After receiving a number of accolades for the important role they played throughout the Vicksburg Campaign, the Mercantile Battery then moved on to assist General Nathaniel Banks with his attempts to control Louisiana. In preparation for Banks’s Red River Campaign, Patrick H. White was named to be the Chief of Artillery for General Thomas E. G. Ransom’s division in the XIII Corps. White selected Lt. Pinckney S. Cone to take over his place as the leader of the Chicago Mercantile Battery.

On April 8, 1864, Banks’ armies were surprised by a Confederate frontal assault led by General Richard Taylor, son of former US President Zachary Taylor, at Sabine Cross Roads just south of Mansfield, Louisiana. In a debacle that closely resembled the Union misadventure of First Bull Run in the summer of 1861, Banks' army was decimated. During the frantic retreat, Senior 1^st Lieutenant George Throop and Senior 2^nd Lieutenant Joseph W. Barr were killed and twenty men from the Chicago Mercantile Battery were captured including White and Cone. All of the Battery’s guns, equipage, etc. were lost along with those of several other artillery squads engaged at the Battle of Mansfield.

In the aftermath, the Union prisoners were led into the town of Mansfield where they spent the night.  Some of the Yankee prisoners, like Captain White, were fortunate to sleep in the Court House which was later rebuilt and exists today.  The seriously wounded soldiers  were separated and placed in care of several Union doctors who refused to leave the battlefield with Banks' retreating army.  The Rebel captors then marched the rest of the Union men across western Louisiana into eastern Texas to Camp Ford in Tyler.

Sources: "Report of the Illinois Adjutant General, Volume VIII," revised by Brig. Gen. J. N. Reece, 1901, and "Patriotism of Illinois," by T. M. Eddy, D. D.

• Before Vicksburg

• Vicksburg Campaign

• Red River Campaign

• Red River to New Orleans

• Camp Ford, Tyler, TX

• The Return to Chicago