Forgotten Campaigns of the Civil War

The Civil War is usually remembered for its iconic battles in the East, yet some of its most intriguing episodes played out far from those fields. In the deserts of the Southwest, the swamps of Louisiana, and the prairies of Missouri, ambitious generals launched offensives that have largely faded from memory, yet were filled with drama and significance. These lesser-known campaigns—Sibley’s New Mexico Campaign (1862), the Red River Campaign (1864), and the Missouri Campaign (1864)—unfolded on the fringes of the conflict, where geography and circumstance tested the limits of endurance and strategy. Each featured grand plans colliding with harsh realities, yielding vivid stories of courage, folly, and survival. In Civil War Battles: Forgotten Campaigns, these are not just names in a chapter heading: they’re fully playable campaigns, with scenario-by-scenario narratives that let you see how fragile plans became once weather, distance, and imperfect information took over.

Sibley’s New Mexico Campaign (1862)

March 28, 1862 – Glorieta Pass, New Mexico Territory. A lone Confederate sentry stood atop a rocky ledge, scanning the distant horizon where the Santa Fe Trail wound through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Dawn’s first light bathed the high desert in hues of rose and gold. The young Texan’s gray uniform was faded and coated in red adobe dust from weeks of grueling marches. In the chilly morning air, he pulled his slouch hat down against the breeze and narrowed his eyes. Through stands of piñon pine and juniper, he thought he saw movement—distant figures, Union soldiers, advancing along the rugged pass. Heart pounding, the sentry tightened his grip on his rifle. Far below, in a mountain valley still shrouded in predawn shadow, campfires flickered where the rest of the Confederate column was stirring. Today would decide whether their desperate gamble for the West would succeed or come crashing down in these sun-baked mountains.

That spring morning encapsulated the hopes and fears of Brigadier General Henry Hopkins Sibley’s New Mexico expedition. Sibley, a Louisiana-born West Pointer and former U.S. Army officer, had concocted an audacious plan to seize the New Mexico and Arizona territories for the Confederacy. In early 1862, with the blessing of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, he raised a brigade of roughly 3,000 Texas volunteers—primarily mounted cavalrymen—and led them westward out of El Paso. His ultimate vision was imperial in scope. By conquering the sparse Union outposts in New Mexico, Sibley aimed to open a path to the gold and silver mines of Colorado and, ultimately, to the ports of California. If successful, the Confederacy would secure a treasure trove of mineral wealth and possibly even a corridor to the Pacific. The stakes were enormous, but so were the challenges: a thousand miles of barren desert and hostile territory separated Sibley’s “Army of New Mexico” from its objectives.

 

Brigadier General Henry Hopkins Sibley (Brady-Handy collection, Library of Congress / Public Domain)

From the outset, geography shaped the campaign’s fate. The Confederate column trudged north along the Rio Grande, the lifeline of the arid Southwest. The landscape was starkly beautiful and unforgiving—endless mesas, sagebrush plains, and craggy hills under a vault of brilliant sky. By day, the Texans were baked by the desert sun; by night, they shivered under cold stars. They pressed on in long, dusty columns, banners snapping in the hot wind, ever watchful for danger from both hostile locals and Union patrols. Sibley’s men carried what supplies they could on mule-drawn wagons, but they hoped to “live off the land,” a risky bet in such a sparsely settled country. Water was scarce; between the Rio Grande’s rare fordable bends lay desolate stretches with ominous names like Jornada del Muerto (“Journey of the Dead”). By the time the Texans crossed into Union territory, their throats were parched and their mounts already worn thin.

And “hostile territory” in New Mexico did not mean only bluecoats and militia. Along stretches of the Rio Grande valley and its approaches, Apache war parties added a separate, persistent layer of danger—one that struck where Sibley could least afford losses. For an army dependent on animals, wagons, and foraging, the vulnerable points were obvious: isolated pickets, grazing herds, small detachments sent to gather food, and the inevitable stragglers who fell behind on the march. The Texans found they could not let horses and mules spread out to graze without heavy guards, and parties moving even a short distance from the main column risked being cut off. These were not pitched battles, but they mattered. In a campaign already stretched by distance, every mule driven off, every wagon delayed, every guard detail pulled away from the rifle line was another drain on momentum and endurance.

One episode shows how such attacks could bite indirectly but sharply. In early 1862, near Fort Thorn, an Apache party managed to get close enough to the Confederate camp to set the dry grass alight, burning off forage along the river at the very moment the Texans needed grazing most. In the Southwest, forage could be as decisive as ammunition. A cavalry-heavy expedition lived and died by the condition of its animals—and when the feed disappeared, the timetable collapsed with it. More broadly, the threat forced Sibley’s men into a constant, exhausting posture of watchfulness on a march that was already grinding them down. For instance, Company D of the 2nd Regiment Texas Mounted Rifles recorded a staggering nine men as "killed by Indians" out of their total of 95 men and officers as of October 31, 1861.

Major General Edward R. S. Canby (Library of Congress / Public Domain), Canby was promoted to Maj Gen. in 1864

Union forces in New Mexico were equally isolated, but forewarned. Colonel Edward R. S. Canby, the Union commander in New Mexico, learned of Sibley’s plans and steadily gathered every available soldier to oppose him. Frontier regular army detachments, New Mexican volunteer militia (including many Hispanic locals), and even a regiment of miners from Colorado all converged at Fort Craig, an old adobe bastion on the west bank of the Rio Grande that guarded the approach to the heart of the territory. By early February 1862, Canby had nearly 4,000 men dug in at Fort Craig, prepared to block the Confederate advance.

In mid-February, Sibley’s brigade arrived at Fort Craig—the first major obstacle on the road north. The fort’s earthen ramparts bristled with Union cannon and bayonets. Rather than storm such a strong position and risk heavy losses, Sibley attempted a flanking maneuver. Under the cover of night, he led his men across the Rio Grande and moved upstream on the opposite bank, hoping to lure the Federals out and draw them into battle on open ground. Canby, unwilling to let the invaders slip past toward Santa Fe and Colorado, marched out to confront Sibley a few miles north of the fort, near a ford of the Rio Grande called Valverde.

Battle of Valverde (Atlas of the war of the Rebellion, Public Domain)

On February 21, 1862, the two forces clashed in the Battle of Valverde. The fighting raged all day in the scrubby mesquite flats and sand dunes near the river. Early on, Union troops gained the upper hand, attacking boldly and nearly overrunning the Confederate left. Sibley, reportedly debilitated by illness and drink that morning, relinquished active command at a critical hour—leaving tactical decisions to his subordinates, notably the fiery Colonel Tom Green of the 5th Texas. Amid clouds of dust and gun-smoke, with the crash of artillery echoing off the bluffs, Green rallied the Texans in Sibley’s absence. In the afternoon, he led a daring counterattack that struck the Union flank. Texan cavalry swarmed around the Union line and broke it late in the day. Canby’s troops fell back in disorder to Fort Craig, abandoning the field. Valverde was technically a Confederate victory—the Rebels held the ground and even captured a few Union cannons. Yet Green’s triumph was a costly one. Sibley’s army was battered and low on provisions, and Fort Craig still loomed in their rear, its garrison intact and blocking the Confederate supply line back to Texas. The Texans had won a battle, but achieved little towards conquering New Mexico.

Rather than waste time besieging Fort Craig (which could likely hold out for weeks), Sibley chose to bypass it and press onward. The gray-clad column resumed its march up the Rio Grande Valley, leaving Canby contained but unbeaten behind them. In early March, the Confederates occupied Albuquerque without a fight, seizing whatever meager supplies the retreating Union forces had left. Sibley’s men were now over 200 miles from their base in Texas, in possession of central New Mexico, but their situation was precarious. The desert had not yielded the bounty Sibley had promised—food and forage were running low, and many of the Texans’ horses and mules had died or been left behind. Still, buoyed by their survival and the sight of Confederate flags flying over captured towns, the Texans pushed on. They occupied Santa Fe on March 10, raising the Stars and Bars over the old Spanish capital. For a brief moment, Sibley could boast he had seized the territorial capital—he was the conqueror of the first piece of his envisioned Confederate Southwest empire.

Yet even as Sibley installed himself in Santa Fe, Union reinforcements were gathering to the northeast. The most important Union stronghold in the region, Fort Union, lay up the Santa Fe Trail in the high plains beyond the mountains, and fresh volunteers from Colorado had arrived there to bolster its defenses. These “Pikes Peak” Coloradans—hardy frontiersmen in dusty Union blue—were led by Colonel John P. Slough and Major John M. Chivington. Determined to stop Sibley’s advance before it could threaten Colorado Territory, Slough marched his 1,300-strong column south along the Santa Fe Trail. Meanwhile, Sibley dispatched a detachment of Confederate troops under Major Charles L. Pyron (later reinforced by elements under Lt. Col. William Scurry) to secure Glorieta Pass—the narrow mountain gap that controlled the approach to Fort Union. On March 26, 1862, advance scouts from the two forces collided at Apache Canyon, at one end of Glorieta Pass, and a sharp skirmish ensued. That clash set the stage for the subsequent larger battle.

Battle of Glorieta Pass/Pigeon's Ranch (Roy Andersen, 1986, National Park Service / Public Domain)

Two days later, on March 28, the main battle of Glorieta Pass erupted. At Pigeon’s Ranch, a waystation midway through the pass, Slough’s Union troops engaged Scurry’s Confederates in a fierce fight among the pine-clad ridges and boulders. The thin mountain air rang with the crack of rifles and boom of artillery, volleys echoing off cliff walls. By afternoon, the Texans managed to push the Federals back through the pass after bitter, close-quarters combat. It appeared Sibley’s men had won another battlefield victory—they controlled the field at day’s end, and the road to Fort Union lay open. But the triumph proved illusory. In the midst of the fighting, Chivington had led a separate flanking detachment of Union troops on a rugged mountain path and fallen upon the Confederate supply train in the rear. At a place called Johnson’s Ranch, Chivington’s men captured and burned the Confederate wagons, slaughtered or stampeded the mules, and destroyed virtually all of Sibley’s supplies. It was the decisive blow that forced Sibley to abandon his entire campaign. With their food, ammunition, and wagons gone, the Confederates could not advance and certainly could not remain where they were.

Battlefield of Glorieta Pass as shown in Civil War Battles: Forgotten Campaigns

By nightfall on March 28, the once-confident Confederate army was in full retreat. Scurry’s bloodied troops slipped back from Glorieta Pass under cover of darkness, leaving their dead scattered in the snow-flecked mountain ravines. Sibley’s dreams of reaching Fort Union, Colorado, or California were shattered; now it became a fight for survival. The Rebels fell back to Santa Fe and then evacuated the city, trudging southward down the Rio Grande Valley from which they had come. Union forces converging behind them—Canby from Fort Craig and Slough’s Coloradans from Fort Union—pressed the retreat, but cautiously. Over the next few weeks, Sibley’s men endured one of the most grueling marches of the war. Exhausted, hungry, and harried by local New Mexican militia and Apache scouts, the Texans staggered through the deserts they had crossed with such hope just months before. Famished men even slaughtered their own failing horses for meat; others collapsed from dehydration under the merciless sun. Veterans later described seeing comrades fall with blackened tongues from thirst as they trudged along the Jornada del Muerto. Union patrols nipped at the Confederate rear guard, but Sibley’s beleaguered column managed to slip away each time. By early May, the ragged survivors found refuge in the Mesilla Valley of New Mexico and, from there, finally straggled across the border into Texas.

The New Mexico expedition had come to a dismal end. Of the roughly 3,000 Texans who had marched in, barely half returned to San Antonio; the rest were dead, wounded, captured, or too sick to continue. Sibley’s grand invasion had failed utterly. The Confederate foothold in the Southwest evaporated, along with any realistic chance of securing the West’s mineral wealth or a route to the Pacific. Sibley himself was disgraced—his notorious drunkenness and bungled leadership were blamed for the debacle, and he was shuffled off to minor commands thereafter. For the Union, the twin victories at Valverde (strategic, in stalling the invasion) and Glorieta Pass (decisive, in wrecking the Confederate logistics) ensured that the far Southwest would remain in Union hands. Far from the headlines of Richmond or Washington, the “Gettysburg of the West” had ended the Confederacy’s ambitions in the high desert.

From the sun-scorched mesas of New Mexico, our journey shifts east and two years forward, to the steamy waterways of Louisiana. In the spring of 1864, another ambitious campaign would unfold—one driven not by dreams of gold, but by the lure of cotton and a bid to strike at the very edge of Confederate territory.

The Red River Campaign (1864)

If Sibley’s venture in New Mexico was a gamble for glory and gold, the Red River Campaign two years later was driven by greed and grand strategy. By early 1864, momentum in the Civil War had swung toward the Union—mid-1863 victories had severely dented Southern hopes. Yet west of the Mississippi River, Confederate forces still held a vast Trans-Mississippi theater (Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas) largely unscathed by major fighting. Union leaders cast hungry eyes toward Texas, the Confederacy’s westernmost bastion. President Lincoln and General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant authorized an ambitious expedition up Louisiana’s Red River, aiming to capture Shreveport (the Confederate capital of Louisiana and headquarters of the Trans-Mississippi Department) and potentially open the way into Texas. The motives were strategic as well as political and economic: to eliminate the last major Confederate stronghold west of the Mississippi, to deter French meddling from neighboring Mexico, and to seize the South’s “white gold” – cotton.

Major General N.P. Banks, ca. 1861 (Brady-Handy collection, Library of Congress / Public Domain)

The Red River Campaign became one of the largest Union operations west of the Mississippi, a complex joint Army-Navy offensive. The Union force was led by Major General Nathaniel P. Banks, commander of the Department of the Gulf. Banks was a Massachusetts politician-turned-general with no formal military training. Ambitious and in need of a military triumph (he even harbored presidential aspirations), Banks saw the Red River expedition as his chance to redeem a lackluster record. He marshaled about 25,000 troops, including his own Army of the Gulf based in New Orleans and veteran Midwestern units lent by General William T. Sherman. Accompanying them was a formidable naval flotilla under Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter, an aggressive officer fresh off the Union victory at Vicksburg. Porter assembled a flotilla of ironclad gunboats, lightly armored “tinclads,” and assorted support vessels – nearly 90 boats mounting over 200 heavy guns. Troop transports carried Banks’s soldiers alongside the warships as they pushed up the Red River, confident that such overwhelming force would brush aside any Rebel opposition.

Opposing this Union armada was a considerably smaller Confederate army led by Major General Richard Taylor. Taylor—son of former U.S. President Zachary Taylor—was a Louisiana plantation owner-turned-soldier who, despite having no pre-war military experience, proved to be a talented commander. (He had served under Stonewall Jackson in Virginia, learning aggressive tactics from that legendary general.) By 1864, Taylor was charged with defending Louisiana and eastern Texas. He could muster perhaps 10,000–15,000 men, a patchwork of Louisiana and Texas regiments, many of them cavalry or mounted infantry. These troops were poorly equipped and spread thin, but they knew the bayou country intimately. Taylor himself was keen and combative, if occasionally at odds with his cautious superior, General Edmund Kirby Smith (the overall Trans-Mississippi commander). As Banks’s blue-coated legions pushed northwest up the Red River, Taylor prepared an aggressive defense despite being badly outnumbered.

Confederate Lieutenant-General Richard Scott "Dick" Taylor (Library of Congress / Public Domain)

The Union offensive kicked off in March 1864. Banks’s column marched out of New Orleans and moved north across Louisiana, following primitive roads that quickly turned to mud with spring rains. Admiral Porter’s fleet chugged alongside them on the Red River, carrying supplies and offering heavy fire support. Almost immediately, coordination problems emerged among the Union leaders. Banks, as the senior army commander, technically held overall command, but Admiral Porter answered to the Navy and had his own views, and the presence of Sherman’s battle-hardened Midwestern troops (under Brig. Gen. A.J. Smith) meant Banks was sharing the field with subordinates who didn’t always defer to him. Nevertheless, initial progress was smooth. In early April, Union forces seized the river town of Grand Ecore and captured Fort DeRussy, a Confederate stronghold on the Red River, which opened the way for Porter’s gunboats to ascend to central Louisiana. Federal troops marched in long columns under the dripping Spanish moss and live oaks of the plantation country, confiscating thousands of bales of cotton from local plantations as they advanced. Endless wagon trains hauled away these bales of “white gold” to be sent back downriver—prize loot that would enrich Northern speculators and naval officers under the Union’s prize laws. The soldiers, meanwhile, found themselves slogging through a strange, sultry world of cypress swamps and murky bayous. The heat and humidity rose with each passing day. Wool uniforms became sweat-soaked, and swarms of mosquitoes and gnats tormented every man. Soldiers complained that the march felt like slogging through a steamy green tunnel of swamp and thicket, the air heavy and still as a stove.

General Taylor executed a fighting withdrawal, ceding ground slowly while looking for an opportunity to strike. By the first week of April, he had concentrated about 8,000 Confederate troops around the small crossroads of Mansfield, roughly 40 miles shy of Shreveport. There, the narrow road from Grand Ecore to Shreveport snaked through rolling pine woods and sugar cane fields—terrain perfect for an ambush. Taylor correctly reckoned that Banks’s forces were strung out in a long line, their front far ahead of their wagons and supports. On April 8, 1864, he sprung his trap. The advanced divisions of Banks’s army, mostly cavalry and infantry escorting a long wagon train, blundered into Taylor’s position south of Mansfield. Without warning, waves of butternut-clad Confederate infantry burst from the woods. One brigade, led by the French-born General Camille Armand “Prince” de Polignac, charged with wild Rebel yells straight into the surprised Union vanguard. Amid the chaos, teams of Union mules stampeded and wagons overturned as shells and bullets tore through the ranks. A Northern officer recalled seeing the Rebel line surging forward “like a gray storm cloud spitting fire.” Taylor’s Texans and Louisianans hit the Federals hard on front and flank. After a brief, bloody struggle, the Union front collapsed. Panic rippled back through Banks’s column. Hundreds of Union soldiers were cut down or captured as they fled; dozens of supply wagons were abandoned to the enemy. Only as dusk approached did Banks manage to rally a reserve division to halt the rout a few miles to the rear. The Battle of Mansfield was a clear Confederate victory. Taylor’s bold attack had wrecked an entire Union corps, netted him some 20 captured cannons and hundreds of prisoners, and sent Banks reeling backward.

Bank's army, in the advance on Shreveport, crossing Cane River, LA, March 31st, 1864 (taken from Flickr's The Commons / no known copyright)

The next day, at Pleasant Hill, Banks’s now-concentrated army managed to hold off Taylor’s renewed assaults in a bloody day-long battle. Though the Union technically held the field at nightfall on April 9, Banks—shaken by the previous day’s disaster and low on supplies—chose to retreat under cover of darkness rather than risk another fight. Thus, despite the stalemate at Pleasant Hill, the Red River Campaign’s fate was sealed: the Union invasion was over, and Banks’s army was in full withdrawal.

As Banks pulled his troops south in defeat, Admiral Porter’s flotilla faced its own crisis. The Red River’s water level, which had been just sufficient on the upstream journey, now began dropping ominously. By mid-April, Porter’s heavy ironclad gunboats found themselves scraping the bottom in shallow stretches. When the Union army reached Grand Ecore on the retreat, they discovered that several of the gunboats were stranded above the rapids near the town of Alexandria. If the river fell any further, the navy’s proud fleet could be stuck deep in enemy territory—and at the mercy of Confederate shore batteries—perhaps to be destroyed or captured. Sensing their foe’s vulnerability, Taylor’s Confederates harried the retreat relentlessly. At one point during the withdrawal, at a Cane River crossing, the Rebels nearly surrounded part of Banks’s column, forcing the Federals to fight a desperate rearguard action to escape annihilation. Skirmishers also sniped incessantly at Porter’s vessels from the riverbanks. In one such clash, the fiery Confederate cavalry general Tom Green (one of Texas’s famed fighters) led a reckless charge along the river’s edge and was killed by a blast of canister from a Union gunboat. The Federals were learning that retreating could be just as perilous as advancing in this hostile terrain.

 

Battle of Pleasant Hill by C. E. H. Bonwell (Library of Congress / Public Domain)

Amid the chaos, a remarkable feat of engineering saved the Union army and navy from complete disaster. When Porter’s largest gunboats reached Alexandria, Louisiana, they encountered a natural rock ledge or rapids in the Red River that the low water had made impassable. The vessels could not get downstream. It seemed the Union fleet—ironclads that represented millions of dollars of investment and hundreds of crewmen—might have to be blown up if they could not be floated out. A young Union engineer officer, Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Bailey, proposed an audacious solution: build a dam across the Red River to raise the water level and float the gunboats over the rapids. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Banks approved the plan. Within days, hundreds of Union soldiers (many of them former lumbermen from Wisconsin and Maine) were felling trees, piling logs, rocks, and sandbags into the river at Alexandria. Under a punishing sun, knee-deep in mud and water, they labored to constrict the river’s flow. Even some Confederate prisoners were pressed into service. Day after day, the work continued, as anxious navy crews watched the river slowly rise behind the makeshift dam. “Every available man toiled in mud and water, sunup to sundown,” one officer wrote. “The river rose inch by inch behind the dam… and we prayed it would be enough.”

Battle of Pleasant Hill as shown in Civil War Battles: Forgotten Campaigns

By May 9, 1864, Bailey’s improvised dam had raised the water level by several feet—enough to attempt a breakout. Porter’s gunboats fired up their engines and, one by one, dared the rapids. With a rushing torrent pressing at the dam, the engineers began to breach their timber barriers. A surge of water tore through, carrying the flotilla with it. One by one, the Union gunboats shot through the gap and down the river. On the deck of a tinclad gunboat, a Union sailor cheered hoarsely as he felt the vessel lurch and glide forward on the roaring current. The humid Louisiana air was thick with heat and the smell of churned mud. For weeks, he had sweated under a brutal sun, straining to pole the boat off sandbars and dodging sniper fire from the banks. Now, at last, the Red River was carrying him home. Around him, fellow crewmen whooped and waved their caps in exhausted triumph. The entire fleet had made it past the rapids. Bailey’s Dam—part miracle, part madness—had worked. As the final vessels cleared the falls, the engineers cut the remaining cribs loose, and the Red River flowed freely again.

By late May, Banks’s beaten army and Porter’s relieved flotilla were safely back on the broad Mississippi. The Red River Campaign had ended in a costly fiasco for the Union. Northern casualties numbered in the thousands, not to mention the loss of many gunboats and transports either sunk by the enemy or scuttled to avoid capture. The Union had failed to capture Shreveport or invade Texas. They had seized plenty of Confederate cotton, only to lose much of it during the chaotic retreat. In Washington, D.C., the debacle sparked outrage—General Grant himself grumbled that it was “one damn blunder from beginning to end.” In the Confederacy, Richard Taylor emerged as the victor who had snatched an unlikely win against a superior foe. Taylor believed that, had he not been restrained by his cautious superior, Gen. Kirby Smith, he might have destroyed Banks’s entire army and navy. Regardless, the victory at Mansfield proved one of the Confederacy’s last major triumphs, keeping Louisiana and Texas out of Union hands for the time being. The Union, chastened by the whole affair, abandoned further plans to invade Texas.

Banks himself was superseded in military (but not political) matters by the formerly mentioned Major General Edward Canby.

Six months later, in the autumn of 1864, the Confederates attempted yet another risky offensive—this time not in remote deserts or bayous, but in the contested heart of Missouri. With a U.S. presidential election looming and the South’s fortunes fading, a former Missouri governor-turned-general set out to tip the balance, at least on his home soil. The final campaign of our trio would sweep across hundreds of miles of prairie and woodlands in a bold, quixotic raid—one that marked the last significant Confederate thrust west of the Mississippi.

The Missouri Campaign (1864)

By the fall of 1864, the Confederacy was in dire straits. Atlanta had fallen to Sherman in September, Lee was pinned down at Petersburg, and an air of doom hung over Richmond. Nevertheless, the South still had a few wild cards to play. One was a gamble on the far frontier—the Missouri Campaign of 1864, a last-ditch Confederate raid into Union-held territory. Its leader was Major General Sterling Price, the former governor of Missouri. “Old Pap” Price, as his men called him, had been a hero to Missouri’s secessionists early in the war, and he still dreamed of “liberating” his home state from Northern control. In September 1864, with encouragement from Confederate high command in the West, Price gathered an army of roughly 12,000 cavalry and mounted infantry and set out from Arkansas into Missouri. The goals were ambitious: to seize Missouri’s major cities (or at least seriously threaten them), topple the Unionist state government and install a pro-Confederate regime, and inspire thousands of local Southern sympathizers to join his ranks. By causing a popular uprising and military havoc, Price also hoped to influence the U.S. presidential election scheduled for November 1864—perhaps tipping the balance against Lincoln by demonstrating that the war’s outcome was far from decided.

Stirling Price (Library of Congress / Public Domain)

Price’s mounted army—one of the largest all-cavalry forces assembled during the war—crossed into southeastern Missouri in late September 1864. His men were a motley assortment of Missouri and Arkansas regiments, seasoned guerrilla bands, and frontier cavalry. Few wore regulation uniforms; instead, they dressed in tattered civilian clothes or remnants of captured Union gear, with only their battle flags and accents to mark them as rebels. Despite their ragged appearance, they were highly mobile; each rider led extra horses to enable rapid movement. As Price trotted northward, he did find some support among the populace. In several towns, pro-Confederate locals cheered the arrival of the gray-clad horsemen, and a handful of young men volunteered as guides or new recruits. But Missouri had been under Union rule for three years, and many of the staunch Southern partisans Price expected to rally had either fled to join the Confederate Army earlier or been suppressed by Union militia. Still, Price’s raid gathered momentum, and by the end of September, he was moving toward St. Louis, Missouri’s largest city and industrial hub.

Union forces in Missouri were quickly alerted and began organizing a defense. Militia and volunteer units manned garrisons at key points, and urgent calls for reinforcements went out to neighboring Union commands. From the east, troops were sent by rail and river from Illinois and other states (including veteran units from Sherman’s army, diverted northward under General A.J. Smith). In Kansas to the west, Union General Samuel R. Curtis raised an ad hoc “Army of the Border,” mobilizing thousands of Kansas State Militia alongside volunteer cavalry to guard his state’s frontier. Major General William Rosecrans, the Union department commander at St. Louis, coordinated Missouri’s overall defense. Facing this growing resistance, Price adjusted his plans on the fly.

At the beginning of October, Price approached Fort Davidson at Pilot Knob, a small Union post in the eastern Missouri highlands, about 80 miles south of St. Louis. He hoped to score an easy victory and capture its supplies on the way to St. Louis. On September 27, Price surrounded the fort and demanded its surrender. Its commander, Union Brigadier General Thomas Ewing, refused. Price ordered a direct assault. Wave after wave of Confederate attackers surged across open ground toward Fort Davidson, only to be mowed down by deadly fire from the defenders’ artillery and rifles. By nightfall, hundreds of Southern soldiers lay dead or wounded in front of the fort’s earthen walls, and the Union garrison still held. That night, Ewing daringly evacuated his surviving troops under cover of darkness, blowing up the fort’s powder magazine to prevent its capture. When Price’s men occupied the fort the next morning, they found only smoking craters and scores of their own fallen comrades. The Battle of Pilot Knob had gained the Confederates nothing—except a costly delay at the campaign’s outset.

By the time Price pulled his battered advance units out of Pilot Knob, St. Louis had been heavily reinforced with Union troops. Reluctantly, Price abandoned his plan to attack the city. Instead, he turned his columns westward, marching toward Jefferson City, the state capital. As the Confederates traversed central Missouri, they lived well off the land—but their plundering ways slowed them down. With each day’s haul of seized corn, livestock, fodder, and whatever else could be taken as spoils, Price’s wagon train of captured goods grew longer and more cumbersome. On October 7, Price’s men reached the outskirts of Jefferson City. After a brief skirmish, they found the capital heavily fortified and bristling with Union defenders (the Union had rushed units there by steamboat). Price decided not to waste time on a pitched battle for the city. He continued his march west, veering onto the broad road that led toward Kansas City on the Missouri-Kansas border.

Battlefield of Pilot Knob as shown in Civil War Battles: Forgotten Campaigns

Throughout mid-October, Price pressed on across western Missouri while Union forces closed in from both east and west like a vise. From the east, a Union cavalry corps under General Alfred Pleasonton was racing across Missouri in pursuit of Price’s rear, while from the west General Curtis and his Kansas volunteers moved to block Price’s path near Kansas City.

Battle of Westport (displayed at the Missouri State Capitol / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

At last, on October 23, 1864, Price’s army reached Westport, just outside Kansas City. There, the largest battle of the war west of the Mississippi was about to unfold. Price now had perhaps 8,000 effective troops left (many recruits had no arms or had drifted away, and detachments guarded his wagon train), while the converging Union forces under Curtis and Pleasonton numbered over 15,000. That morning, Price launched an attack northward against Curtis’s positions around Westport, hoping to punch through and escape into the open plains beyond. Fighting raged along the banks of the Big Blue River and on the gentle hills south of town. Gunfire echoed over the prairie and bullets thudded into fences, sending nearby farm families huddling in their cellars. On Brush Creek, Confederate cavalry under General Jo Shelby made a furious charge that initially gained ground. But elsewhere the Union lines held firm, and by afternoon Pleasonton’s Union cavalry was pressing Price’s rear from the east, threatening his long wagon train. General Price realized he was in danger of being encircled. With no hope of victory, he gave the order to retreat. The Confederates began pulling back from Westport in the late afternoon, abandoning wagons and even cannon in their haste. Thanks to Shelby’s stalwart rear-guard action, much of Price’s force escaped that day, but the defeat at the Battle of Westport effectively doomed his campaign.

General Samuel Ryan Curtis (The Photographic History of The Civil War in Ten Volumes: Volume One / Public Domain)

What followed was a harrowing chase through eastern Kansas. As the weary Confederates retreated southward, nature turned against them. A cold autumn storm blew in, drenching the prairie in rain. Before dawn on October 25, hundreds of soaked and exhausted Confederate troopers camped near the Marais des Cygnes crossing (on the Kansas-Missouri border) were jolted awake by the crack of Union carbines. A young Missouri cavalryman pulled his sodden blanket tighter around his shoulders as he scrambled to his feet in the downpour. In the murky gray light, he could just make out enemy horsemen splashing across the flooded creek. Bugles rang out an alarm, and the Confederates hastily formed a ragged line in the mud. In the brief clash that followed, Union troopers swarmed over the rebel rear guard, capturing many and scattering the rest.

A few hours later that morning, as the skies began to clear, Union cavalry overtook Price’s main column on the open prairie near Mine Creek, Kansas. Two Confederate divisions, with dozens of wagons in tow, were bogged down trying to cross a swollen stream. Sensing the opportunity, Union General Pleasonton ordered his horsemen to charge. It was one of the war’s largest cavalry charges. Nearly 3,000 Union troopers thundered across the grasslands, pistols and sabers drawn. The Confederate rearguard managed one volley before the blue-coated wave was upon them. In the melee that ensued, two Confederate generals (including General John Marmaduke) were dragged from their horses and captured, and over a thousand of Price’s men threw down their arms. Much of the remaining wagon train was overrun or abandoned. The Battle of Mine Creek was a rout – and the death knell of Price’s expedition.

General Price and the remnants of his army continued to flee south with what little remained of their plunder. Only the heroics of Jo Shelby’s veteran cavalry brigade kept the retreat from turning into total annihilation. Shelby’s Missourians fought sharp rearguard skirmishes to hold off the pursuing Federals, allowing a few thousand of Price’s men (and a dwindling handful of wagons) to escape into Indian Territory and down to Texas. By November 1864, the grand raid was over. It had lasted over six weeks and covered more than 1,500 miles. Of Price’s 12,000 men, barely 5,000 made it back to friendly lines; the rest were dead, wounded, captured, or missing. They had failed to permanently seize a single major target or spark a popular uprising. Politically, the raid did nothing to derail President Lincoln’s re-election—if anything, the Union victories in Missouri bolstered Northern morale. The Missouri Campaign of 1864 proved to be the last large-scale Confederate operation west of the Mississippi River.

In retrospect, Price’s Missouri expedition, like Sibley’s drive into New Mexico and Taylor’s Red River defense, was a dramatic gamble that fell short. Each of these campaigns was launched with grand hopes that collided with harsh reality. Each was fought on forbidding terrain—deserts, swamps, or vast plains—that punished the invaders and shaped the outcome. And in each case, local Union forces, though often outnumbered or ad hoc, managed to outlast or outmaneuver the Confederate thrust. These lesser-known campaigns did not decide the Civil War, but they illuminate its far-flung nature. From the burning supply wagons at Glorieta Pass to the sunken gunboats on the Red River to the rain-soaked cavalry charge on the Kansas prairie, the Civil War was truly a continental conflict – full of unexpected twists and forgotten dramas.

Ken Burns opens his Civil War documentary with a reminder that “the Civil War was fought in ten thousand places.” That single sentence is a quiet rebuke to how memory works. We remember the war through a handful of names—Gettysburg, Shiloh, Chickamauga—because they feel like the center. But the conflict’s true geography was wider, stranger, and often more improvisational: wagon roads and river bends, desert fords and courthouse squares, mountain passes and muddy crossings. In those places, the war could hinge on things that never make it into the grand summaries—whether forage held out, whether a river fell, whether a column took the wrong road, whether a supply train survived the night.

That’s why these campaigns linger. Sibley’s invasion shows how quickly strategy turns into logistics and endurance when you’re marching through a land that won’t feed you, won’t forgive mistakes, and punishes every lost mule as if it were a lost battalion. The Red River expedition proves that even a vast joint force—armies, ironclads, transports, artillery—can be brought to a halt by distance, bad coordination, and a river that simply refuses to rise on schedule. And Price’s Missouri raid, sweeping across hundreds of miles, captures the late-war Confederacy at its most desperate: still bold, still dangerous, but increasingly forced to gamble on speed, surprise, and political effect rather than lasting military control.

In Civil War Battles: Forgotten Campaigns, these aren’t footnotes or “meanwhile, out west…” paragraphs. They’re playable campaigns you can follow step by step, where the narrative isn’t a retrospective—it’s something you create through decisions, friction, and consequences. If the war really was fought in ten thousand places, these three are some of the most vivid—and the kind where you can feel, scenario by scenario, how fragile plans became once weather, distance, and imperfect information took over.

Book Recommendations

If you are interested to dig deeper, here are some book recommendations. As always, clicking the book covers brings you to Amazon.

Sibley’s New Mexico Campaign (1862)

Hall, Martin Hardwick. Sibley’s New Mexico Campaign. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1960

Edrington, Thomas S., and John Taylor. The Battle of Glorieta Pass: A Gettysburg in the West, March 26–28, 1862. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998

The Red River Campaign (1864

Joiner, Gary Dillard. One Damn Blunder from Beginning to End: The Red River Campaign of 1864. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2003

Johnson, Ludwell H. The Red River Campaign: Politics and Cotton in the Civil War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1958

The Missouri Campaign (Price’s Raid, 1864)

Lause, Mark A. Price’s Lost Campaign: The 1864 Invasion of Missouri. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2011.

Sinisi, Kyle S. The Last Hurrah: Sterling Price’s Missouri Expedition of 1864. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015.

General Histories about the Transmissippian Theater

Hess, Earl J. The Civil War in the West: Victory and Defeat from the Appalachians to the Mississippi. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012

Monaghan, Jay. Civil War on the Western Border, 1854–1865. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984

... and finally, unrelated to the campaigns mentioned above, but a personal favourite of mine...