The Red River Campaign: Union and Confederate Leadership and the War in Louisiana

by Gary D. Joiner (Editor), Theodore P. Savas (Editor), David A. Woodbury (Editor)

Best account of the war in Louisiana.

Genres: American Civil War, Transmississippi, Military History

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 31, 2003

Reviews

[Mark Harden]

Four essays offer a concise introduction to the
Red River Campaign. A final chapter presents a
tour of the campaign. The essays are engaging
and informative.

[Nick Roser]

A solid group of essays covering different facets of the 1864 Red River Campaign. I picked this up to glean more detail on the battle of Mansfield. The essays covering Gray’s Louisiana brigade and the Crescent Regiment hit that nail on the head. Apparently my copy is signed by Gary Joiner, so that’s neat-oh.

[Nick]

While dry, this work is brief enough to keep the interest of a casual reader interested in the Red River Campaign. The book puts the campaign into a greater context which explains why the relatively small battles of this campaign had an impact on the war all out of proportion with the army sizes and casualty lists. The book's contention that Federal defeats in the campaign helped the Confederates to prolong the war might be a stretch, but the arguments are interesting.
At the very least, the book points out the mistakes made by Union general Banks and admiral Porter, and ways in which the campaign might have been better handled.

[Jimmy]

This book started out as an issue of the magazine Civil War Regiments. While the four essays are individually very good, they seem to fit in better in a magazine than as a book collection. They cover only a tiny fragment of the total campaign; two essays deal with the same Confederate brigade in the same battle.

[Joel Manuel]

I enjoyed Mr. Savas' essay on Col. Beard and the Consolidated Crescent Regiment the most.