[3][4][5] After the success of the Confederates at the Battle of Mansfield, April 8, 1864, Union forces retreated during the night[6] and next morning took up a position on Pleasant Hill.

The road from Mansfield to Pleasant Hill was "littered by burning wagons, abandoned knapsacks, arms, and cooking utensils.

[13][14] The baggage train made slow progress and was still only a few miles from Pleasant Hill when the major fighting began later that day.

Confederate Trans-Mississippi Department commander Lt. Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith, who was at Shreveport, received a dispatch from Taylor that reached him at 4 a.m., April 9.

Part of the Second Brigade in Emory's XIX Corps, the 47th Pennsylvania was the only regiment from the Keystone State to fight in the Union's 1864 Red River Campaign.

[17] Led by Col. Tilghman H. Good, the 47th Pennsylvania sustained a significant number of casualties, including several men who were captured by Confederate troops.

Held initially at Pleasant Hill, POWs from the 47th Pennsylvania and other Union regiments were marched and moved by rail to the largest CSA prison west of the Mississippi, Camp Ford, which was situated near Tyler, Texas.

Dr. Harris H. Beecher, Assistant-Surgeon, 114th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment, present at the battle, described the village of Pleasant Hill as a town of about twelve or fifteen houses, situated on a clearing in the woods, of a mile or so in extent, and elevated a trifle above the general level of the surrounding country.

[22]Historian John Winters describes Pleasant Hill as a "piney-woods summer resort consisting of a dozen or more houses clustered along a cleared knoll, offered Banks many advantages as a battlefield, but because of the great distance from the main supply base at Alexandria and the serious lack of sufficient drinking water for an entire army, Banks could not hold this position for any length of time.

However, the Union side succeeded in halting the advance and regained the left and center ground, before driving the Confederates from the field.

Winters describes the scene, accordingly: "Men toppled from their saddles, wounded horses screamed in anguish, and for a moment pandemonium reigned.

Bee's men took temporary shelter ... in a series of small ravines studded with young pines until they recovered from the shock of the unexpected attack.

Gen. Hamilton P. Bee, writing from his headquarters at Pleasant Hill on April 10, 1864, he was in possession of the battlefield of Pleasant Hill at daylight on the morning of April 10 and he wrote that, The day has been passed in burying the dead of both armies and caring for the Federal wounded, our own wounded having been cared for the night before.

After the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Banks and his Union forces retreated to Grand Ecore[4][30] and abandoned plans to capture Shreveport, by then the Louisiana state capital.

[4] The battle's outcome was costly for both sides, however; according to Brooksher, the 1864 Red River campaign helped to prolong the war by tying down Union resources from other fronts.