The Battle of Yellow Bayou, also known as the Battle of Norwood's Plantation, (May 18, 1864) saw Union Army forces led by Brigadier General Joseph A. Mower clash with Confederate States Army troops commanded by Brigadier General John A. Wharton in Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana during the American Civil War. This was the final action of the Red River campaign in which a Union army under Major General Nathaniel P. Banks was repulsed by Confederate forces led by Major General Richard Taylor. The failed Union campaign almost ended in disaster when an accompanying Union fleet led by Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter was trapped at Alexandria, Louisiana, by low water in the Red River. An engineering feat saved the fleet, allowing Banks' army to complete its withdrawal.
While Banks' army waited for a bridge to be built across the Atchafalaya River, Wharton's forces began pressing the Union troops from the rear. Mower was ordered to halt their advance. Mower's forces subsequently drove the Confederates back to their main line. The Confederates then counter-attacked and a back-and-forth battle erupted, with the Confederates finally repulsed. A thicket between the contending sides caught fire, ending the fighting after a few hours. Mower's holding action allowed the Union army to safely cross the Atchafalaya on May 19–20.
President Abraham Lincoln and Major General Henry Halleck wanted a military campaign to plant the United States flag in Texas to counter the threat of the French-installed Maximilian regime in Mexico. Over the objections of Major Generals Banks, Ulysses S. Grant, and William T. Sherman, the venture up the Red River was ordered and assigned to Banks. In mid-March, one 17,000-man column under Banks moved north on Bayou Teche to meet a 10,000-strong column under Major General Andrew Jackson Smith at Alexandria. A. J. Smith's troops were accompanied by Porter's gunboats and river transports in the Red River. Slowed by low water in the Red River, the Banks-Porter expedition finally reached Natchitoches on April 2–3.
On April 8, Banks' troops were routed by Taylor at the Battle of Mansfield (Sabine Cross Roads) and compelled to retreat. Both armies were reinforced and on April 9, Taylor's attacks were repelled by Banks' army at the Battle of Pleasant Hill. Taylor's superior, General Edmund Kirby Smith reached the scene and decided to take Major General John George Walker's and Brigadier General Thomas James Churchill's divisions north to oppose a 15,000-man Union column coming from Little Rock, Arkansas, under Major General Frederick Steele. Kirby Smith left Taylor with only 5,200 troops to harass Banks' much larger army. Realizing that he could expect no help from Steele and required to return A. J. Smith's troops to Sherman, Banks decided to end the campaign and retreat.
The American Civil War (1861–1865) was the deadliest conflict in American history, killing an estimated 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians. The Confederate States of America, formed by eleven seceding Southern states, faced the Union in four years of warfare across 23 states and territories. Major engagements included First and Second Bull Run, Antietam (the bloodiest single day in American history, September 17, 1862), Chancellorsville, Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), Vicksburg (surrendered July 4, 1863), and Sherman's March through Georgia and the Carolinas (1864–1865). President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, transforming the war's stated purpose to include the abolition of slavery and enabling the enlistment of approximately 180,000 Black men in the United States Colored Troops. Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The war resolved the question of secession and ended American slavery, though Reconstruction would face sustained resistance in its attempt to secure civil rights for formerly enslaved people.
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