There was another underlying reason for the expedition, which may have changed Banks’s mind. The Red River area was rumored to contain large stores of cotton critically needed by the North. Some historians feel that Banks’s desire to secure this cotton influenced his decision to promote the campaign, and that the capture of cotton became all important to him. After the campaign, the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War charged that the expedition failed because Banks and Porter were overly concerned about capturing cotton. How much their attention strayed is unknown, but it is true that competition between the army and navy for cotton caused great tension during the campaign. At Alexandria soldiers were angered “to see the navy seizing the cotton for prize on land, while they did not get any” (J.C.C.W. n.d.:18,74). Whatever the real motivation for the campaign, the official military objective was Shreveport. Once Shreveport was in Union control, Texas would lay open to invasion. To capture Shreveport, Banks’s army, supported by Porter’s flotilla, would drive up the Red River while another force under Major General Frederic Steele would move south from Arkansas. Opposing the Federal attack in Louisiana was Confederate Major General Richard Taylor, who had only around 6,000 troops scattered throughout Louisiana in Monroe, Alexandria, Marksville, and on Bayou Teche. Badly outnumbered, Taylor worked to gather his forces and then waited for reinforcements from Texas so he could eventually make a stand. On March 12, 1864, Porter began his move up the Red River. Within three days, he captured Fort De Russy, near Marksville, with the help of a detachment of infantry. Meanwhile, Banks’s main army began its march north from Franklin, Louisiana, fighting rain and muck. [Illustration: Richard Taylor. Courtesy of the Louisiana State Library.] The forward units of the army reached Alexandria on March 24. Arriving as a tired yet conquering army, they had already traveled 165 muddy road miles. Still, “the colors were unfurled, the band struck up, and the men marched through the streets” with Banks watching the troops pass in review from a house veranda (Beecher 1866:298-299). Once assembled, the Federal forces numbered nearly 30,000 troops, 13 gunboats, and 60 assorted transport vessels. Here Banks and Porter had their second warning that the Red River was not going to cooperate. It quickly became obvious that the expedition would be delayed by the low water at the rapids. Although eventually the water level rose, the expedition was forced to leave many vessels behind. North of Alexandria, Porter’s fleet consisted of only 12 gunboats and 30 transports. To carry all the supplies needed by the army, wagons had to be used to make up for the supply boats left in Alexandria. Banks was also forced to leave behind troops to protect the fleet and the town.