After two unsuccessful attempts to capture eastern Texas, Major-General Nathaniel P. Banks, commanding the Federal Department of the Gulf, complied with the Lincoln administration plan to invade the region via the Red River in northwestern Louisiana. President Abraham Lincoln had long coveted eastern Texas because of its military and economic importance, as cotton and other supplies from Mexico were funneled through this region. Lincoln also believed that a Federal presence in Texas would deter France from violating the Monroe Doctrine by colonizing Mexico.
General-in-Chief Henry W. Halleck believed that using the Red River to enter Texas would provide a better chance at success than the previous overland and coastal efforts. Halleck notified Banks that after consultation, it had been decided that “the Red River is the shortest and best line of defense for Louisiana and Arkansas and as a base of operations against Texas.” Banks was therefore directed to “operate in that direction” once the Red and Atchafalaya rivers were high enough to allow for river transport.
Banks would once again have the services of the Thirteenth Corps, as well as the shallow-draft gunboats and transports of Rear-Admiral David D. Porter’s naval fleet. The Red River campaign soon became the largest military operation west of the Mississippi, as Banks ultimately received reinforcements from Major-Generals Ulysses S. Grant and Frederick Steele in Tennessee and Arkansas respectively.
Banks’s first objective on his way into Texas would be Shreveport, a massive supply depot and headquarters of Lieutenant-General Edmund Kirby Smith’s Confederate Trans-Mississippi Department. Capturing Shreveport would severely damage Smith’s tenuous supply line, as well as strengthen the fledgling Unionist governments in Louisiana and Arkansas. It would also serve as the perfect starting point for the much-anticipated Texas invasion.
Halleck wrote, “I am of the opinion that all of our available forces not required to hold positions now in our possession should be sent to Louisiana and Texas, where they are now very much needed, and where they can operate with advantage during the winter.” But not everyone in the administration favored such a move. Navy Secretary Gideon Welles wanted to invest in key points on the Atlantic such as Fort Caswell in North Carolina, arguing that conquering the Confederacy east of the Mississippi would necessarily cause the Trans-Mississippi states to fall on their own.
Halleck countered that the “reduction of Fort Caswell alone will not secure to us the harbor of Smithville or close to the rebels and blockade-runners access to Wilmington.” In addition, capturing Smithville and Wilmington would require the Federals to “also capture the works on Smith’s Island and those which command the New Inlet, a task not less difficult or requiring less time, even at a favorable season, than the reduction of Fort Sumter and the works on Morris Island.”
Halleck also warned that “the defenses of Wilmington and Cape Fear River have been greatly strengthened, and it will now require a large force and probably a long time to effect their reduction. To attempt this in the present condition of our armies will involve the suspension of other and more important operation,” which was the complete conquest of Louisiana and the invasion of Texas.
Another opponent of the Red River plan was General Grant, who continued to push for Banks to move against Mobile, Alabama. Halleck explained to Grant that capturing Texas was more important to the administration than an invasion of Alabama, even if a Texas campaign would be “undertaken less for military reasons than as a matter of state policy.” Halleck also informed Grant that a Texas campaign “may have an important influence on your projected operations during the coming winter.” This was because it would involve the armies of both Banks in Louisiana and Steele in Arkansas, and Steele would need to be reinforced by some of Grant’s forces.
Halleck wrote on January 8, “Keeping in mind the fact that General Banks’ operations in Texas, either on the Gulf Coast or by the Louisiana frontier, must be continued during the winter, it is to be considered whether it will not be better to direct our efforts, for the present, to the entire breaking up of the Rebel forces west of the Mississippi River rather than to divide them by also operating against Mobile and Alabama.” And since Banks and Steele were too weak to do it themselves, Halleck proposed sending a force down the Mississippi to “co-operate with the forces of Steele and Banks on the west side.”
A week later, Grant sent Halleck a proposal that continued to press for the Mobile campaign. This involved an army under Major-General William T. Sherman advancing from Vicksburg to Meridian, destroying the railroads in Mississippi so “that the enemy will not attempt to rebuild them during the rebellion.” Banks would then join forces with Rear-Admiral David G. Farragut’s naval fleet on the Gulf Coast to capture Mobile. Once this was completed, Sherman would advance from Chattanooga to Atlanta, and another army under Major-General James B. McPherson would advance from Mobile to Montgomery.
Four days later, Grant sent his plan to Major-General George H. Thomas, commanding Federals at Chattanooga. Grant insisted that the key points between Chattanooga and Mobile must be Atlanta and Montgomery. Grant then informed Thomas that he intended to write again to Halleck, this time “giving him my views of the cooperation we should have from the eastern armies.” He explained his proposals for the Eastern Theater:
“I shall recommend that no attempt be made toward Richmond by any of the routes heretofore operated on, but that a moving force of 60,000 men be thrown into New Berne or Suffolk (favoring the latter place) and move out, destroying the road as far toward Richmond as possible; then move to Raleigh as rapidly as possible; hold that point, and open communication with New Berne–even Wilmington. From Raleigh the enemy’s most inland line would be so threatened as to force them to keep on it a guard that would reduce their armies in the field much below our own.”
For this to work, Grant wrote, the Confederates under Lieutenant-General James Longstreet must be driven out of northeastern Tennessee.
Grant explained to Halleck that an offensive against Raleigh or Wilmington instead of Richmond “would virtually force an evacuation of Virginia and indirectly of East Tennessee.” This “would draw the enemy from campaigns of their own choosing, and for which they are prepared, to new lines of operations never expected to become necessary.”
In addition to Welles and Grant, Banks himself also opposed the Red River plan, but he was convinced by the administration that large warehouses of cotton in western Louisiana could be captured. Banks, a career politician, believed that putting much-needed cotton back into northern circulation could appease potential voters. Banks spent the next two months planning the campaign. Federal detachments that had occupied strategic points on the Texas coast since late last year “took to their ships, as unexpectedly as they had landed, and disappeared from the coast of Texas.”
As the month ended, Sherman wrote to Banks: “My inland expedition is now moving, and I will be off for Jackson and Meridian to-morrow… I want to keep up the delusion of an attack on Mobile and the Alabama River, and therefore would be obliged if you would keep up an irritating foraging or other expedition in that direction.” Sherman urged Banks to closely cooperate with Porter’s gunboat fleet, and would gladly join Banks’s campaign once the Red River was high enough for the gunboats to be effective.
Bibliography
- Catton, Bruce, Grant Takes Command. Open Road Media, Kindle Edition, 2015.
- Catton, Bruce and Long, E.B. (ed.), Never Call Retreat: Centennial History of the Civil War Book 3. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc. (Kindle Edition), 1965.
- Cutrer, Thomas W., Theater of a Separate War: The Civil War West of the Mississippi River. The University of North Carolina Press, (Kindle Edition), 2017.
- Josephy, Jr., Alvin M., War on the Frontier: The Trans-Mississippi West. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1983.
- Sherman, William T., Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, Vol. I. New York: D. Appleton and Co. (Kindle Edition), 1889.