’t he outnumbered in the battle? Coming up with the total Present for Duty (PFD) on the US side is relatively easy since there is a table in the Office Records that shows the following Present […]
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Counting Confederates at the Battle of Mansfield
This is the first in a series of posts planned for the next several weeks that address aspects of the Red River campaign of 1864. Rather than a chronological narrative about the campaign, I shall be examining different topics and decision points. — How many Confederates were at the battle of Mansfield (also known as […]
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The Great Escape: Taylor at Irish Bend
April 1863 did not go well for Confederate General Richard Taylor. At the beginning of the month he had hoped to take the initiative against US forces in lower Louisiana; but by end of the month he was struggling to hold together his broken army after having lost the initiative, lost half his fleet, and […]
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The Great Naval Showdown that Wasn’t
On April 14th 1863, 150 years ago this week, a naval battle occurred in the Atchafalaya Basin that could have had a big impact on the war; but instead of a dramatic showdown, it turned into a turkey shoot. ———————————————————————————————- In the beginning of 1863 Confederate naval forces in the Gulf Coast region enjoyed a […]
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The Atchafalaya
150 years ago, U.S. Army General-in-Chief Henry Halleck had a grand plan for the war in the west — open the Mississippi River by a cooperative movement of Gen. Grant from the north and Gen. Banks from the south. The problem was that the two were separated by over 150 miles of river protected by […]
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Echoing Bad History
The other day Dimitri Rotov had a blog post comparing a quote from James M. McPherson’s new book with similar quotes from other books. What bothers Dimitri is that McPherson isn’t original; what also ticks me off is that McPherson mimics bad history. The quotes in question link the Red River Campaign of 1864 to […]
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Red River 2.0: Canby tries to revive the campaign
Books about the 1864 Red River campaign typically end in late May, when U.S. forces reached the Mississippi. But there was a final act. The following is the epilogue missing from existing campaign books… Since the beginning of the campaign, Gen. Grant had felt uneasy about Gen. Banks and about the fractured command structure along […]