The Battle of Stirling's Plantation and Bayou Bourbeau: The Fall 1863 Campaign in Louisiana & Texas

The battles of Stirling's Plantation and Bayou Bourbeau in South Louisiana, and the Rio Grande Expedition in Texas, in the Fall of 1863, were a major Federal attempt to loot thousands of bales of cotton for Northern speculators, and to subjugate western Louisiana and Texas. The campaign left behind a swath of death and destruction that would lead to the even more destructive Red River Campaign of 1864.