Exploring the most important 55 months in American history
Nathaniel P. Banks’s Federal forces in Louisiana concentrate at Alexandria, while Frederick Steele’s Federals finally begin moving out of Little Rock in Arkansas. The two-pronged mission to capture the key cotton-producing city of Shreveport is now under way.
A Federal army-navy operation launches an attack on an isolated fort on the Arkansas River.
Edmund Kirby Smith’s Confederate army confronts a small Federal force in the first full-scale battle of Smith’s incursion into Kentucky.