Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 3.

[256] absent from their command, he must send them back at the time specified, even if it should lead to an abandonment of the main object of the expedition. General Grant was anxious to have all the armies acting in concert with each other in the contemplated grand and simultaneous movement upon Richmond and Atlanta, and for that purpose he directed Banks, in the event of the success of his expedition, to hold Shreveport and Red River with such force as he might deem necessary, and return the remainder of his troops to New Orleans as quickly as possible, with a view to a movement on Mobile, if it should be thought prudent. So anxious was the new General-in-Chief for the co-operation of Banks's force, that, in another dispatch, he said: “I had much rather that the Red River expedition had never been begun, than that you should be detained one day beyond the first of May in commencing the movement east of the Mississippi.”

It was under circumstances such as these that the expedition advanced from Natchitoches upon Shreveport, a hundred miles distant, by land, over a barren and almost uninhabited country. The heavier gun-boats could ascend the river no farther than Grand Ecore, and from that point all supplies had to be taken in wagons, and on few transports inadequately guarded by armed vessels. Under these circumstances, and others just mentioned, Banks would have been justified in going no farther, for he had ascertained that the Confederates from Texas and Arkansas, under Taylor, Price, Green, and others, were gathering on his front, to the number of about twenty-five thousand, with over seventy guns. But his own troops and those of General Smith were anxious to secure the main object of the expedition,¹ and so, on the morning of the 6th of April,

1864.

Franklin moved forward, with General Lee's cavalry in the van, followed by two thin divisions of the Thirteenth Corps, under General Ransom. General Emory followed Ransom with the First Division² of the Nineteenth Corps, and a brigade of colored troops, which had just come up from Port Hudson. On the following morning,

April 7.

General Smith followed with a part of the Sixteenth Corps, while a division of the Seventeenth, under T. Kilby Smith,. twenty-five hundred strong, went up the river as a guard to the transports, which moved very slowly. General Smith was directed to conduct them to Loggy Bayou, opposite Springfield, about half way between Natchitoches and Shreveport, and there to halt and communicate with the army, at Sabine Cross Roads, fifty-four miles from Grand Ecore.

General Lee had already encountered the Confederates. In a reconnoissance westward from Natchitoches. on the 2d, with the First, Third, and Fourth Brigades of his division, and, at a distance of about twelve miles from that town, he found the pickets of the foe. These were driven upon the main body, and the whole force was chased to and beyond Crump's Hill, twenty miles from Natchitoches, before the pursuit ended. There, where the route of the army would be more to the northwest, General Lee waited for the head of it to come up.