 Bailey's engineering skills during Major General Nathaniel P. Banks' ill-fated 1864 Red River Campaign are considered the reason the campaign did not result in the loss of the entire 30,000-man Army of the Gulf.Having landed his forces at Simmesport, Louisiana in March with the intention of moving north along the Red River some 200 miles to capture Shreveport, the headquarters of Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith, Banks was repulsed at the Battle of Mansfield on April 8, 1864, by Confederate General Richard Taylor and his force of just 12,000 men.Retreating down the Red River, Banks found the low river level at Alexandria prohibited the passage of Commander David Dixon Porter's fleet of ten Federal gunboats, part of the Union Army's Mississippi Squadron.