The Red River Campaign

After Mansfield and Pleasant Hill, Banks's army fell back on Natchitoches and Grand Ecore, and there the campaign came apart. Grant's confidential orders told Banks to bring the army back to New Orleans, the river was dropping, and supply boats were lost. Cotton, the prize for many, had often been burned by Confederates first, though Admiral Porter's fleet profited heavily from what it seized, and speculators went home disappointed. Union soldiers set fire to Natchitoches as they left, and Confederate cavalry arrived in time to help put it out.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Natchitoches Historic District — 0.5 mi
  The riverfront blocks of the oldest permanent settlement in the Louisiana Purchase, founded in 1714 at a Natchitoches village, with a brick-paved Front Street, Cane River frontage and the largest bousillage construction in the South.
• Fort St. Jean Baptiste State Historic Site — 0.5 mi
  A reconstruction of the 1716 French fort beside the Natchitoches village, with a palisade of nearly 2,000 pine logs, a chapel and storeroom, and living-history programs, open Wednesday to Sunday.
• Cane River Creole National Historical Park — 8.2 mi
  Oakland and Magnolia, two Cane River cotton plantations kept as they stood, told through the enslaved families who worked them, the 1864 and 1804 freedom seekers and the tenant farmers who stayed into the 1960s.
• Los Adaes State Historic Site — 13 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

• Prudhomme-Rouquier House — steps away
• First Mass in Natchitoches — steps away
• Basilica of the Immaculate Conception — steps away
• Roque House (circa 1797) — 0.2 mi