Visit To Mansfield-Pleasant Hill, Louisiana, April, 1969

James N.

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Booklet purchased in the museum describing the Battle of Mansfield and the Red River Campaign, autographed by park superintendent and local historian Alonzo Plummer.

I first became aware of the 1864 Battle of Mansfield and what was originally known as the Mansfield Commemorative Area during the Civil War Centennial of the 1960's, but it wasn't until several years later that I had an opportunity to visit there. In Spring of 1969 I drove over from the Dallas area with my new bride Marilynn who took the photos of me there and at nearby Fort Jesup.

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The site of Fort Jesup above is nearer the town of Nachitoches, and although it played no part in the Civil War, served as an important staging area for the 1846 invasion of Mexico by U. S. forces. The little army of Brig. Gen. Zachary Taylor first assembled here, including the 4th U. S. Infantry, among whose members was a newly-graduated from West Point second lieutenant named Ulysses Simpson Grant. Two companies of "Volunteers" from here had previously marched into the interior of Texas - then definitely a part of Mexico - in 1836 where they joined the ragtag force led by Sam Houston and participated in the victory over the Mexicans at the battle of San Jacinto. Today Fort Jesup is a Louisiana State Park containing a small museum and the reconstructed barracks seen above.

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On the way from Nachitoches to Mansfield is the now-abandoned site of the town of Pleasant Hill above; following the war, the town relocated itself a mile or so further southeast. This was well before the annual reenactments commemorating the April 9, 1864 battle were ever held. The site remains privately owned and other than a more recent proliferation of historical markers has become even more wooded and remote.

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Mansfield Battle Park is southeast of the town of Mansfield on State 175; the archway above enters into a parklike area that encompasses only a portion of the center of the original battlefield and looks little or nothing like it did on April 8, 1864 when it was an active plantation. Today more of the site has been protected by the Battlefield Trust and transferred to State control but remains undeveloped and the park looks remarkably the same as when these photos were taken fifty years ago.

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Near the entrance are several monuments erected in memory of Texas and Louisiana troops and commanders; the largest of which below is in memory of Brig. Gen. Jean-Jacques-Alfred-Alexandre Mouton who was killed here while leading his division in the Confederate attack that broke the Federal line, sending them into retreat that became a rout. Another smaller monument honors adopted Texan Brig Gen. Camille Armand Jules-Marie Count de Polignac of France who replaced Mouton when he fell.

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The main Union line had been along a rail fence like this reconstruction above, now deep in the woods which were not here at the time of the battle; instead cotton fields stretched along both sides of the road.

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Centerpiece of the park is the Centennial-era Visitor Center and Museum. Once it was home in the 1970's-80's to a remarkable collection of locally-excavated battlefield artifacts loaned by a noted local relic hunter and historian, but when the State of Louisiana went bankrupt in the 1980's and all state parks were temporarily closed the collection was removed by its lender.

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The rather spartan interior at the time of this visit has seen several renovations during its existence. The rather crude diorama below is populated by then-commercially-available Civil War soldiers, western cavalrymen, and cowboy figures and is actually based on a wartime illustration appearing on the cover of Harper's Weekly depicting the stampede of the Union wagon train following the battle.

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The map above is the centerfold of the small handout booklet shown below and locates in yellow highlights the places mentioned in this thread.

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Great old pics of the area. I have visited a few times and hope the newly acquired land across from the visitor center will be interpreted and open with some trails and foot paths.
 
My God how much has changed in the past 50 years. Those trees are a lot taller now! Along with more of them.

You wouldn't happen to have more pictures of Pleasant Hill handy would you? I'd love to see how the dogtrot looked as well as the place before that dang VFW hall was built.
 
I may look through some old photos of mine for more Pleasant Hill stuff, but a more recent view of Pleasant Hill for folks, (2016). I might have some Mansfield photos from the early 2000's lurking around.

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Pleasant Hill was always my reenactment "home" and I've always loved it, but as I'm sure I've said elsewhere I stopped going after 2016 because of incompetently handled the event had become. Last year on of senior officers told me I should start coming back and that everything was as it had been before and everything had improved, that they even owned the VFW Hall that had been built smack dab in the middle of one of the most important parts of the battlefield. I just asked him "Have y'all torn down that eyesore before it falls apart and give us more room to reenact? And restore part of the battlefield." he looked as if I proposed mugging a nun or something and couldn't conceive I would say such a thing needed to be done because they rent it out. So my exile from my "home" reenactment continues...

For some reason I never tire of that story.
 
My God how much has changed in the past 50 years. Those trees are a lot taller now! Along with more of them.

You wouldn't happen to have more pictures of Pleasant Hill handy would you? I'd love to see how the dogtrot looked as well as the place before that dang VFW hall was built.
Unfortunately (?), these are the only ones from that particular trip or that far back in time. During my early reenacting days in the mid-1970's both Mansfield and Pleasant Hill were sites of memorable events for our unit, but I don't recall ever being there before the VFW building which may even date back to the 1950's.
 
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From April, 1990 here are a couple of photos showing me in front of my "battalion" (2 companies - one made of "Galvanized" Rebs - plus color guard) and below, the only one showing one of the then-pretty-new buildings, the dogtrot house behind the cavalry.

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Unfortunately (?), these are the only ones from that particular trip or that far back in time. During my early reenacting days in the mid-1970's both Mansfield and Pleasant Hill were sites of memorable events for our unit, but I don't recall ever being there before the VFW building which may even date back to the 1950's.

I really don't care for that building. It NEEDS to be torn down. Restored battlefield=More room to play

2016 just ruined that event for me, $25 dollar registration, with no powder, and the laughably small Saturday night meal, (literally the tiniest bowl of Jambalaya I ever seen and no seconds and to add insult to injury it was the worst cooked I've eaten), plus a fancy modern brick house built beside the battlefield.

It was like a treasured piece of my childhood and life had been yanked out of a car and beat to death with a crowbar.
 
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That looks a lot like the P. Hill I grew up with reenactment wise!
I have more photos from that same event that I thought I'd posted previously but now a search fails to find a relevant thread - I'll have to see about creating a separate thread for them!
 
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Thanks for the photos. I have a g-g-grandfather that fought there and hope to visit soon. I am not sure how the covid-19 virus has affected things at the park.
 
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I have more photos from that same event that I thought I'd posted previously but now a search fails to find a relevant thread - I'll have to see about creating one in another separate thread I guess!
I was there! That's when they use to have a 3-4 of events IN LA. That was a fun event. Beans and cornbread! We were union, 114 & 75th NY (Schism:twins:). For a while we used to host the Battle of Bayou Bourbeau in Washington, LA.
 
Thanks for the photos. I have a g-g-grandfather that fought there and hope to visit soon. I am not sure how the covid-19 virus has affected things at the park.
No idea - since you've never visited before, a word of warning: The way to the park at Mansfield is poorly marked coming from town; since it opened, the Interstate bypass is a better approach and is decently marked as far as directions go. Visit Mansfield first before trying to find Pleasant Hill; it can be challenging and even once there things can be difficult to locate since there's not much of a "park".
 
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I have more photos from that same event that I thought I'd posted previously but now a search fails to find a relevant thread - I'll have to see about creating one in another separate thread I guess!

I can't wait! I'll probably have to look around myself for some of my old event photos, what few of them there are.

One event, I really wish I had photos of, was the 145th. That event, I got the most death threats from fellow reenactors than I've ever got! More than most death threats I got from other things, (I'm good at catching them for some odd reason).

I got to share the story of that wacky event.

That event I went there with old friend and mentor a day early so we could build a fence around a lot he rented adjacent to the camping area, for a parking lot, (yeah 2016 a partner of his took over in the event of his retirement of the hobby and I was banned from it as she didn't like me, another reason 2016 left a bad taste in my mouth). At the time I was in high school and worked at a Bodacious, (for those that don't know a barbeque restaurant chain in NE TX), so I brought a bunch of of BBQ'd pork out an offended the first Jewish gentleman I ever met when I offered him some, (I honestly didn't know...), but Saturday morning we reenacted at Mansfield, and as I recall we, my unit the 15th TX Inf. got to fight on the same ground the original 15th fought on, I took a hit, and soon enough a Federal tripped over me and fell, destroying my glasses. It was actually the Jewish gentleman I had previously crossed paths with. Plenty of apologies, but no offer to help me out on replacing them, and I went the rest of the event blind as a bat. (Let me tell you, driving myself home was an adventure!)

Flash forward to the afternoon battle at Pleasant Hill, I was tired, dizzy and couldn't see, and we are off to attack the Federals! My 1st Sgt. and I had a little stunt we had played at another event where I would drop my rifle and run from the firing line, and he'd shoot the deserter. I told him I wasn't up to the battle, but officers were herding us all off to fight, and I said lets do it. Before then we did it, we were always Federal, this time we were Confederate.

During the early parts of the battle, I yelled out my line and ran from the line to which the good Sgt. shot my cowardly self. Done deal deal I got to rest in the sun upon the battlefield.

Not done deal....

After the battle I had officers screaming in my face, other enlisted men from other units declaring me a disgrace to my uniform and to my State as well as the South and how I should be shot for real! A lot of folks demanding I be run off from the hobby permanently! It eventually quieted down when my old friend and mentor and another officer or two stood up for me pointing out real Confederate soldiers ran from the line and how I shouldn't have been ordered into line when I was still adjusting to being blind. I still got death threats weeks later at the Jefferson reenactment.

I loved doing that deserter skit, it died a horrible death that day at Pleasant Hill because of some people's feelings. People I've since learned to not give a d*** of their views and version of the war. Good times...
 
Here are some I took a year or two ago..........

These are great pictures. Beautiful and well done. Pictures like yours make folks want to visit these historic sites. One minor suggestion. Except for one, I know where most were taken, but a short label or description on each would help those unfamiliar with the area. Your late afternoon pictures of the Allen Home look a lot better than my amateur photography taken on a visit last year.
 
it played no part in the Civil War

The old fort itself played no part in the war, but there was a short skirmish nearby when Col. Xavier Debray's Cavalry Regiment accidentally ran into a division of Federal cavalry. Debray had crossed the Sabine River and passed through Many, Louisiana on April 2 on his way to join Taylor's cavalry at Pleasant Hill. The road led through a dense, rolling pine forest. When first encountered, Debray deployed his regiment, skirmishers being thrown forward and on both flanks, to ascertain the strength of the enemy. Once he realized he was up against a far superior force, Debray was able to extract his regiment in an orderly manner and redirect on another road to Pleasant Hill. According to his report, he had 5 men and several horses wounded.

Prior to the war with Mexico, Lt. Henry Sibley of the 2nd US Dragoons was stationed at Fort Jesup.
 
My first "major" reenactment was at Mansfield in 1980, I believe. I had moved to Missouri in 1979, met a few reenactors, and joined a Federal company in the Jefferson City-Columbia area. Our Confederate friends in the Missouri Civil War Reenactors' Association invited us to join them for the Mansfield event, where they hoped to impress the Confederate Guard, the cock-of-the-walk Rebel unit in our region. We filled a bus in Kansas City and rendezvoused Friday night with the other Confederate reenactors in Mansfield, where the Rebel "army" spent the night sleeping in a dirt parking lot. Saturday morning, after no breakfast that I remember, we formed-up in in an impressive column of several hundred and began the three mile march to the park. As we passed through the south end of town we made a long halt--unfortunately in the heart of the Black community. It had not dawned on me how our presence would affect these people, who, after all, lived in a town where Jim Crow was not that far in the past. Their looks told us that we were not welcome, but no one said a word to us, probably because the sheriff and several deputies were with us. I was told later that the halt at that particular location was instigated by the sheriff to remind the locals about whose heritage really mattered in "his" town.
 
Their looks told us that we were not welcome, but no one said a word to us, probably because the sheriff and several deputies were with us. I was told later that the halt at that particular location was instigated by the sheriff to remind the locals about whose heritage really mattered in "his" town.

Surely not? I can't picture such a thing in Mansfield. At least not in my travels through there admittingly not in the 80's.

When I leave an event on Sunday, I usually pack everything up, including the tent if I set it up, and leave right after the battle, more than a few times still in uniform. I've stopped in Mansfield in a full Confederate uniform at a gas station in the south part of Mansfield and had no issue. I was polite and nice and everyone else as well. Blacks that is. I'd never think they're was hint of the divide now, most don't even seem to know what the heck I'm wearing.
 
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