Pleasant Hill

On April 9, 1864, Union and Confederate soldiers clashed at Pleasant Hill, Louisiana, in an engagement tied directly to the Red River Campaign of the American Civil War, as federal troops pushed toward Shreveport, the state's capital, hoping to seize it.

This fight picked up where the Battle of Mansfield had left off. That earlier clash had gone to the Confederates and left Major General Nathaniel P. Banks, leading the Union side, no choice but to order his wagons and the bulk of his artillery pulled back downriver. Overnight, though, fresh troops reached both armies. When Confederate commander Major General Richard Taylor sent his men forward against the Union position, they were driven back, suffering heavy losses in the process. By the following day the Union army had withdrawn. Most historians label the outcome a tactical win for the Union, though a few describe it instead as inconclusive.

Battlefield

The village that stood at this location in 1864 sat roughly two miles north of the present town bearing the same name, which sprang up later close to the railroad after the original settlement was deserted. Locals and historians now call that original spot "Old town" or "Old Pleasant Hill." Harris H. Beecher, an Assistant-Surgeon with the 114th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment who witnessed the fighting firsthand, recalled it as a settlement of about twelve or fifteen houses set on a mile-wide clearing amid the woods, sitting just slightly higher than the land around it.

Pine forests and scrub oaks dominated the surrounding landscape of this stretch of Louisiana at the time. Banks himself noted that the stage road running through Pleasant Hill and Mansfield, a distance of 100 miles, offered the only workable route from Natchitoches to Shreveport, though it cut through barren, sandy terrain with scarce water and forage, most of it dense, unbroken pine forest.

One newspaper account characterized the village as a small community perched on a low ridge, home to around 300 people during peacetime. The same account went on to depict the battlefield itself as a wide, open field that had once been farmed but had since grown wild with weeds and brush. What gave the place its name, the writer explained, was merely a gentle rise near the field's center, a long mound scarcely deserving to be called a hill at all. Timber formed a curved belt around one side of the field, the side facing toward Shreveport.

Historian John Winters characterized the village similarly, as a summer retreat in the piney woods made up of a dozen or so houses gathered on a cleared rise. He noted that while the terrain gave Banks several tactical benefits, the position proved impossible to hold for long, given how far it lay from the army's main supply base at Alexandria and the severe shortage of drinking water needed to sustain the entire force. Within the span of April 9 alone, nearly all the rainwater kept in the cisterns had run out. Banks, without settling on a definite course for the campaign going forward, ordered his wagon trains to begin moving toward Grand Ecore.

Battle

Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks, in his account of the engagement, described how Confederate scouts began probing the newly formed Union line around 11 in the morning on the 9th. Skirmisher fire broke out as early as one or two o'clock and continued sporadically through the rest of the day.

The Confederates launched a full assault at 5 p.m., pressing against the whole Union front. On the right flank, the effort by Walker's and Major's men gained little ground, since Union forces there largely held firm. Elsewhere the story was different: the initial Confederate push proved quite effective, and Churchill's and Parson's troops managed to break through several Union positions along the left and center, pushing the Federal line rearward. Union troops eventually managed to stop this momentum, retake the lost ground on the left and center, and ultimately push the Confederates off the field entirely. The clash raged fiercely for roughly two hours, leaving both sides with heavy losses. Particularly hard hit was the 32nd Iowa Infantry, which suffered severe casualties after becoming isolated from the rest of the Union army during the fighting.

On the Confederate side, Brig. Gen. Hamilton P. Bee led two regiments in tight formation, riding hard down the Pleasant Hill road toward enemy lines. His men ran into an unexpected close range assault from Federal troops hidden behind a fence. Historian Winters captured the moment vividly: soldiers were thrown from their saddles, injured horses shrieked in pain, and chaos briefly engulfed the ranks. Bee's soldiers sought refuge among small ravines dotted with young pine trees until they could regroup from the surprise onslaught. Bee himself worked to rally his troops, though he lost two horses shot out from under him in the process. Colonel Xavier B. Debray was hurt when he was thrown after his horse died beneath him. He nonetheless managed to lead his men to a safe withdrawal, though about a third of them were left dead or wounded on the front.

By 1 a.m. on April 10, only hours after the fighting had ceased, Banks ordered his army to begin withdrawing from Pleasant Hill.

Aftermath

By his own account, Brig. Gen. Hamilton P. Bee held the ground at Pleasant Hill by daylight on April 10, 1864, having set up headquarters there. In his words, that entire day went into burying fallen soldiers from both sides and tending to wounded Federal troops, since his own injured men had already received care the previous night.

The fighting produced numerous Union captives, with even larger numbers seized during the engagement at Mansfield. These prisoners were marched off to Camp Ford, a Confederate holding facility located close to Tyler, Texas. For roughly a year afterward, most remained confined there, gaining freedom only when a broad prisoner exchange took place near the war's close, though a handful won earlier release.

Following the clash at Pleasant Hill, Banks pulled his Union troops back toward Grand Ecore, giving up on the objective of seizing Shreveport, which served as Louisiana's capital at that point. Around thirty wounded men, drawn from both the Pleasant Hill and Mansfield fighting, were transported to Minden for medical attention. Those who succumbed to their injuries there went into unmarked graves within the old Minden Cemetery. Recognition finally came decades later, when the Sons of Confederate Veterans placed headstones for them on March 25, 2008.

Ludwell H. Johnson, the historian, characterizes the engagement as a tactical win for Union forces, a conclusion shared by most scholars, though some instead call it inconclusive. Regardless of how the outcome is labeled, both sides paid dearly for it. Brooksher notes that the broader Red River campaign of 1864 ended up lengthening the conflict overall, since it diverted Union manpower and materiel away from other theaters of the war.