Wilson's Raid
After his victory at the Battle of Nashville, U.S. Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas and his Army of the Cumberland found themselves with virtually no organized military opposition in the heart of the Confederacy.
Gen. James H. Wilson (who commanded the Cavalry Corps of the Military Division of the Mississippi, but was attached to Thomas's army) to lead a raid to destroy the arsenal at Selma, Alabama, in conjunction with Maj. Gen. Edward Canby's operations against Mobile.
The town contained an arsenal, a naval foundry, gun factories, a powder mill, military warehouses, and railroad repair shops.
His principal opponent was Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, whose Cavalry Corps of the Department of Alabama, Mississippi, and East Louisiana consisted of about 2,500 troopers organized into two small divisions, led by Brig.
Wilson was delayed in crossing the rain-swollen Tennessee River, but he got underway on March 22, 1865, departing from Gravelly Springs in Lauderdale County, Alabama.
He sent his forces in three separate columns to mask his intentions and confuse the enemy; Forrest learned very late in the raid that Selma was the primary target.
On March 28, at Elyton, in present-day Birmingham, another skirmish occurred, and the U.S. Army soldiers destroyed the Oxmoor and Irondale iron furnaces.
Gen. John T. Croxton and sent them south and west to burn the Roupes Valley Ironworks at Tannehill and Bibb Naval Furnace at Brierfield on March 31.
Croxton continued his raid across Alabama, destroying several iron works and fighting Confederate General Benjamin J. Hill's brigade at Munford.
Wilson dispatched McCook to link up with Croxton's brigade at Trion (now Vance) and then led the remainder of his force rapidly toward Selma.
The dismounted U.S. soldiers broke through by afternoon, after brief periods of hand-to-hand combat; the inexperienced militiamen abandoning their positions and fleeing was the primary reason for the entire line breaking.
Wilson separated his force to avoid any delay in the raid, sending a 3,700-man detachment under Colonel Oscar Hugh La Grange to capture both the bridge and the town.
The Battle of West Point, Georgia, was fought on Easter Sunday, April 16, when Colonel Oscar Hugh La Grange's brigade attacked an earthwork defensive position named Fort Tyler that was defended by a couple hundred young men and teenaged Confederates under CS Brig.
Still, the damage came from many sources, including street combat that continued into the night, 35,000 bales of cotton, and the Central Commercial Warehouse fired by Confederates as the city fell.
[9] Upon conclusion of the raid, and following the surrender of all of the Confederate forces east of the Chattahoochee River by Johnston to Sherman, the hostilities in the theater ended.
