Mansfield was a Civil War engagement fought in Louisiana, 1864. It was a Confederate victory.
By this time, Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Bank's Red River Expedition had advanced about 150 miles up Red River. Maj. Gen. Richard Taylor, without any instructions from his commander, Gen. E. Kirby Smith, decided that it was time to try and stem this Union drive. He established a defensive position just below Mansfield, near Sabine Cross-Roads, an important communications center. On April 8, Banks's men approached, driving Confederate cavalry before them. For the rest of the morning, the Federals probed the Rebel lines. In late afternoon, Taylor, though outnumbered, decided to attack. His men made a determined assault on both flanks, rolling up one and then another of Banks's divisions. Finally, about three miles from the original contact, a third Union division met Taylor's attack at 6:00 pm and halted it after more than an hour's fighting. That night, Taylor unsuccessfully attempted to turn Banks's right flank. Banks withdrew but met Taylor again on the 9th at Pleasant Hill. Mansfield was the decisive battle of the Red River Campaign, influencing Banks to retreat back toward Alexandria.
On April 8, 1864, Confederate and Union troops clashed near Mansfield, Louisiana, in an engagement also called Sabine Crossroads. The fight was one episode within the larger Red River Campaign of the Civil War, waged as Union soldiers pushed toward Shreveport, the state capital, hoping to seize it.
Major-General Richard Taylor, leading the Confederate side, settled on Mansfield as the spot to confront the oncoming Union force commanded by General Nathaniel P. Banks. Knowing that additional troops were within reach, Taylor massed his men at Sabine Crossroads. Banks, for his part, readied his own troops for combat even though his full army had yet to gather. Throughout the day, fresh soldiers arrived to bolster both sides in turn.
Union resistance held only briefly before collapsing under a Confederate assault made up largely of Louisiana and Texas units, said to have gained further strength from hundreds of men who had broken their paroles. Once Mansfield ended, the fighting continued almost without pause into what became known as the Battle of Pleasant Hill.
In the latter part of March 1864, Major General Nathaniel P. Banks directed a joint operation drawing on the Army of the Gulf and naval vessels under Admiral David Porter, pushing up the Red River in hopes of crushing Confederate resistance in Louisiana and seizing Shreveport. Grand Ecore and Natchitoches fell under Union control by April 1. From there the expedition split its efforts: the gunboats, carrying some infantry, kept moving along the waterway, while the bulk of Banks's troops took an inland route toward Mansfield, the place where he understood his adversary was gathering strength.
Confederate command in Louisiana rested with Major General Richard Taylor, who had been pulling his men back along the Red River so he could link up with reinforcements arriving from Texas and Arkansas. South of Mansfield, Taylor identified an open field as the ground on which he intended to confront the advancing Federals. He dispatched cavalry ahead to harry the Union column as it drew near, and summoned his infantry divisions to join him at the front.
By the morning of April 8, Banks's entire force was strung out along one narrow road cutting through the forest between Natchitoches and Mansfield. The horsemen leading this column encountered Confederates entrenched firmly at the border of a clearing, prompting them to halt and request that infantry be sent up. Banks himself rode forward to assess the situation and settled on fighting Taylor right there, sending word for every infantry unit to press ahead as quickly as possible. What followed was essentially a contest of speed, with each army striving to mass its strength on the field before the other could do so.
Throughout the morning hours, Taylor put Mouton's division in place along the eastern edge of the clearing. By afternoon Walker's division had reached the field and took up a position to Mouton's right. Green's cavalry, pulling back under pressure from the oncoming Union troops, split into three groups, with two brigades shifting to cover Mouton's flank and the remaining one moving to support Walker's. The Arkansas division showed up close to 3:30 pm, though it was assigned instead to guard an eastern road rather than join the main line. The Missouri division would not reach the scene until roughly 6:00 pm, long after the fighting had ended.
Around midday, the Union cavalry division took a position on a low hill at the clearing's southern end, backed by one infantry brigade from Landram's division. The remaining brigade of that division showed up not long afterward. Cameron's division was making its way to the field as well, though it would arrive only once combat had already started.
For roughly two hours, the opposing forces held their ground across the clearing, with Banks holding off for reinforcements while Taylor organized his troops. By this stage, the numbers favored Taylor over his opponent. Then, near 4:00 pm, Confederate forces pushed forward in a sudden advance. On the road's eastern side, Mouton lost his life in the assault, and several of his regiment commanders fell as well, causing his division's attack to break down. On the western side, though, Walker's Texas troops curled around the Union flank, collapsing it inward. Ransom suffered wounds while attempting to steady his men and had to be taken off the battlefield; large numbers of Union soldiers were captured while the remainder fled in disorder. As that initial Union line gave way, Cameron's division arrived in time to establish a second position, but the advancing Confederates drove it back as well. Franklin was also wounded during this phase but chose to stay and continue directing the fight. Confederate troops chased the retreating Union soldiers for several miles before running into a third defensive line, this one formed by Emory's division. Several Confederate assaults followed against this position, all of them turned back, and the arrival of darkness finally brought the day's combat to a close.
The toll on Union forces proved severe: 113 men killed, 581 wounded, and 1,541 taken prisoner. Also lost were 20 cannons, 156 wagons, and roughly a thousand horses and mules that were either killed or seized. A disproportionate share of these losses, more than half, fell upon just four regiments: the 77th Illinois, 130th Illinois, the 19th Regiment Kentucky Volunteer Infantry, and the 48th Ohio. The XIII Corps bore the brunt of the fighting and its casualties, whereas the XIX Corps emerged with comparatively few losses.
On the Confederate side, Kirby Smith placed the number of killed and wounded near Mansfield at approximately 1,000, though no exact accounting of Confederate losses has survived. Nearby, the town of Keachi turned its college for women into a makeshift hospital, using the upper floor as a morgue. A hundred soldiers now lie in graves marked at Keachi's Confederate Cemetery, a site still cared for today by the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the Daughters of the Confederacy.
Following their withdrawal, Union troops clashed once more with Confederate forces on April 9, this time at Pleasant Hill.
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