The operations of the Confederate war covered a vast area, and included a multitude of actions severe in themselves, and often rising to the dignity of great battles so far, at least, as the extent of the slaughter was concerned. But many of these actions had no particular bearing or effect upon the general conduct and outcome of the war. To tell the story of them all would not only be tedious, but it would make this history a confused mass of only slightly related details rather than a consecutive narrative of what happened. It is necessary, therefore, to summarize many things which in themselves were dramatic in their character and of the highest importance to the men engaged in them. The detachment of Longstreet to operate against Burnside at Knoxville has already been mentioned in the previous chapter. There was some brilliant fighting there, in which the Federals succeeded in beating off Longstreet's tremendous assault, but only after suffering one conspicuous defeat at the hands of the great Confederate lieutenant. In like manner the expedition of Banks in command of 40,000 Federals into the Red River country, west of the Mississippi, had no important bearing upon the war except in so far as it resulted in depriving Grant for a time of the services of 40,000 veterans whose soldierly vigor he could have used to much better purpose. This Red River expedition was inspired by cotton speculators for their own purposes of greed. It was intended to enable them to get possession of the great stores of cotton that lay in Louisiana and Texas. The expedition consisted of the army under Banks--a political general of far better military capacity than most political generals had--and a fleet of gunboats under that noted fighter, Commodore David D. Porter. Banks's army was opposed by a much smaller force of Confederates under General Richard Taylor, who nevertheless defeated it in an irregular action and drove it into a confused retreat which must have ended in surrender but for the protection of Porter's gunboats. Banks retreated painfully along the margin of the tortuous stream, nowhere daring to quit the gunboats' support even in order to save weary miles of marching around the bends in the river.