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Updated: May 16, 2025
Price was then at Prairie d'Ane, covering the crossing of the roads that led to Camden and to Shreveport, but on the evening of the 11th he drew back beyond the prairie to a strong position eight miles north of Washington. To have followed Price would have been to put Steele's long and lengthening line of communication at the mercy of Marmaduke.
This was the real object and purpose of the Meridian campaign, and of Banks's expedition up Red River to Shreveport during that winter.
As soon as Kirby Smith became aware that his adversary was advancing to the Red River, he prepared to meet the menace by concentrating on Shreveport the whole available force of the Confederacy in the Trans-Mississippi from Texas to Missouri, numbering, according to his own estimate, 18,000 effectives.
It is understood that General Steele makes a simultaneous move from Little Rock, on Shreveport or Natchitoches, with a force of about ten thousand men. Banks will have seventeen thousand, and you ten thousand.
The result, anyhow, was that Haskins surrendered his post, and at once embarked for St. Louis. The arms and munitions stored in the arsenal were scattered some to Mississippi, some to New Orleans, some to Shreveport; and to me, at the Central Arsenal, were consigned two thousand muskets, three hundred Jager rifles, and a large amount of cartridges and ammunition.
This information was communicated to department headquarters, and I asked that prompt measures should be taken to reënforce me; but it was "a far cry" to Shreveport as to "Lochow," and the emergency seemed less pressing in the rear than at the front. Walker had three companies of Vincent's horse on the east side of the Atchafalaya, watching the Mississippi.
Twenty miles south of Alexandria a road leaves the Boeuf, an effluent of Red River, and passes through pine forest to Burr's Ferry on the Sabine. Twenty odd miles from the Boeuf this road intersects another from Opelousas to Fort Jesup, an abandoned military post, thence to Pleasant Hill, Mansfield, and Shreveport.
I have lived on Red River, and know somewhat of the phases of that stream. The expedition on Shreveport should be made rapidly, with simultaneous movements from Little Rock on Shreveport, from Opelousas on Alexandria, and a combined force of gunboats and transports directly up Red River. Admiral Porter will be able to have a splendid fleet by March 1st.
As soon as he has taken Shreveport, or as soon as be can spare you, return to Vicksburg with all dispatch, gather up your detachments, wagons, tents, transportation, and all property pertaining to so much of the command as belongs to the Sixteenth Army Corps, and conduct it to Memphis, where orders will await you.
Both commands were to start from the Red River Shreveport and Alexandria being the respective initial points and in organizing the columns, to the mounted force already on the Red River were added several regiments of cavalry from the east bank of the Mississippi, and in a singular way one of these fell upon the trail of my old antagonist, General Early.
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