The Legend of the Nankeen Shirt

As the Union army marched northward through Louisiana in 1864,
the Confederate forces retreated before their wake.

Upon evacuating Natchitoches, the Confederate commander,
General Richard Taylor, was left with a problem of keeping
track of the Union movement.
He wanted to carefully choose his place to stand and fight,
but there were two routes to Shreveport from Natchitoches
and he needed to know which route the enemy would take.

An elderly Doctor brought the General to his home
and explained that he had a young boy staying with him
while the boy's father was away at war.
He suggested that he could send the boy with the message,
but did not want to involve the lad in espionage.
In the boy's room, the Doctor laid out two nankeen shirts.
Nankeen cotton was a brown cotton grown in the area which,
after many washings, turned a bright copper color.

Of the two shirts owned by the boy,
one had a braid down the front and the other was plain.
The Doctor explained that he would send the boy on an errand
to Sabine Parish and if the youth wore the shirt with the braid,
the Union army would be traveling on the east side of the Red River.
On the other hand, if he wore the plain shirt, the Yankees
would be marching up the road to Mansfield on the west side of the river.

A few days later the boy rode his mule to a family plantation in Sabine Parish
and was promptly taken to General Taylor's headquarters.

The General sat with the young man through a discussion,
never mentioning the whereabouts of the Union troops.
After the boy was returned to his mule, General Taylor
turned to the task of forming troops below Mansfield.

The young lad never knew the part he played in the victory to come.