October 2025 Meeting Summary

At our dinner meeting on October 15th, the speaker was Dr. Michael J. Forsyth, associate professor and director of the Department of Command and Leadership at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth KS.  He gave an excellent presentation about leadership during the Red River Campaign, which took place in 1864 in the Trans-Mississippi Theatre of the Civil War.  Attendance at the dinner meeting was 55. 

Dr. Forsyth covered the Red River Campaign from the perspective of the command teams on both sides.  Neither command team got along in terms of their interactions and this tended to affect the outcome of the campaign in negative ways.  For the Confederates the infighting between General E. Kirby Smith and Major General Richard Taylor was so severe that it watered down their victory in the campaign, so that it was in fact a hollow one at best.  However, on the Federal side, while they lost the campaign tactically, the two commanders, Major General Nathaniel P. Banks and Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter, overcame their differences for the greater good of saving the Union fleet on the Red River and ultimately preserving the force for use another day, which had some positive consequences for the Union war effort.