The Red River campaign, also known as the Red River expedition, was a major Union offensive campaign in the Trans-Mississippi theater of the American Civil War, the campaign taking place from March 10 to May 22, 1864. It was launched through the densely forested Gulf Coastal Plain region between the Red River Valley and central Arkansas towards the end of the war. The offensive was intended to stop Confederate use of the Louisiana port of Shreveport, open an outlet for the sugar and cotton of northern Louisiana, and to split the Confederate lines, allowing the Union to encircle and destroy the
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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