The closing scenes.
Major-General Maury commanded the Confederate forces garrisoning
Mobile and adjacent works, with
Commodore Farrand, Confederate Navy, in charge of several armed vessels.
Small bodies of troops were stationed at different points through the department, and
Major-General Forrest, with his division of cavalry, was in
northeast Mississippi.
Directing this latter officer to move his command across the
Tennessee river, and use every effort to interrupt
Sherman's communications south of
Nashville, I proceeded to
Mobile to inspect the fortifications; thence to
Montgomery, to meet
President Davis.
The interview extended over many hours, and the military situation was freely discussed.
Our next meeting
[
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was at
Fortress Monroe, where, during his confinement, I obtained permission to visit him. The closing scenes of the great drama succeeded each other with startling rapidity.
Sherman marched, unopposed, to the sea.
Hood was driven from
Nashville across the
Tennessee, and asked to be relieved.
Assigned to this duty I met him near
Tupelo,
North Mississippi, and witnessed the melancholy spectacle presented by a retreating army.
Guns, small arms and accoutrements lost, men without shoes or blankets, and this in a winter of unusual severity for that latitude.
Making every effort to re-equip this force, I suggested to
General Lee, then commanding all the armies of the
Confederacy, that it should be moved to the Carolinas, to interpose between
Sherman's advance and his (
Lee's) lines of supply, and, in the last necessity, of retreat.
The suggestion was adopted, and this force so moved.
General Wilson, with a well appointed and ably led command of Federal cavalry, moved rapidly through
North Alabama, seized
Selma, and turning east to
Montgomery, continued into
Georgia.
General Canby, commanding the
Union armies in the
Southwest, advanced up the
Eastern shore of
Mobile bay, and invested Spanish fort and
Blakely, important Confederate works in that quarter.
After repulsing an assault,
General Maury, in accordance with instructions, withdrew his garrisons in the night to
Mobile, and then evacuated the city, falling back to
Meridian, on the line of the Mobile and Ohio railway.
General Forrest was drawn in to the same point, and the little army, less than eight thousand of all arms, held in readiness to discharge such duties as the waning fortunes of the “cause” and the honor of its arms might demand.
