Red River campaign

Significance

The Red River campaign was the last major Union offensive in the Trans-Mississippi theater of the American Civil War, running from March 10 to May 22, 1864. Its objectives were broad: to deny Confederate forces use of Shreveport as a Louisiana port, to open access to the sugar and cotton of northern Louisiana, and to split Confederate lines in a way that would allow Union forces to encircle and destroy Confederate military strength in Louisiana and southern Arkansas. Launched through the densely forested Gulf Coastal Plain between the Red River Valley and central Arkansas, the campaign represented the Union's most ambitious attempt to resolve the Trans-Mississippi theater late in the war. Its failure to achieve these goals left Confederate forces in Louisiana and Arkansas operationally intact and foreclosed further large-scale Union action in the region for the remainder of the conflict.