The Red River Campaign

General Banks ordered Alexandria spared, but as the last Union units marched out on May 13, 1864, soldiers looted and set fires, and most of the town was lost: historian James Hollandsworth puts it at nine-tenths, a Confederate lieutenant at two-thirds. A Union inquiry blamed a single fire of unknown origin spread by high wind. A Confederate commission, which included Thomas C. Manning, reported arson by Union soldiers. Hollandsworth concludes that A. J. Smith's men, who had lost confidence in Banks, were the likeliest culprits. The Catholic church survived; the Episcopal church, which the troops tried to demolish, burned.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Forts Randolph and Buhlow State Historic Site — 0.2 mi
  Two Confederate earthen forts on the Red River at Pineville, built with enslaved labor and never attacked, beside the remains of Bailey's Dam.
• Arna Bontemps African American Museum — 0.8 mi
  The restored Alexandria house where the Harlem Renaissance writer Arna Bontemps was born in 1902, on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.
• Kent Plantation House — 2.3 mi
  Rapides Parish's oldest known standing building, a Creole house with a February tour and a 2023 memorial that put the enslaved first.
• Louisiana Maneuvers and Military Museum — 4.4 mi
  A National Guard museum in a replica WWII barracks at Camp Beauregard, built around the huge 1940-41 war games in Central Louisiana. Free.

More markers nearby

• Bailey's Dam — steps away
• Why was Fort Randolph Built? — 0.2 mi
• Deserting soldiers and the end of the war — 0.4 mi
• Rapides Cemetery — 0.5 mi