Confederate Memorial Service Slated in Louisiana

Memorial service planned at Keatchie cemetery

By John Andrew Prime
jprime@gannett.com
April 13, 2009

A memorial service will be held Saturday at 2 p.m. at the Confederate Cemetery in Keatchie in DeSoto Parish, part of events scheduled in observance of the annual Confederate History Month.

The cemetery is the final resting place of more than 100 Confederate soldiers, many of whom died in local makeshift hospitals following the April 8, 1864 Battle of Mansfield, fought not too many miles away. That battle was the last major Confederate victory of the Civil War and, with the Battle of Pleasant Hill the following day, led to the defeat and retreat of federal forces that had tried to capture Shreveport to knock Texas out of the war in a campaign planned personally by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.

The memorial is being staged by the Shreveport-based Lt. Gen. Richard Taylor Camp of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Taylor was the Confederate field commander at both battles.

The Keatchie Confederate Cemetery is on state Highway 172, about a mile west of the crossroads at Keatchie in DeSoto Parish

http://www.shreveporttimes.com/article/20090413/NEWS01/90413013