He is credited for saving nearly 30,000 troops during the Red River Campaign using his engineering skills and is only one of fifteen officers to receive a Thanks of congress.

He built a home in town with acreage that stretched northward up River Road which included the site of present-day Meadowbrook Resort.

[1] Bailey entered the Union Army at the beginning of the war as captain of Company D of the 4th Wisconsin Infantry Regiment.

He served as part of Major General Benjamin F. Butler's Army of the Gulf, which occupied New Orleans after Admiral David Farragut captured the city in April 1862.

Promoted to major in May 1863, Bailey contributed to the Union Army's engineering activities in support of the Siege of Port Hudson.

Having landed his forces at Simmesport, Louisiana, in March with the intention of moving north along the Red River some 200 miles to capture Shreveport, the headquarters of Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith, Banks was repulsed at the Battle of Mansfield on April 8, 1864, by Confederate General Richard Taylor and his force of just 12,000 men.

Hounded by Taylor's forces in the rear, Banks faced the humiliating necessity of abandoning Porter's fleet.

Without the fleet's supporting firepower, his entire Army would risk capture before it could return to safety in New Orleans.

He was shot and killed on March 21, 1867[4] near Nevada, Missouri, by two brothers he had arrested (but failed to disarm) for stealing a hog.

[1][6] A monument to his memory stands in Malta, Ohio, and he is the subject of a biography, Hero of the Red River - The Life and Times of Joseph Bailey.