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Search for Adobe Express to find out more and use it for free. You're going to go. Oh, Hey everyone. Welcome to episode 472 of our Civil War podcast. I'm Rich.

And I'm Tracy. Hello y'all. Thanks for tuning into the podcast. As y'all will recall with the last show, we talked

about the Confederate victory at the Battle of Mansfield on April 8, 1864, and how the fighting that day came to a close down the road at Pleasant Grove.

As you guys will recall, Confederate General Dick Taylor had been appalled by the waffling of department commander Kirby Smith.

So Taylor had decided to take the bull by the horns and fight the Yankees before they reached

Shreveport.

Taylor chose the ground where he'd make his stand

near the town of Mansfield,

and there on April 8th he'd won a resounding victory.

There was no denying the Battle of Mansfield had been a disaster for the Federals.

They fled the field, retreating back down the road, they had just marched up.

Both Nathaniel Banks, the political general in charge of the Federal's Red River

expedition and his field commander William Buell Franklin bore responsibility for the

debacle at Mansfield. Banks' overconfidence had led him to dismiss any possibility that the Confederates would make a stand short of Shreveport.

So he was taken by surprise when Dick Taylor did just that.

That Banks didn't expect a fight goes a long way toward explaining

the Order of March that he'd set for the column, which made little sense otherwise.

Since it left most of the federal infantry too far back and behind the

...