Capture of the Alabama

After the sealing of Mobile harbor, arrangements were made for the capture of that city and gaining possession of Alabama. General Canby in command of the Department of the Gulf, moved twenty-five thousand troops against Mobile, in March, 1865. At the same time General Wilson, of Thomas's army, with thirteen thousand horsemen and about two thousand foot-soldiers, swept down from the Tennessee to co-operate with Canby. In the space of thirty days, Wilson raided six hundred and fifty miles through Alabama and Georgia, meeting with scarcely any opposition but from Forrest's cavalry, whom he kept from assisting the besieged Confederates at Mobile. Wilson captured cities and towns, and destroyed an immense amount of public property. Meanwhile Canby was reducing Mobile to submission; and on the 10th and 11th of April, General Maury, in command there, fled up the Alabama River with nine thousand troops, leaving five thousand men as prisoners, with one hundred and fifty cannon, in the hands of the victors. The war was now virtually at an end in the Gulf region.

During the winter of 1864-65, the Armies of the Potomac and of the James lay in comparative quiet in front of Petersburg and Richmond, holding the Confederate government and army so tightly in their grasp, that the latter could not form a junction with Johnston's forces, nor interfere with Sherman's and Thomas's operations in the South and West. Early in December, Meade had sent Warren to destroy Lee's means of transportation of supplies over the Weldon Railway, near the North Carolina line; and early in February a heavy flanking column, horse and foot, stretched across that road beyond the Confederate right, to Dinwiddie Court-House, seeking an opportunity to turn the right flank of Lee's army. Severe struggles ensued, with heavy losses, and resulted in the permanent extension of the National line to Hatcher's Run, and the railway from City Point to that stream.

Grant now prepared to make a general and vigorous movement against Richmond; and late in February, he ordered General Sheridan to destroy all communications with that city north of the James River and to seize Lynchburg, a great depot of Confederate supplies. That officer was then in the Shenandoah Valley. With Generals Merritt and Custer, he left Winchester on the 27th, with ten thousand men, horse and foot; went up the Valley to Staunton, scattering Early's forces at Waynesboro'; and crossed the Blue Ridge and destroyed the railway as far as Charlottesville. Lynchburg was evidently too strong for him; so he divided his troops and sent one party to break up the railway toward that city, and the other to disable the James River Canal, by which large supplies of provisions entered the Confederate capital. Then Sheridan passed around the left of Lee's forces and joined the Army of the Potomac on the 27th of March. This destructive raid alarmed Lee, who saw that the salvation of his army and of the Confederacy now depended upon his forming a junction with Johnston's forces in North Carolina. For that purpose he concentrated his army near Grant's centre, in front of Petersburg, and made a furious assault (March 25, 1865) upon Fort Steadman, a strong point in the National lines, hoping to break through there; but he was repulsed with heavy loss, and his chances for reaching North Carolina were more remote than ever.

During the early part of the preceding winter, General Stoneman and his cavalry had made a campaign in southwestern Virginia; and early in February that commander was ordered to make a raid into South Carolina in aid of Sherman's movements. But that general was so successful that Stoneman's help was not needed, and he was directed to march eastward and destroy the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad as far toward Lynchburg as possible. When this was done, he turned southward and struck the North Carolina Railway between Danville and Greensboro'. Some of his troops penetrated to Salisbury, where the Confederates had many Union prisoners. There they destroyed a vast amount of public property; but the Union prisoners had been removed, and were not released. Then a part of Stoneman's force destroyed (April 19) by fire the magnificent railway bridge, eleven hundred feet long, of the South Carolina Railway, that spanned the Catawba River; while the leader and the main body went into East Tennessee. During this raid, the National cavalry captured six thousand prisoners, thirty-one pieces of artillery, and a large number of small arms.