The Battle of Mansfield

Why a Union army was 150 miles up a Louisiana river: to take Shreveport, warn off the French in Mexico, and seize the slave-grown cotton Banks (North) reached for.

Banks’s column strung out for miles on a single stage road; Taylor (South) waited at a clearing, counting not the totals but the road, where a smaller army could be bigger at the point of contact.

Two hours of waiting, then Mouton (South) charges and falls; Walker (South) wraps the flank; the Union line breaks and slams into its own wagon train on the one road.

A lopsided Confederate win, Mouton dead three miles from home, Emory’s (North) backstop the only southern edge, and every aim of the campaign, cotton included, gone.