In the meantime, Kirby Smith and Taylor had not been idle. At the town of Mansfield, some 40 miles due south of Shreveport, Taylor collected approximately 7,000 men. There was Texan cavalry under the command of Tom Green, who as a young boy had served in the artillery at San Jacinto in 1836. Brigadier General Jean J.A.A. Mouton led a division of Louisiana infantry and Major General John George Walker commanded a division of Texas infantry. All the Rebel infantry divisions were equal in size to a Union brigade. Taylor also had Brigadier General S.B. Maxey’s independent cavalry brigade that featured several regiments from the Indian Nations. With divisions of Missouri and Arkansas infantry in Shreveport, the entire Trans-Mississippi Department was represented in the defense of its headquarters. Kirby Smith held the troops at Shreveport for they needed to be resupplied with ammunition and because he contemplated a move against Steele’s corps in southern Arkansas if Banks slowed his advance. On the other hand, Taylor strained to lunge at the detested Yankees despoiling his home state and, with Banks’s army advancing at a steady pace, Taylor soon got his chance.
On April 7, at Wilson’s Farm, Lee’s cavalry found itself charged by Green’s Texans. The Rebel horse were veterans, but Lee called up his reserves and pushed Green back. The sharpness of the skirmish convinced Lee that the Confederates were before him in force. He foresaw a fight coming, but his fellow officers scoffed at the suggestion of a battle unfolding before they reached the outskirts of Shreveport. Vindication for the Union Cassandra proved bittersweet.
Mansfield and Pleasant Hill
Taylor decided to stand at Mansfield because, after that town, the road directed Banks back to the river and Porter’s squadron. In any case, Taylor burned to avenge his beloved Louisiana and he held his opponent in contempt. In the Shenandoah Valley campaign of 1862, Taylor had led a brigade of infantry under the command of Major General Stonewall Jackson and witnessed first-hand Banks’s defeat and his subsequent earning of the nickname “Commissary” Banks for all of the captured supplies he unwillingly provided the Rebels. As Banks’s army approached, Taylor vowed to Brigadier General Camille A.J.M., Prince de Polignac, one of Mouton’s subordinates, that he would “fight Banks if he has a million men.” Fortunately for Taylor, Banks possessed only 30,000 men, yet that still substantially outnumbered the 8,800 that the Rebels massed for the fight. To Colonel Henry Gray’s brigade of Louisiana infantry, Taylor gave the privilege of drawing first blood. As a coiled spring, the Confederates awaited battle.
While Banks might enjoy a nearly four-to-one superiority, this was entirely negated because his army was in a line of march, and it was but the head of the column which deployed at Mansfield. In the center stood Colonel William J. Landram’s infantry division, 2,400 strong, while Lee posted a thousand horsemen on each flank. The Federal line was in place by 3.30 p.m. on April 8, and then a quiet descended upon the field. Taylor held his men in check as he expected a Federal assault. Banks wished to accommodate the Rebels, but he was not on the scene and Lee balked at attacking a numerically superior enemy. He rode to meet Banks and explained that the Union soldiers “could not advance ten minutes without a general engagement, in which we should be most gloriously flogged.” Such expostulations took Banks aback, and he delayed the attack until he could bring more infantry into the line. The problem for the Federal army commander lay in the fact that Taylor’s patience deserted him.
At 4.00 p.m., Taylor ordered in his troops. They attacked in echelon, with Mouton’s division going in first, followed by Walker’s Texans. The fighting proved hot and the Louisianans lost many men, including the beloved Mouton, but the Federals suffered heavily, too. Then the Texans, “yelling like infuriated demons” hit the Union line “like a cyclone.” Outnumbered, outfought and outflanked on both ends of the line, the Federals folded. Infantry, cavalry, and what guns could be saved streamed back down the road that had brought them to the battle. In some places they retreated in good order, but elsewhere poor morale, scant experience or shoddy leadership generated a rout. The Rebels added to the Northerners’ torment by turning captured guns on the fleeing Federals. Franklin arrived with another division of infantry and deployed them across the road but, after an hour of fighting, this line also found itself flanked and overborne. The rout continued.
The soldiers of Franklin’s XIX Corps streamed down the road, a mass of men and animals. The wagons of the cavalry division’s train lined the way and added to the confusion. Lee had requested earlier that his supply wagons join the rest of the train at the rear of the army, but he was told to keep them up front. Now the teamsters, unable to turn their wagons around, cut the mules from their traces and ran. Banks, never wanting in personal courage, rode through the mass of men and plaintively pleaded, “I know you will not desert me.” If he had not faced his horse about he would have been alone amongst the Rebels.
As Banks trotted away from the carnage, he sent word to Brevet Major General William H. Emory from the XIX Corps to hurry forward his infantry division and shore up the front. At Pleasant Grove, about two miles from Mansfield, Emory’s soldiers deployed and survivors of the battle either fell in with, or found refuge behind, their line. The Confederates were soon upon them. Despite the lure of 150 wagons, Taylor’s men did not stop to plunder the supply train. Their blood was up and twice now they had put the Yankees to rout. They hit Emory’s line with the same expectations but with a good deal less fury. Although tired and disorganized, the Southerners almost broke Emory’s division, but exhaustion and the setting sun ended the affair.
To his credit, Banks intended to make a stand at Pleasant Grove, but a lack of water and the fact that most of those who fought at Mansfield ended their retreat at Pleasant Hill led him to pull back to there. For fewer than 1,000 casualties, the Confederates inflicted 2,200 losses on the North and captured 20 guns, the wagon train and numerous stand of firearms. Once more, Confederate soldiery offered their gratitude to “Commissary” Banks. The physical losses, though severe, perhaps did not represent the most grievous damage inflicted on the Federal forces. Most of the formations in Franklin’s XIX Corps and Lee’s cavalry division were not just decimated, but terribly shaken. The XIX Corps could muster at most 2,000 effectives. The 130th Illinois Regiment consisted of one skinny youth in a coonskin cap. While they still maintained a quantitative advantage, the morale of the army had drained away. With the exception of the hardened veterans of the XVI Corps, most of the enlisted men quickly lost any confidence they held in the highest ranks of command. The XVI Corps’ commander, A.J. Smith, still enjoyed his men’s trust, but the campaign soon became identified as merely a cotton-grabbing exercise. The soldiers sang improvised songs deriding Banks, and E.R.S. Canby, a major general in the United States Army, claimed that the cotton speculators “follow in the tracks of the army, traffic in its blood and barter the cause for which it is fighting, with all the baseness of Judas Iscariot, but without his remorse.” Between the Confederate Army and the Union Navy, Banks’s Red River campaign seemed saddled with failure.
A. J. Smith assembled his corps at Pleasant Hill. Even though he expected the Rebels forthwith, he inexplicably laid out his troops in a most haphazard fashion. Four brigades of infantry were scattered about the ground before the village of Pleasant Hill, with the brigade of Colonel William T. Shaw particularly far forward and exposed. The rest of Smith’s corps lay behind Pleasant Hill, more than a mile away from Shaw’s line. Perhaps worst of all for Smith’s men was not their deployment, but rather the knowledge that the army’s supply train was retreating towards Grand Ecore, guarded by most of the XIX Corps and the cavalry. This event signalled the turning point in the campaign.
The Confederates knew something of this. Green’s Texan horse harried the Federals all the way back to Pleasant Hill, where at 9.00 a.m. on the 9th they halted before Smith’s corps. Aware of the units retreating to Grand Ecore, Taylor had not expected the Yankees to make a stand at Pleasant Hill. In response to this development, Kirby Smith was already hastening f
orward the infantry divisions of Brigadier Generals James C. Tappan and Mosby M. Parsons. Tappan’s Arkansans and Parsons’s Missourians force-marched 45 miles in a day and a half to reach Taylor and, while the divisions were in reality little more than reinforced brigades, they doubled Taylor’s infantry command. After the hard fighting at Mansfield, the whole Southern group was jaded. Taylor collected them before Pleasant Hill, his hopes rising as the Federals seemed in no hurry to quit the place.
By 3.00 p.m. on April 9, the combative Louisianan had gotten his men into line and even allowed them two hours of rest. Most of the Rebel cavalry deployed to the left flank, while Taylor posted one brigade on the right. The Louisiana infantry, now under the command of Polignac, was held in reserve. To their right stood Walker’s Texans, and to the right and ahead of the Texans, were the divisions of Tappan and Parsons under the combined command of Brigadier General Thomas J. Churchill. Overall, the Confederate line took the shape of a giant ladle.
The battle opened with a Confederate bombardment by what Taylor half-jokingly referred to as his “petite-grand battery.”2 Consisting of all of the Rebel guns, they soon silenced the battery assigned to Shaw and then proceeded to punish the hapless brigade. After three-quarters of an hour, Walker, Tappan and Parsons all moved out with their divisions. The cavalry kept pace and secured the flanks but stayed out of the fight. Polignac and the petite-grand battery followed the Texans up the road that led into Pleasant Hill.
From here the battle developed in two distinct stages. This general advance was the first stage. The fighting at this point proved sharp, short and decisive. Shaw’s men represented the best of the tough Western soldiery, but no troops could have stood up to the pummelling bombardment and the divisional assault that overtook them. As Shaw’s brigade simply disintegrated, the folly of A.J. Smith’s haphazard deployment bore its bitter fruit. None of the other three brigades could provide effective support for Shaw, or to each other. A tide of gray and butternut uniforms swamped the Federal infantry and drove towards Smith’s second line behind Pleasant Hill.
Here the Union defense crystallized. Nine regiments of solid Western soldiers, backed by three batteries, and all well-placed, met the Rebel attack and stopped it cold. Taylor’s men reformed while he brought up Polignac and the artillery. In addition, Green’s two cavalry brigades, under the command of Brigadier Generals James P. Major and Hamilton P. Bee, swung out far to the left and rode to a position threatening Smith’s right flank. The first stage closed with the Confederates readying for a renewed effort. Polignac assumed the left end of the line and unlimbered the petite-grand battery where his Louisianans met with Walker’s Texans.
It took the better part of two hours from the first shots until Taylor finished his preparations for the final attack. In the meantime, Banks left the retreat to Grand Ecore and rode to the sound of the guns. Once again he rode through the milling humanity of broken troops. His spirits rose when he came upon Smith’s line. Finding Smith, he congratulated the corps commander, “God bless you general, you have saved the army.” Smith wisely cautioned against any such premature praise.
The second stage of the battle began with another artillery duel, and this time the Federal guns more than held their own. Nevertheless, the fight unfolded much like the earlier actions. The Confederates pressed home their assault with great determination and once more a Union flank was turned. The 5th Minnesota and the 8th Wisconsin anchored Smith’s right flank, and now these two regiments found themselves overlapped by Polignac’s infantry. Major Arnondin noted that the Yankees fought with a white hot fury, but their “blue coats disappeared in a sea of gray and brown.”3 The French prince pivoted his men to the right and began to roll up the rest of Smith’s line like a rug. At this juncture, the world crashed in on Banks. Smith rode forward with his staff to rally his men and almost immediately fell from the saddle with a grievous wound to his chest by a musket ball. Pressed from front and flank, the other seven Federal regiments routed from the field. The best Banks could do was see to the safe removal of Smith from the action. Green’s troopers then made their appearance to the right and rear of the Union mob and finished the work. None of the Northern cannon made it to safety, and very few of the infantry ever reached Grand Ecore. Only a few mounted officers and the cavalry, which were conspicuous only in their ineffectiveness, escaped the net. The well-educated Taylor later greeted Green, hailing him as the “Murat of Texas.”4
Retreat and Surrender
The Federal retreat to Grand Ecore turned into a nightmare. As the survivors of Pleasant Hill streamed to the southeast, they began to overtake the army wagon train and its guard. As word spread throughout the remainder of Banks’s army, a rot set in and the morale of the Easterners and the discipline of the Westerners disappeared. The former deserted or surrendered while the latter engaged in an orgy of vandalism and brigandage. Green’s cavalry added to the growing disarray with a series of raids and strikes until the Yankees reached the relative safety of Grand Ecore, where they had earlier constructed rudimentary fieldworks secured by the river. Here Banks took stock and blanched at the audit of war. Out of some 25,000 infantry and cannoneers, he could marshal approximately two-thirds of that original number, and from 90 pieces of artillery, he could now count 34 muzzles. Most of the cavalry remained, and this left Banks with about 20,000 men with which to face Taylor’s force of less than 10,000. The issue, however, concerned not relative numbers, but rather the state of the soldiers’ spirits. While the Johnny Rebs knew they could not be beaten, the Billy Yanks wondered if their generals would ever lead them to victory. In the early morning hours of April 10, Banks’s best general, A.J. Smith succumbed to his wound, but not before imploring Franklin to arrest Banks and take command.
Adding to Banks’s misery was the absence of Porter and his Mississippi Squadron. On April 7, the naval commander had taken his ships upriver to support Banks for the final push on Shreveport. By the 10th, the squadron had reached its destination, the mouth of Loggy Bayou, site of the expected rendezvous with Banks’s victorious army. Instead, a mile above the bayou, the navy discovered a nasty surprise waiting for them. The New Falls City, an extremely large steamer, lay transversely across the Red River, with 15 feet of her bow and stern lying on each shoreline, her back broken in the middle and resting on a sandbar. Draped across the wreck, a banner in large letters invited the Federals to a ball to be held in Shreveport. Even before Porter could contemplate removing the impressive obstacle, a tinclad gunboat arrived on the scene with news of the defeat at Mansfield and the disaster at Pleasant Hill Porter decided to turn about and ordered the laborious process begun. Already the river was falling and most of the ships’ keels were dragging on the bottom, especially that of the massive Eastport. Porter had always bragged that he could steam wherever the sand was damp. It looked as if he would finally get the chance to back up that boast.
On April 12, Porter returned to Grand Ecore and the magnitude of the defeat became obvious to him. That night at a grim council of war, Banks, Franklin, Porter, Emory, who had replaced Smith, and all of the divisional commanders weighed their options. The one bright spot in the proceedings came from the repulse of a general assault ordered by Taylor the day before. After bringing up his infantry and his ever-growing artillery park, Taylor, anxious to carry on with the impetus of victory, assured Kirby Smith that one more determined attack would bag the Yankee host once and for all. Following a heavy cannonade that played havoc with the chevaux-de-frise, the Confederate infantry went in and suffered a terrible rebuff. The Federals fought with a determination borne of desperation and the defensive works conferred an advantage not to be conquered by Southern elan. Taylor concluded that he must wait “for the hedgehog to unfold itself again.”5
The council of war settled upon a retreat following the river road downstream to the Mississippi, and then to Baton Rouge. Half of the land force would lead the way for the immense wagon train, while the remainder of the army would serve as the rearguard
. Porter’s ships would parallel the line of retreat and it was expected that the navy’s heavy guns would contribute much towards dissuading Rebel aggressiveness. Inexplicably, Porter refused to dump his cargo of cotton to ease the navigation of the rapidly dwindling Red River. Banks entertained no such compunction and saw to the transporting of the wounded first. Porter’s overarching greed presaged the doom awaiting downriver.
At first, all went according to plan, as the Union retreat easily pushed through the stretched Rebel cordon. Taylor and his men quickly regained their equilibrium, however, and set off in pursuit. While the infantry and artillery followed closely on the heels of Banks’s rearguard, most of Green’s horsemen rode inland and then ahead of the Federal host to harass and impede its progress. At the same time, Green dispatched Maxey’s brigade of cavalry from Texas, and the Arizona and Indian Territories across the river with several batteries of horse artillery. With no Union forces to contend with on the east bank, Maxey’s men ranged up and down the Red bedevilling Federal ships with artillery ambushes and sharpshooter sniping. More than once individual, or small groups of, warships, transports and packets found themselves under heavy fire and taking serious losses. Only under the cover of the massed firepower of the squadron could the Yankees find any relief. As the pressure on the retreating Federals increased, so did the tempo of the withdrawal and the pursuit. The Union forces grew more and more anxious as the Confederates offered no respite. The Rebels pressed home their exertions, especially as they came upon scene after scene of the wanton destruction inflicted on the civilian population. Blood begat more blood and the Louisiana troops vowed to save Natchitoches from the “Vandals.”6
Dixie Victorious: An Alternate history of the Civil War Page 31