Earthen Walls, Iron Men: Fort DeRussy, Louisiana, and the Defense of Red River

Earthen Walls, Iron Men: Fort DeRussy, Louisiana, and the Defense of Red River. By Steven M. Mayeux. Foreword by Edwin C. Bearss. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2007. Pp. xvi, 370. $45.00, ISBN 978-157233-576-9.)

Laid out and built by Confederates to be the Gibraltar defending Louisiana's Red River, Fort DeRussy proved to be a temporary impediment to Federal forces in March 1864. The earthwork fort did not delay for long the Union's campaign up the Red River, with its goal of capturing Shreveport, Louisiana, and then possibly crossing into Texas. In painstaking detail Steven M. Mayeux's careful narrative delineates almost everything connected with this Confederate bastion, including combat in the fort...