1865. |
February. |
March. |
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The movable forces under Canby's command, had been organized into brigades, called the “Reserve Corps of the Military Division of the West Mississippi,” and numbered about ten thousand effective men. Early in January,
these were concentrated at Kenner, ten miles above New Orleans, and General F. Steele1 was assigned to take command of them.
A part of this force was soon afterward sent to Fort Barrancas, in Pensacola Bay, and the remainder followed directly.
These, with the addition of seven regiments, and several light batteries, were organized as the Thirteenth Army Corps, comprising three divisions, and General Gordon Granger was assigned to its command.
Meanwhile, the Sixteenth Army Corps (General A. J. Smith), which had assisted in driving Hood out of Tennessee, was ordered to join Canby.
It was then cantoned at Eastport.
Early in February, it went in transports, accompanied by Knipe's division of cavalry, five thousand strong, by the waters of the Tennessee, Ohio, and Mississippi rivers, to New Orleans, where it arrived on the 21st,
after a travel of over thirteen hundred miles in the space of eleven days. There the corps remained awhile, waiting for the perfection of the arrangements for the expedition under Wilson,2 which was to sweep down from the north, through Alabama, simultaneously with Canby's attack on Mobile.
The corps finally moved again, and arrived at Fort Gaines, on Dauphin Island, on the 7th of March, where a siege train was organized, *consisting of seven batteries of the First Indiana Artillery, two of the Sixth Michigan, and one of Mack's Eighteenth New York.
The cavalry marched overland from New Orleans.
At the middle of March, every thing was in readiness for an attack on Mobile, with from twenty-five thousand to thirty thousand troops, composed of the Thirteenth and Sixteenth Corps, Knipe's cavalry division, and a brigade of cavalry, a division of infantry, and another of negro troops, under General Steele, at Barrancas.
The West Gulf Squadron, commanded by Rear-Admiral Thatcher, was there, to co-operate.
Mobile was so strongly fortified, that a direct attack upon it on the western side of the bay, was deemed too hazardous, and involved a protracted siege; it was therefore determined to flank the post by a movement of the main army up the eastern shore, and in concert with the navy, seize the fortifications on the islands and main land at the head of the bay, and then approach Mobile by way of Tensas River, or one of the channels above the city.
For this purpose, a point on Fish River, that empties into Bon Secour Bay, north of Mobile Point, was chosen as the place of rendezvous for the troops, and a base of operations, at a distance of not more than twenty miles from Spanish Fort, the heaviest of the fortifications to be attacked.3 That movement was begun on the 17th,
when the Thirteenth Corps marched from Fort Morgan, on Mobile Point, and made its way slowly over a swampy region in heavy rains, consuming
1 See page 252.
2 The Twenty-ninth and Thirty-third Iowa, Fiftieth Indiana, Twenty-seventh, Twenty-eighth and Thirty-fifth Wisconsin, and Seventy-seventh Ohio.
3 The old Spanish Fort, erected when the Spaniards had possession of Mobile, was a rectangular bastioned work on a bluff commanding Blakely River and its vicinity. The works known as Spanish Fort, erected by the Confederates, extended along the bluff nearly two miles, and included two other works, known, respectively, as Red Fort and Fort Alexis, or Dermett. These works were calculated for 36 guns, and a garrison of 2,500 men.
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