Commanders' Responsibilities in the Operations Process during the 1864 Red River Expedition: Defeat of Union General Nathaniel Banks Between Louisiana and Little Rock, Arkansas in American Civil War

This excellent report has been professionally converted for accurate flowing-text e-book format reproduction. A commander has the responsibility to understand, visualize, describe, direct, lead, and assess his forces during the operations process. Failure to abide by any one of these responsibilities may lead to a disruption in operations. Failure to abide by every single one will lead to complete mission failure. In 1864, Union Major General Nathaniel P. Banks led his Army of the Gulf and all attachments to a political and military defeat in the Red River Valley. Ordered by President Abraham Lincoln to secure cotton and votes in Louisiana, Banks led his men on a two-month, ill-planned, and poorly executed campaign between Alexandria, Louisiana and Little Rock, Arkansas. Despite operating with a numerically superior force, Banks's inability to understand, visualize, describe, direct, lead, and assess his forces led to a major Union defeat, resulting in the unnecessary loss of men and equipment while setting back the Union Army's entire campaign to defeat the South.

Throughout history, commanders who failed to adhere to these basic concepts placed their units in a position where expected victory often turned to unexpected defeat. An example of this occurred in the spring of 1864 for Union commanders fighting in Louisiana. Under the command of Major General Nathanial P. Banks, Union ground forces, working in concert with the navy, embarked on a seventy-day campaign to seize Shreveport, Louisiana and secure access to cotton in the region. The genesis of the campaign came from political pressure from New England politicians and textile mill owners on President Abraham Lincoln regarding the waning cotton supplies feeding northeastern mills. Owners of textile factories looked to Lincoln to provide some form of military-backed government intervention to secure access to the substantial supply of cotton found in Louisiana and the Lone Star state. These factory owners had significant political sway not only in New England but also within Washington, DC, and Lincoln needed all the support he could gather for the upcoming presidential elections in the fall of 1864. An additional source of pressure came from the recent occupation of Mexico City by French forces in June 1863. This act of aggression stirred fears that France, led by Britain, might recognize the Confederacy.

In a note to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, Lincoln made his opinion on the issue final when he asked, "Can we not renew the effort to organize a force to go to Western Texas?" with the injunction to "Please consult the General-in-Chief on the subject."5 With this, Lincoln unknowingly set in motion a sequence of events that led to a major Union setback in the trans-Mississippi West.