Review - "Decisions of the Red River Campaign: The Fifteen Critical Decisions That Defined the Operation" by Michael Lang

[Decisions of the Red River Campaign: The Fifteen Critical Decisions That Defined the Operation by Michael S. Lang (University of Tennessee Press, 2025). Softcover, 16 maps, illustrations, appendix, orders of battle, strength tables, notes, bibliography, index. Pages:xx,293. ISBN:978-1-62190-916-3. $24.95]

Michael Lang's Decisions of the Red River Campaign: The Fifteen Critical Decisions That Defined the Operation is one of the more unique installments in UT Press's ever-growing Command Decisions in America's Civil War series. In a series now approaching two-dozen volumes, this is only the second Trans-Mississippi theater entry, and its subject, the 1864 Red River Campaign, is the only one to lack a comprehensive book-length treatment that anyone would consider definitive in nature. While numerous overview-level books covering the campaign's operations in the Red River Valley and Arkansas exist, it is still the case that no full-length studies of the campaign's climactic battles, those fought at Mansfield (April 8) and Pleasant Hill (April 9), have been published. In contrast with other series topics, which tend to address major military contests fought between principal field armies, the Red River Campaign is also atypical in that it was driven by political and economic considerations more than military ones. How that mix affected critical decision-making and its consequences adds some interesting elements to the analysis.

For those unfamiliar with the series and its structure, please refer to the site reviews of the early series titles for more explanation. In short, critical decisions are, as Lang explains, those that are "not only consequential in their own right, but also so important that they substantially shape the decisions and events that follow, thus forming the course of history" (pg. xiv). For each critical decision, identification and analysis unfolds in the following sequence: Situation, Options, Decision, and Result/Impact. Situation describes a particular state of affairs (be it "strategic, operational, tactical, organizational, personnel related, or logistical" in nature) at a pivotal moment prompting a critical decision. That background element provides readers with the context necessary to recognize and evaluate the Options (two or more in number) available to the decision-maker. The historical Decision that was selected by that high-level decision-maker is then described. The ensuing Result(s)/Impact section recounts what happened and how those historical events shaped what followed. An Alternative Decision/Scenario section is optional for contributors (some really get into the alternate history conjecture while other omit it altogether), and Lang includes a brief one or two paragraphs of that type of content for all of his fifteen decisions.

Series contributors typically organize their critical decision compilations into several sub-groupings (most often by specific time intervals). Task ten knowledgeable individuals with the same job of identifying critical decisions and you'll undoubtedly receive back ten different lists. With that in mind, one might quibble with a few of Lang's selections, but that's alright as he brings all of the most centrally important situations and decisions into the conversation. In Lang's analysis, eight decisions are assigned to an extended stretch (January 1863-April 1864) of campaign preliminaries. This is where the bulk of the strategic, organizational, and personnel-related decisions reside. The second grouping, five in number (including the volume's only two tactical-level decisions), addresses the campaign's first big inflection point, the April 6-9 sequence of events encompassing the battles of Mansfield and Pleasant Hill. The third and final grouping, covering the period April 9-May 30, discusses the two critical decisions that most shaped the finishing stages of the campaign on both fronts, Union commander Nathaniel Banks's decision to withdraw to the Red River after his tactical victory at Pleasant Hill and Confederate commander Edmund Kirby Smith's decision to divert the bulk of his resources to Arkansas.

Like most others who have examined the campaign at length, Lang wonders what Richard Taylor, Kirby Smith's principal subordinate in the Red River Valley, might have accomplished against Banks's increasingly divided and demoralized command at Cane River had Kirby Smith not redirected the bulk of his available infantry firepower (the Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas divisions of Parsons, Churchill, and Walker) to Arkansas. What more that larger force might have done against the river fleet trapped above the falls at Alexandria is another interesting matter to contemplate. Lang is more noncommittal than most when it comes to taking sides in the epic clash of wills between Kirby Smith and Taylor, instead offering readers the tools to form their own opinions.

Two decisions are tied to the fighting in Arkansas, the first a logistical decision on the part of Frederick Steele, the Union general charged with leading what came to be known as the Camden Expedition, and the second Kirby Smith's weighty decision over where to concentrate his counteroffensive after Banks retreated back to the Red River and the naval support it provided. That relative paucity of critical decisions assigned to the Camden Expedition (essentially 1.5 out of 15) possibly represents a determination that Steele's column and its overextended supply line possessed little in the way of ability and opportunity to truly transform the course and results of the campaign (an opinion that Steele himself held from the outset).

Even though it's not explicitly part of the standardized structure of decision analysis adopted by the series, at times it might be helpful to explain why seemingly important decisions did not, in the mind of the author, qualify as critical decisions. For example, Steele's decision to abandon, perhaps temporarily (he did not yet know that Banks had been defeated at Mansfield and had retreated after Pleasant Hill), his advance on Shreveport and redeploy to Camden, where his supply line to Pine Bluff was shortened, might be considered a critical decision. Similarly, Steele's final decision to abandon Camden (after his two primary foraging missions were smashed by the Confederates and official confirmation arrived that Banks was not only no longer advancing but in trouble) and retreat back to his Arkansas River base might also be considered a critical decision. That said, critical decisions have to have realistic options and, in both cases, the author perhaps determined that Steele's supply situation left him no reasonable alternatives. On the Confederate side of the Arkansas operation, there are no critical decisions assigned to the execution, upon heavy reinforcement from the Red River Valley, of Kirby Smith's plan to cut off Steele's retreat. Cavalry division commander James Fagan was ordered to block Steele's retreat route (a movement that was apparently very feasible), but Fagan instead cleared out his entire force off to the west toward better foraging grounds, leaving Steele's path wide open. Some deem Fagan to have spoiled a golden opportunity to force the outright surrender of Steele's desperately low-supplied army. Of course, we'll never now what might have happened had Steele been compelled to fight his way out of a surrounding cordon of infantry and cavalry, but it was arguably a critical decision left unexamined.

As is the case with a few structural elements of the series, the scale of the driving tour appendix can vary between volumes. With eleven stops that begin in New Orleans and spread across Louisiana and Arkansas, Lang's tour is a substantial journey. In addition to providing driving directions and visual field orientation, the text attached to each stop explains how it is tied to a critical decision. Helpfully, many of the key orders and communications between leaders that are cited in the main text's decision analysis are reproduced at length in the tour appendix. Added to the orders of battle for both sides are some strength tables (divisional for Union forces and district level for the Confederates) and lists of naval forces (gunboats and transports) deployed by both sides.

One of the most noticeable changes in the series between its inception and today is in the cartography, the earliest volumes having wider coverage (with maps in the dozens spread over both the main decision analysis and integrated driving tour) and more small-unit detail. Lacking insider knowledge, one might guess that evolving economics of publishing played some part in this. It's less of a concern in this volume, which has very few tactical-level critical decisions.

In addition to its strong consideration of the campaign's most momentous decisions, Michael Lang's Decisions of the Red River Campaign also, more than any other entry in the series, starkly demonstrates the ways in which leadership and personality factors can erase seemingly overwhelming one-sided advantages in manpower, firepower, materiel, and waterborne support. Lang's measured analysis of Union plans and their execution, as well as Confederate lost opportunities, only confirms General Sherman's caustic condemnation of the campaign's conduct as being, at least from the Union perspective, "one damn blunder from beginning to end."