Book Review: Decisions of the Red River Campaign: The Fifteen Critical Decisions That Defined the Campaign

Decisions of the Red River Campaign: The Fifteen Critical Decisions That Defined the Campaign. By Michael S. Lang. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2025. Softcover, 273 pp. $29.95.

Reviewed by Patrick Kelly-Fischer

The 1864 Red River Campaign has been largely relegated to the status of a footnote, one more debacle led by a Union general who had been appointed to their command for political reasons. No less authoritative a source than Major General William T. Sherman called it, “One damn blunder from beginning to end.” (xiii) And yet, it was among the most important campaigns of the Civil War in the Trans-Mississippi in terms of the number of troops involved and the political stakes.

It was by no means a foregone conclusion that the campaign would end badly for Union forces, or even that Banks’ army and the accompanying fleet would escape intact. Even this late in the war, Confederate forces in the Trans-Mississippi theater of operations had the wherewithal to seriously threaten an exposed Federal force. In Decisions of the Red River Campaign, Michael S. Lang delves into both the Union and Confederate choices that resulted in the historical outcomes we know today.

This is the latest in the Command Decisions in America’s Civil War series from The University of Tennessee Press. Each of the 21 books in the series covers one battle or campaign, breaking it down into a series of defining decisions that significantly impacted its outcome. Any particular decision may be strategic, tactical, or political; it may be a small unit decision on the field of battle or happen thousands of miles away in Richmond or Washington, D.C. The author examines each decision through the lens of several options that were realistically available to the decision maker in question.

This particular structure does come at the expense of some of the human interest stories, narrative color, and story-telling that make up so much of Civil War literature. But in turn, it provides the reader with a clear, concise understanding of the basics of what happened in a given campaign, why it happened, and what else may have realistically occurred instead.

Lang breaks Decisions of the Red River Campaign into three main sections: The decisions in the run-up to and initial phases of the campaign, the decisions during the battles of Mansfield and Pleasant Hill, and finally two decisions that saw the campaign through to its conclusion. He excels at presenting and assessing the decisions based on the actual options available to commanders, and is careful to base this on the actual information that he can reasonably assess the participants had at the time.

That includes giving a reasonably fair shake to the much-derided Confederate Lieutenant General Edmund Kirby Smith. Even as the campaign was underway, Smith was criticized for being too timid, and then for reassigning a significant number of troops after Pleasant Hill, possibly frittering away an opportunity to destroy Banks’ army. While Lang doesn’t seek to exonerate or condemn Smith, he does offer a balanced presentation of the difficult circumstances Smith was facing, and notes that, “It is safe to say that Edmund Kirby-Smith had one of the most thankless jobs in the whole of the Confederacy.” (108)

Throughout the Red River campaign, Smith was significantly influenced by a second Union column, commanded by Major General Frederick Steele, invading his department from the north through Arkansas. While it falls outside the scope of most of the decisions covered in the book, it is critical context for why Smith acted as he did, and Lang deftly provides just enough background for the reader to follow, without bogging the book down in a blow-by-blow of a second campaign.

The book includes several appendices, including a substantial driving tour. While quite a few books these days will include driving tours—including many in the Emerging Civil War series—this one is unusual in that Lang warns it can easily stretch over several days and hundreds of miles of driving. Starting at New Orleans in the south, it works its way up to the Red River, west to Shreveport, and then north into Arkansas where Steele’s campaign culminated. Readers may choose to omit some of the further-flung stops, especially in the beginning and end of the tour.

The driving tour section also allows for some additional detail and color that wouldn’t have fit into the heart of the book, and throughout the tour write-up, Lang does an excellent job of salting in primary source material that helps to flesh out the story.

On the whole, Decisions of the Red River Campaign is an excellent addition to the relatively sparse body of work covering one of the major campaigns of the Civil War in the Trans-Mississippi. For readers who are new to the campaign, the book is an excellent introduction to its basic structure and events, and may inspire them to explore the topic more deeply. For experienced students of this part of the war, it offers a new level of analysis and insight into the campaign