CINCINNATI
 CIVIL WAR ROUND TABLE
Serving Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana Since 1956

Next Meeting: Thursday, September 19, 2013

Speaker: Gary Joiner, Ph.D., Louisiana State University--Shreveport

Topic: Red River Campaign of 1864

To begin our 2013/2014 season, we are pleased to welcome for the first time Dr. Gary Joiner, Associate Professor at Louisiana State University, Shreveport. Several of our speakers have discussed the Civil War’s river navy, but Dr. Joiner is the first to focus on the Red River Campaign of 1864, a somewhat forgotten chapter in Civil War history. Considered a premier expert on the campaign, Gary wrote a definitive book on the subject in 2003, One Damn Blunder from Beginning to End: The Red River Campaign of 1864 (Scholarly Resources). He is also the Director of the Red River Regional Studies Center at LSU-Shreveport.

The Red River Campaign takes us to a geographic area of the Civil War some of us may not be familiar with. Here was an intensive Federal Army/Navy effort to secure the Red River along western Louisiana and Arkansas, so as to cut off the Confederate supply route from Texas. Shreveport, the Confederate capital of Louisiana (and where Gary lives), was the primary target. On paper, the campaign strategy appeared solid. 22,000 Federal troops under Nathaniel P. Banks would march from New Orleans to meet the Union naval forces under Rear Admiral David Porter at the lower end of the Red River. Defending against this formidable infantry/naval force was substantially less Confederate opposition.

MG Nathaniel Banks (US), LTG Richard Taylor (CS), Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter (US). Library of Congress.

However, several factors, including the quirkiness of Mother Nature in the form of low water levels and many tactical errors (mostly attributed to General Banks), doomed the campaign from the start (and almost resulted in the decimation of the entire Federal Mississippi Squadron fleet). As Gary will relate in his talk, it seemed “one damn blunder from beginning to end” plagued this effort that led to what is considered the last decisive Confederate victory of the War. Gary, by the way, is also an expert cartographer, and will allude to the many geographic difficulties of the Red River and the challenges it presented to Admiral Porter.

For further information on the Red River Campaign, please consult Gary’s excellent online article on the Civil War Trust website: Red River.

In addition to One Damn Blunder, Gary has written and edited several other books, including Mr. Lincoln’s Brown Water Navy: The Mississippi Squadron (Rowman and Littlefield, 2007), Little to Eat and Thin Mud to Drink: Letters, Diaries & Memoirs from the Red River Campaign, 1863-1864 (University of Tennessee Press, 2007 - Editor), and The Red River Campaign: Union and Confederate Leadership and the War in Louisiana (Parabellum Press, 2003). Gary has been a history consultant to, among others, Louisiana Public Television, the History Channel and MSNBC.

For more about Gary, please visit his website: Dr. Gary Joiner .