Tag: battle of mansfield

  • The Road Not Taken

    After musing on the battle of Mansfield in my previous post, I come to the question of whether Banks was on the wrong road. The basics of the situation are this: by the first week of April 1864 U.S. forces had advanced as far as Grand Ecore and Natchitoches; it was about 75 miles further […]

  • What went wrong at the battle of Mansfield?

    As described previously, even though overall the US had more men in the campaign, Taylor enjoyed a numerical advantage at the moment he attacked at Mansfield. As a result Taylor was able to overwhelm the US front line, turning it in on itself and driving it back. So for Taylor, not much went wrong that […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]