A couple of weeks ago on vacation in Louisiana, I stopped at the at the Mansfield (battle ground) State Historic Site. Was last there in the late 1950s when only a couple of stone markers comprised the site. I was most pleasently surprised and pleased at the current grounds and museum complex. Very detailed, very nice outdoor marking and trails that help to paint a picture and explain that decisive battle of the Red River Campaign. I would highly recommend a stop there to those who've not toured in a long time as well as to those who've never been. It was a critical battle, and campaign, for Texas and involved a large number of Confederate Texans.

For those of you not familiar with the area, it's about an hour's drive south of Shreveport via I-49 and exits are well marked for the site.

I took advantage of the selections in the museum book store to pick up a copy (recommend by the ranger) of "Red River Campaign, Politics & Cotton in the Civil War," by Ludwell H. Johnson,copywrite 1993, The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 93-40019, ISBNO-87338-486-5. It was updated and revised from a previous publication by The Johns Hopkins Press, copywrite 1958.

It did justice to the details of the campaign including extensive details of the followup actions in Arkansas (Union Gen. Steele moved south from Little Rock as part of a planned pincers movement to coincide with Bank's movement up from Baton Rouge...both ended in disaster by the late spring of 1864.)

While I'm always a fan of TWBS tactics and stratigies, I found the first third of the text particularly interesting as it covered the politics and personalities of Banks real desire to mount the campaign through Texas, rather than up the Red River and the details of how very influencial northern business men and politicians saw speculation in Texas "liberated" cotton as a profitable windfall for themselves and their cronies.

It also gave details on the Union efforts to court Texas loyalists and set up a Union backed government in Texas, much as was being done in the occupied portions of Louisiana. The details of the veniality and down right criminal activities associated with the cotton speculators, stretching from the Congress, White House and Wall Street, down to the "boots-on-the-ground" theft by both army and navel personnel make any of today's so called "windfall-profit" activities in Iraq look like petty larceny!

While I enjoy the powder-smoke-and-cavalry-charges as much as the next "buff"--I think we would do ourselves a favor by occassionally taking a look at the politics and economics that drove much of the strategy in both Washington and Richmond. The book implies that as much as "saving the Union" Banks' Red River Campaign was personally, and politically driven by the gold-rush kind of mania that cotton speculation took on mid-way through The War.