Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Spring 2008 - (Page 24) residences, along with the Ice House Hotel, the Court House, all the churches except the Catholic, and a number of livery stables. The burning of Alexandria occurred during the final days of the Red River campaign. Nathaniel P. Banks, Union commander in the Department of the Gulf, had begun planning for an expedition up the Red River in late December 1863. The plan of operation called for Banks to march north along the Bayou Teche through Vermillionville [Lafayette] and Opelousas to Alexandria with between 15,000 to 18,000 men. A second force of 10,000 men under Brigadier General A. J. Smith was detached from Major General William T. Sherman's army at Vicksburg. These troops were to travel by transport down the Mississippi River and then up the Red River to Alexandria, where they would join Banks for the march on Shreveport. Meanwhile, Major General Frederick Steele was ordered to move his troops from their positions in central Arkansas in order to link up with Banks and Smith at or near Shreveport. Finally, a fourth Union force consisting of David Dixon Porter with his fleet of gunboats would operate on the Red River itself. Banks, Smith, and Porter met at Alexandria and continued their advance toward Shreveport. The Confederate army under the command of Richard Taylor skirmished with Banks’s men as they advanced along the south bank of the Red River. For reasons that have never been satisfactorily explained, Banks ordered his men at Grand Ecore to take a road that swung away from the river, thus forfeiting the support of Porter’s gunboats. This route passed through an important crossroad south of Shreveport at Mansfield. Banks’s army END OF A FAILED CAMPAIGN was strung out on a narrow road and flanked by dense pine forests as it moved north. At Mansfield, Taylor struck the head of the column on April 8 and sent it reeling in disorder. However, the Union army recouped and dug in at Pleasant Hill, where they successfully fended off a fierce Confederate assault the next day. An aggressive commander would have resumed his advance on Shreveport, but Banks had given up, and he ordered a retreat, first to Grand Ecore, and eventually all the way back to Alexandria. Although Banks had no Shreveport from Alexandria. The dry weather helped, but Porter’s gunboats were trapped by the premeditated resourcefulness of Confederate engineers. The Union army had engineers too, and one of their best, Colonel Joseph Bailey, oversaw the construction of wing dams that channeled the river and raised the water level. It was difficult, frustrating work, especially when one of the dams gave way before the boats could pass over the falls. But on May 13, the dams were complete, and all of Porter’s gunboats, even the heaviest, successfully shot the gap. Within two days, the Union navy was back in the waters of the Mississippi River while the army trudged overland on its way to safety. The Red River campaign with the concomitant destruction of property and lives became the subject of two official investigations — one Union, the other Confederate. The Union investigation was headed by the Joint Committee of the Conduct of the War in the United States Congress. The Joint Committee had plenty to investigate because the whole affair had been, as William T. Sherman put it, “One damn blunder from beginning to end.” However, the burning of Alexandria did not figure prominently in the proceedings. In fact, the subject came up only once during the questioning of witnesses. On December 14, 1864, General Banks appeared before the Joint Committee to provide his explanation as to why things had gone wrong. He referred to the burning of Alexandria only once during the many hours he was on the stand, and then it was only as an afterthought. One of the members of the Joint Committee, Mr. Odell, asked General Banks, “Of what did that property [that you confiscated for use by the army] consist? Banks answered, “Of cotton and sugar, forage, horses, mules, etc.” Odell asked, “What was about the amount of that property?” Banks answered, “That I cannot tell. Colonel S. B. Hollabird, the quartermaster of the department of the Gulf, can supply that information.” SEEKING THE TRUTH way of knowing it at the time, Steele had encountered problems of his own and had aborted his part in the campaign as well. There is no doubt that Banks would have continued his retreat to the Mississippi River if he could, but Porter’s fleet of gunboats was trapped by the falls just above Alexandria. There had been a dry spell, and the Red River had continued to fall. Historians have assumed that it was the dry weather that had caused the low water. But ground-breaking research by Gary Joiner has discovered that the Confederates were actually diverting water from the Red River into a bayou south of Shreveport. In fact, the Confederate engineers had blown a dam, which allowed the diversion to occur almost a week before the Union army had started for 24 LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES\Spring 2008
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.