Yankee Blitzkrieg: Wilson's Raid Through Alabama And Georgia

Plot

This is the story of Wilson's raid, which played a major role in the final defeat of the Confederacy. In March 1865, under the command of Maj. Gen. James H. Wilson, 13,480 Union cavalrymen began their raid on Alabama and Georgia. Two months after it began, it was over. Selma, Montgomery, Columbus, and Macon had fallen. Wilson's men went on to capture the Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, near Abbeville, Georgia and the vice president Alexander H. Stephans at his plantation near Crawfordvill, Georgia. The destruction of seven iron works, seven foundries, seven machine shops, two rolling mills, five collieries, thirteen factories, four niter works, three arsenals, one navy yard, one popwder magazine, five steambosts, thirty-five locomotives, 565 railway cars, miles of track, and huge amounts of quartermsater, commissary and ordnances stores attests to the efficiency of the campaign.