Through the Howling Wilderness: The 1864 Red River Campaign and Union Failure in the West

During the warm, humid spring of 1864, deep in the interior of the pine barrens and along the sinewy streams of the Red River Valley in northern Louisiana, a drama unfolded that briefly lifted the veil of obscurity from that region west of the Mississippi River. The Union army initiated a bold attempt to capture the Confederate capital of Louisiana at Shreveport.