Sabine Cross Roads, Near Mansfield, La. [caption title]

[Most likely Baton Rouge or New Orleans, La, 1865. Very good.. Printed broadside, 14.25 x 6.25 inches, with text printed in two columns inside a decorative border. Old folds, even toning, minor foxing and creasing, small marginal chip to left margin. A Civil War commemorative poem in forty quatrains memorializing the Battles of Sabine Cross Roads (April 8, 1864) and Pleasant Hill (April 9, 1864), two important battles of the Red River Campaign in which Union forces failed to take Shreveport. After being routed on the first day of the battle by Richard Taylor's Confederate forces, Nathaniel Banks retreated and held his ground the following day, with the 77th Illinois playing a crucial role. The first verse of the present poem begins: "'Twas on the eighth of April, Eighteen sixty-four, A day to be remembered, By the Thirteenth Army Corps." The poem is signed in type at the end by its author, "Billy R.M., Fifer Co. C, 77th Illinois Vols."

OCLC records two copies of the present broadside, at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and the Historic New Orleans Collection. A second broadside poem by Moore titled, "Father Abraham, we are needing our pay" is also held by HNOC, with New Orleans suggested as the imprint. It seems likely that both of Moore's poems were published in Union-occupied Louisiana once the Union took control of the state, with the 77th Illinois stationed at both Baton Rouge and New Orleans in the months following the battles. A wonderful and rare Trans-Mississippi Civil War imprint.