Who said,"War is just a continuation of politics and cotton(money)." The Bobbin Boy certainly got his fill of Louisiana that spring.

I was just not impressed with the way Kirby Smith handled his troops during that entire operation. I suppose you could say it was a local strategic success in that Shreveport was saved. However,1864 was a desperate time for the Confederacy and desperate times deserve desperate measures.Send a few brigades to help Steele flounder in the mud and with the balance of the troops turn Richard Taylor loose and destroy Banks and his arsonists.Then threaten New Orleans.It certainly could not have been taken but who cares.

The war was not lost in Virginia.It was lost that sring and summer in north Georgia. Lincoln would have ordered Sherman to send a corps or two to retrieve the situation and then just perhaps Johnston may have pulled it off.

It appears to me that Kirby Smith was most concerned with his personal reputation and saving his kingdom. The Confederacy lost a great opportunity that spring.Its last.

MWT