The Red River Campaign was supposed to be a coordinated strike. In the second half of March 1864, Union forces from the Army of the Gulf pushed up the Red River alongside Admiral David Porter's fleet of gunboats, aiming to capture Shreveport and destroy Confederate power in Louisiana. By April 1, Banks had reached Natchitoches. But then the army left the river and turned inland, following a narrow road through piney woods toward Mansfield. The gunboats continued upstream with part of the infantry, splitting the Union force. Taylor, who had been retreating to link up with reinforcements from Texas and Arkansas, saw his opportunity. He sent his cavalry to harass and slow the Union vanguard while he called his infantry forward to a clearing a few miles south of Mansfield -- a place called Sabine Crossroads -- where the dense forest would negate the Union advantage in numbers and artillery.

Taylor assembled roughly 9,000 troops at the start of the engagement: Alfred Mouton's Louisiana and Texas infantry, John G. Walker's Texas division, Thomas Green's Texas cavalry, and William Vincent's Louisiana cavalry brigade. Another 5,000 men under Thomas Churchill and Mosby Parsons were marching from Keachi but would not arrive until after the fighting began. But the official rolls do not tell the whole story. Eyewitness accounts describe paroled soldiers from units that had surrendered at Vicksburg slipping back into the ranks, including men from the Sabine Rebels of the 17th Louisiana. Confederate Governor Henry Watkins Allen brought two battalions of state guard. And from the surrounding farms and homesteads, as soldier Joseph Blessington recorded, 'old men shouldered their muskets and came to our assistance.' The Union force at the start was smaller still: roughly 6,000 men from Albert Lee's cavalry division and William Landram's infantry, with reinforcements struggling up that single road.

At four o'clock, the Confederates surged forward. On the east side of the road, Mouton led his division's charge and was killed; several of his regimental commanders fell with him, and the attack stalled. But west of the road, Walker's Texans wrapped around the Union flank, folding the line in on itself. General Thomas Ransom was wounded trying to rally his troops and carried from the field. Hundreds of Union soldiers threw down their weapons and surrendered; the rest ran. Robert Cameron's division arrived to form a second line, but the Confederate momentum rolled over it too, wounding William Franklin in the process. For several miles the Confederates chased the retreating Federals until they collided with a third line, fresh troops from William Emory's division of the XIX Corps, including the 47th Pennsylvania -- the only regiment from the Keystone State in the entire Red River Campaign. Emory's men held. The Confederates charged repeatedly but could not break through, and nightfall ended the fighting.

The toll was devastating and lopsided. Union forces lost 113 killed, 581 wounded, and 1,541 captured, along with 20 cannons, 156 wagons, and a thousand horses and mules. More than half the Union casualties came from just four regiments: the 77th Illinois, 130th Illinois, 19th Kentucky, and 48th Ohio. Confederate losses were roughly 1,000 killed and wounded, though precise records were never kept. In the nearby town of Keachi, the women's college was converted into a hospital and morgue. One hundred soldiers' remains are marked in Keachi's Confederate Cemetery. The battle was the decisive engagement of the Red River Campaign. Though Banks's army fought again the next day at the Battle of Pleasant Hill, the campaign's momentum was broken. The Union never took Shreveport. Today the American Battlefield Trust and its partners have preserved portions of the Mansfield battlefield, ensuring the clearing where two armies waited and watched each other stays open.