Mansfield Battle Park

Mansfield was a Confederate victory, fought April 8, 1864. Some 8,800 to 9,000 of Richard Taylor's men engaged about 12,000 of Banks's army, whose column was strung out along a single road. Alfred Mouton was killed leading a charge, then Walker's Texans wrapped the Union line and it collapsed. The Union lost 2,235, including 1,541 captured or missing. The memorial here was put up in 1924 by the Kate Beard chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, in the Lost Cause tradition that honored the soldiers and left out what the war was fought to keep: slavery.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mansfield State Historic Site — steps away
  A 1957 museum and three-quarter-mile trail on the ground where Confederate troops broke a Union line on April 8, 1864, in a park begun by the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
• Los Adaes State Historic Site — 30 mi
  The Spanish presidio that was the capital of Texas from 1729 to 1770, some 15 miles from French Natchitoches, now an archaeological site where Native pottery is the most abundant find.

More markers nearby

• Federal Hospital — 15 mi
• The Battle of Pleasant Hill — 15 mi
• Loggy Bayou-Red River — 21 mi
• Fellowship Baptist Church — 22 mi