The Union Army's Red River Campaign and Camden Expedition of 1864 were intended to drive the Confederates from Louisiana and Arkansas and to isolate Texas from the rest of the Confederacy. William Riley Brooksher details the Louisiana portion of this poorly executed and ultimately unsuccessful campaign. With a novelist's sense of drama, he vividly recounts the fierce clashes at Mansfield (Sabine Crossroads), Pleasant Hill, and Yellow Bayou, and the destruction of Natchitoches and Alexandria.