Red River Campaign

Politics and Cotton in the Civil War

Ludwell H. Johnson

• Publisher: The Kent State University Press
• Year: 1999
• eBook ISBN: 9781631011887
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de la guerre de Sécession

First published in 1958, Red River Campaign examines how partisan politics, economic needs, and personal profit determined military policy and operations in Louisiana and Arkansas during the spring of 1864.

In response to the demands of Free-Soil interests in Texas and the New England textiles manufacturers' need for cotton, Lincoln authorized an expedition to open the way to Texas. General Nathaniel Banks conducted a combined military and naval campaign up the Red River that lasted only from March 12 to May 20, 1864, but was one of the most destructive of the Civil War.

CHAPTER I

Genesis of the Campaign

WHEN THE LINCOLN ADMINISTRATION set about the task of suppressing the Confederacy, it soon discovered that there was more than one way to prosecute a war and that the good or ill fortunes of various commercial and political interests depended on which methods and policies were selected. As a result, lobbyists and politicians converged on Washington, each of them having his pet general to be appointed, a particular firm to be given a government contract, or a favorite campaign to be undertaken. High-pressure advice came from manufacturers, from state governors, and from within Lincoln’s own cabinet. It was in this sort of hectic atmosphere that the President had to reach the most vital decisions affecting the conduct of the war.

On some occasions Lincoln perhaps did not clearly recognize the nature of the forces pressing for this or that policy; at other times he obviously did. At any event, there were times when the decisions that were finally reached bore little or no relation to the desire of the vast majority of the people for the shortest and least costly war possible, and the general welfare was sacrificed to special interests. This was especially true of Lincoln’s ideas concerning trading with the enemy, ideas that sometimes sound strange indeed.¹ The unusual trading privileges granted to various individuals by the President are difficult to justify on the grounds of an effective prosecution of the war.² Such things, however, do not necessarily impugn the integrity of Lincoln or his advisers. A sincere conviction that the only salvation of the country lay in the continued ascendancy of the Republican party could easily lead to acts that, while they strengthened that party, might seriously impede the progress of the war. Political undertones of this nature were present in the removal from command of such men as McClellan, Buell, and Fitz-John Porter, as well as in the appointment or retention of political generals like Ben Butler, John Pope, Frémont, N. P. Banks, and others. Party politics sometimes dictated routes of invasion and areas to be occupied as well as the choice of generals.³ Favored individuals, including personal friends of the President, were allowed to trade with the enemy.⁴ Lincoln may have yielded to such pressure for the sake of the Republican party and the Union. As always, the question of motivation is obscure. Part of the explanation may lie in the fact that Lincoln was a man who often found it hard to say no.

Since the campaigns of the Civil War evolved from sources considerably more complicated than Napoleon’s Maxims, no account of military events is complete unless it contains some cognizance of underlying causes, those causes that constitute the “secret history” of any war. And possibly no campaign of the war sprang from a more complex series of events than did the Federal invasion of Northwest Louisiana, the Red River expedition. While it lasted only from March 12 to May 20, 1864, in reality this expedition represented the culmination of political, economic, ideological, and diplomatic pressures, some of which had been at work even before the war itself began. Here may be a test case, so to speak, illustrating the nature of the forces that found their ultimate expression on battlefields from Gettysburg to Galveston.

One of the purposes of the Red River expedition was the invasion of Texas, and it is with the annexation of that state in 1845 that this story begins. Annexation was regarded by anti-slavery men in the North as another stunning victory for what they looked upon as a sinister conspiracy of slaveowners. Edward Everett Hale, who was in Washington when the joint resolution annexing Texas was passed, returned to his home in New England and immediately wrote and published a pamphlet entitled “How to Conquer Texas before Texas Conquers Us,” in which he advocated the prompt settlement of the state by Northerners in order to smother slavery by weight of numbers. In itself Halè’s effort was of little or no importance, for it had only a handful of readers, but it was prophetic in concept. Nine years later, when the Kansas controversy burst upon the nation, a Worcester schoolteacher and neighbor of Hale’s named Eli Thayer organized the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Society for the purpose of stopping the spread of slavery by flooding Kansas territory with Northern settlers.⁵

Hale’s ideas with respect to Texas were thus applied to Kansas with considerable success. But the aggressive colonizing instincts of the Emigrant Aid Societies were not confined in ambition to the borders of Kansas, although that state continued to occupy the center of the stage, and acquisitive glances were cast toward the great domain of the Southwest: Texas. The appearance in 1857 of A Journey Through Texas, Fred Olmsted’s account of his most recent peregrinations, created much interest in New England. Here before the eyes of fervent Puritan crusaders lay perhaps a more magnificent opportunity for the exercise of their talents than even “Bleeding Kansas” afforded. The antislavery German minority of western Texas, raising their cotton without using slaves, presented an appealing picture.⁶ In reviewing the book a famous Boston publication observed that “a great future is in store for that region if by any means it can be saved from the blight of slavery.”⁷

For several years, in fact, Olmsted had been in contact with such men as W. H. Seward, Hale, the Fourierist Victor Considerant, Adolf Douai, the antislavery editor of the San Antonio Zeitung, and various Emigrant Aid Society friends, all with the purpose of getting free-soil settlers into western Texas. In 1857 he distributed copies of his Journey Through Texas to Samuel Gridley Howe, Theodore Parker, John G. Whittier, Edmund Quincy, and others, and made excerpts available in pamphlet form. Warm editorial support came from the New York Times, and Olmsted extended his propagandizing even to the Cotton Supply Associations of Manchester and Liverpool. In 1858, however, personal difficulties forced Olmsted to turn his attention to other matters,⁸ but by that time the idea of a free-soil cotton-growing colony in Texas had gained considerable currency in the Northeast, particularly New York and New England.

As a consequence there was a continuing interest in the next few years in establishing a Northern outpost in Sam Houston’s state. In 1861 Edward Atkinson, a supporter of the Kansas crusade and a rising figure in the New England mill industry,⁹ published a pamphlet entitled “Cheap Cotton by Free Labor,” containing ideas earlier publicized by Olmsted. Here Atkinson proposed the transformation of Southern agriculture by settling Texas with Northern free labor. Under this system, he said, Texas could produce three times the normal amount of cotton grown by the entire South, thus driving the old slave states from the market and forcing them to abandon the peculiar institution as economically unsound.

“The law of competition is inexorable,” said Atkinson.

Have not the business men of the country a right to claim that, by free labor, the price of cotton be kept at that point at which while yielding to the cultivator a large profit, the country can retain its control of the markets of Europe, and so maintain our export trade and keep the balance in our favor? Have not our soldiers a right to demand as their best compensation for subduing the rebellion, that at least one small portion [!] of the country which they will restore to the Union shall be kept open to them for peaceful occupation? … The question may well be asked … whether the confiscation of the lands of all rebels—individuals and states¹⁰—and the bestowal of them as a bounty to our soldiers is not a necessary step in that reconstruction of southern society which must be accomplished, to render the reconstruction of the Union solid and enduring.¹¹

Atkinson’s pamphlet was favorably received by Northern newspapers and public men. Late in 1861 the Springfield National Republican remarked editorially that Atkinson had treated the subject “from the point of view of his business as a consumer of cotton, and the considerations which he presents are entitled to have and will have great weight in forming public opinion on standing questions.”¹² Even the London Spectator noticed and commented favorably on the pamphlet.¹³ George S. Boutwell, prominent Massachusetts politician, was much taken by the young man’s ideas. Probably they were also congenial to Amos Lawrence, famous Bay State textile magnate and Emigrant Aider, who came to believe that because of the “obstinacy of the rebels” it would be necessary to “ruin them completely and settle their lands with Yankees.”¹⁴ Late in 1861 and early in 1862 Atkinson began trying to promote a military expedition to Texas, corresponding with, among others, Dwight Foster, Attorney General of Massachusetts,¹⁵ and Senator Charles Sumner. In May he traveled to Washington to urge that an army of colonization be sent to Texas, but was unable to secure any immediate action. His pamphlet having sold well, Atkinson further amplified his ideas in magazine and newspaper articles.¹⁶

In the meantime, the attention of other men was being attracted by the broad fields west of the Sabine. Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, received a letter from one of his friends advising the organization of an expeditionary force of Germans in order to rescue their countrymen in western Texas from Confederate rule. Postmaster General Montgomery Blair favored the occupation of the state as the best means of forestalling “the darling scheme of the disunionists,” the conquest of Mexico.¹⁷ On August 2, 1861, Major General George B. McClellan submitted to President Lincoln...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Maps
• Contents
• Preface to the Second Edition
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter I: Genesis of the Campaign
• Chapter II: Concerning Cotton
• Chapter III: The Campaign Begins
• Chapter IV: Banks Finds the Enemy
• Chapter V: Taylor Is Disappointed at Pleasant Hill
• Chapter VI: The Federals Go Hungry in Arkansas
• Chapter VII: Banks Retreats Again
• Chapter VIII: A Pause and Another Retreat
• Chapter IX: The End of the Campaign
• Chapter X: Aftermath
• Bibliography
• Index