Selma

Dallas County, Alabama, became the site of the Battle of Selma on April 2, 1865, near the end of the Civil War. This clash formed one part of Wilson's Raid, the Union push through Alabama and Georgia.

Leading roughly 13,500 Union cavalrymen organized into three divisions, Brevet Major General James H. Wilson set out from Gravelly Springs, Alabama, on March 22, 1865, marching southward. Confederate Lieutenant-General Nathan B. Forrest attempted to stop him, but Wilson managed his advance with skill, ultimately overcoming Forrest's forces in a running engagement at Ebenezer Church on April 1. As he pressed on toward Selma, Wilson divided his troops into three separate columns. Selma's defenses, though substantial, could not hold, since Union forces punched through at multiple points along the line. This breakthrough compelled the Confederate garrison to give up the city, though a number of soldiers and commanders, Forrest and Lieutenant-General Richard Taylor among them, managed to slip away.

Background

On March 30, 1865, General Wilson sent Brigadier-General John T. Croxton and his brigade toward Tuscaloosa, Alabama, with orders to wipe out any Confederate property found there. Union forces also seized a Confederate courier carrying dispatches from Forrest that revealed how strong and how widely scattered his troops were. Armed with that intelligence, Wilson dispatched another brigade to demolish the bridge spanning the Cahaba River at Centreville. This maneuver severed Forrest's chance of gaining reinforcements and touched off a running fight that would continue all the way past the fall of Selma. In the wake of the Middle Tennessee Campaign, Forrest had dispersed his men across Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee so they could refit, and he spent the final days of March trying to pull his scattered command back together before Wilson's cavalry could push further south.

Skirmishes broke out on the morning of April 1, and by that afternoon Wilson's advance guard collided with Forrest's assembled line at Ebenezer Church, at the point where the Randolph Road met the main road into Selma. Forrest had wanted his whole force present for this encounter, but flooding had slowed his movements, and earlier clashes with Union troops had already thinned his ranks. As a result he could gather fewer than 2,000 men, and many of these were not seasoned soldiers at all but militia of little training, made up of old men and boys.

Despite being badly outnumbered, the Confederates held on for more than an hour while Wilson fed additional Union cavalry and artillery into the fight. During the action, Forrest suffered a wound from a Union captain's saber but shot the man dead with his revolver. The engagement turned when a Union cavalry charge shattered the militia units, exposing Forrest's right flank. Under heavy pressure, he had no choice but to withdraw. In the end, the clash did little to slow Wilson's advance or weaken his force in any lasting way.

Prelude

Forrest reached Selma the following morning, blood covering both himself and his horse, riding into a town of roughly 10,000 people. He urged Lieutenant-General Richard Taylor, who commanded the department, to abandon the city, and Taylor complied once he had turned over the defense to Forrest. A ring of earthworks nearly three miles long curved around Selma, its ends resting on the Alabama River at the northern and southern edges of town. Constructed two years before and somewhat run down since, the fortifications remained sturdy nonetheless. Their walls stood between 8 and 12 feet tall and measured 15 feet thick at the base, fronted by a ditch four feet across and five feet deep. In front of that stood a row of sharpened posts, each five feet tall, driven upright into the earth like a picket fence. Earthen forts had been raised at key points, positioned so their artillery could sweep the ground any attacking force would need to cross.

Holding Selma for the Confederates were the brigades of Armstrong, Crossland, and Roddey, along with Myrick's Artillery Battalion, Forrest's personal escort, and militia from Alabama. Forrest stretched his roughly 2,000 men so thinly along the line that gaps of five to ten feet opened between them. The Union forces facing them numbered five to ten times as many, packed tightly together, and as the fighting neared it seemed to the Confederates that enemy troops covered the entire field ahead.

By two in the afternoon, Wilson's command had reached the works surrounding Selma. He stationed Long's division along the Summerfield Road, backed by the Chicago Board of Trade Battery, while Upton's division took position on the Range Line Road supported by Battery I of the 4th U.S. Artillery. In all, Wilson commanded 9,000 troops, well equipped and thoroughly trained, ready to launch the assault. His strategy called for Upton to dispatch 300 men after nightfall to slip through the swamp guarding the Confederate right, breach the fortifications, and sweep along the works toward the center in a flanking maneuver. A single artillery shot from Upton's guns would then signal the rest of the Federal corps to attack as one. At five o'clock, though, scattered Confederate units converging on Selma struck the ammunition train positioned behind Wilson's main force. Both Long and Upton had kept sizable numbers of men in reserve specifically to guard against this kind of threat, but Long, acting independently, chose instead to launch an immediate assault on Selma's defenses in order to eliminate the danger threatening his rear.

Battle

Long's troops advanced dismounted, arranged in three principal lines and firing a single volley of shots from their seven-round Spencer repeating rifles. Artillery backed their push forward. From behind their defenses, the Confederates answered with a storm of rifle fire and cannon shot. Casualties mounted quickly among the attackers, and General Long fell wounded, yet the assault pressed on regardless. When the Union soldiers finally reached the fortifications, brutal close combat erupted, with combatants from both sides swinging their muskets like clubs and falling under the blows. Despite this, wave after wave of Union men continued to pour into the works. Within half an hour, Long's command had wrested control of the fortifications guarding Summerfield Road away from a Confederate garrison that stood little chance against such numbers.

Watching this triumph unfold, Upton sent his own division forward to join the fight. Before long, flags marking Union possession stretched across the line from Range Line Road all the way to Summerfield Road. With the outer defenses broken, Wilson personally took command of the 4th U.S. Cavalry Regiment, leading them on horseback down Range Line Road toward the still unfinished inner defensive line. Confederate soldiers who had fallen back to this second position regrouped and unleashed a punishing barrage upon the advancing riders. The charge collapsed under this fire, and Wilson was thrown to the ground when the wound to his beloved horse ended its gallop. He climbed back onto the injured animal without delay and directed several regiments to continue the fight on foot. Near the Selma railroad depot, a patchwork of Confederate units gathered along the railroad embankment beside Plantersville Road, now known as Broad Street, hoping to hold their ground. The struggle there proved fierce, but Union forces, benefiting from their numerical edge, managed to outflank the Confederate line by seven in the evening. Facing this pressure, the defenders gave up both the depot and the remaining inner works.

Aftermath

Federal forces swept up hundreds of Confederate captives, though an equal number slipped away under cover of night along the Burnsville Road. Among those who fled were Generals Forrest, Armstrong, and Roddey. Meanwhile, on the western front, a number of Confederates kept battling their Union pursuers until they reached the eastern bank of Valley Creek. From there, they made their getaway under darkness by swimming across the Alabama River close to where Valley Creek empties into it, a location now marked by the annual Battle of Selma Reenactment. As he fled the city, Forrest struck down yet another Union soldier, his thirtieth kill in hand-to-hand combat over the course of the war. Casualties for Wilson totaled 359 men, whereas Forrest's losses exceeded 2,700, the bulk of them taken prisoner, along with 32 pieces of artillery.

That evening, elated Federal soldiers ransacked Selma. For the following week, Wilson's command worked to demolish the arsenal and the naval foundry there. Once finished, they departed Selma for Montgomery, later engaging the enemy at Columbus on Easter Sunday, and eventually pushed on toward Macon, Georgia, at which point word reached them that the conflict had ended. On May 10th, they seized Jefferson Davis at Irwinsville, Georgia.