Action, Columbus

On April 16, 1865, forces clashed at Columbus, Georgia and in Russell County, Alabama, in an engagement sometimes called the Battle of Girard. This action unfolded as part of Wilson's Raid, the Union thrust through Alabama and Georgia that came during the war's last complete month.

Brevet Major General James H. Wilson had received orders to raze Columbus, recognized as a key Confederate manufacturing hub. Darkness brought chaos to the field when soldiers from both armies ended up packed together on the same bridge, and the defending garrison, unable to sort friend from foe, held its artillery fire. With morning light, Wilson's men set about destroying the city and rounded up a large number of prisoners.

Whether this fight deserves recognition as the war's final battle remains disputed among historians; some argue instead for the Battle of Palmito Ranch, fought in Cameron County, Texas.

Background

Following the triumph at Nashville on December 15 and 16, 1864, Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas directed Maj. Gen. James H. Wilson to push deep into the Deep South with orders to wreck the Confederacy's key supply hubs at Selma, Alabama, and Columbus, Georgia.

From Gravelly Springs, Alabama, Wilson set out on March 22, 1865, with Selma as his objective, since the town served as a vital hub for manufacturing and provisions. Fighting erupted there on April 2 against forces commanded by Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, whose badly outnumbered troops stood little chance against the Union column. That same day, far to the northeast, Richmond fell into the hands of the Army of the Potomac. Though Forrest's men bloodied their attackers considerably, Wilson's cavalry eventually smashed through the town's defenses, seizing Selma by seven that evening. Afterward, the raiders wrecked every store of military material and plundered the town before pressing forward.

Lee surrendered his forces to Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9. Yet the war was far from over in the wider sense: Joe Johnston's Confederate army remained whole, along with rebel forces still active in Alabama, Mississippi, and across the Trans-Mississippi region. Wilson himself had no idea Lee had given up the fight, since communication had broken down, so his campaign of destruction rolled onward.

Three days later, on April 12, Union troops under Wilson entered Montgomery, once the Confederacy's capital, meeting only minimal opposition along the way.

Columbus, Georgia, now stood as Wilson's remaining objective, being the South's largest intact center of industry and supply. With Richmond already lost, only Columbus rivaled it in the scale of support it had furnished to the Confederate war machine. Sitting along the Chattahoochee River, the city also housed a significant shipyard, where the ironclad CSS Muscogee sat moored, still awaiting completion.

Meanwhile, on Good Friday, April 14, Lincoln was shot in Washington and succumbed to his wound the following day, a tragedy of which Wilson still had no knowledge.

Prelude

Word had already reached Columbus that Wilson and his 13,000 troops were closing in, and the Confederate command was not caught off guard. Howell Cobb, a Confederate Major General, took charge of assembling whatever defenders he could find and set about readying the city's defenses as best he could.

His command amounted to roughly 3,500 men, the bulk of them drawn from Georgia and Alabama home guard units alongside ordinary civilians who had volunteered. By April 16, 1865, the local papers were urging residents to flee, certain that a Union assault was close at hand.

One such notice told the public plainly of the enemy's swift approach, while promising that Columbus would be held to the last extremity. Based on past experience, it warned, the city could expect to come under shellfire, and so all those not fighting were told to clear out without delay.

Rather than making his stand in Columbus itself, Cobb chose to defend the western bank of the Chattahoochee, in Girard, the settlement known today as Phenix City. There, older trenches, breastworks, and earthen forts left unfinished from earlier in the conflict suddenly had to be completed without delay.

Cobb's chief concern was holding the pair of covered bridges linking Girard to Columbus. He understood that Wilson had no choice but to funnel his forces toward these two narrow crossings if he meant to take the city, and this gave Cobb a strategic edge. He was equally determined to deny Wilson the elevated terrain around Girard, aware that such a position would let Union guns rain shells down on Columbus with ease.

Beyond fortifying the high ground on the Alabama side of the river, Cobb had the bridge supports packed with cotton and soaked in turpentine. This meant that if his men could not hold off Wilson's raiders, they still had one final option: setting the bridges ablaze to keep Union troops from crossing into Columbus unopposed.

Those bridges had been the work of Horace King, a master builder who later became a lawmaker. Born into slavery in 1807, King worked his way to freedom and rose to become one of the South's most respected builders of bridges. Known fondly as "The Bridge Builder" and sometimes called the "Prince of Bridge Builders," he went on, after the war ended, to serve as a legislator in Alabama.

Aftermath

On the morning of April 17, 1865, Wilson gave orders to wipe out anything in Columbus that might benefit the Confederate cause. His men set fire to the ironclad CSS Muscogee, sometimes called the CSS Jackson, sending it to the bottom, while Port Columbus, the Confederate naval yard, was leveled completely. Confederate forces themselves sank the CSS Chattahoochee so it would not end up in Union hands.

Hospital records from the fight later showed that the toll was far steeper than what was first announced. Wilson's original count placed Union losses at 25, but the true figure stood at 60. Ten men died in the fighting itself, and eight more succumbed afterward to their wounds; most of them now rest in Andersonville National Cemetery. On the Confederate side, 151 men were lost, and a good many of them lie in Linwood Cemetery in Columbus. Union forces also swept up 1,600 Confederate prisoners, who were held in a hastily assembled camp. Every Confederate manufacturing site in both Columbus, Georgia, and neighboring Girard, Alabama (today's Phenix City), was reduced to ruin by the Union army, and the surrounding areas on both banks of the Chattahoochee suffered heavily from the destruction as well. In the days that followed, the burning warehouses and factories along the Chattahoochee Valley seemed to signal that the war itself was drawing to a close. By April 18, the Union cavalry's advance units had moved on from Columbus.

Fresh off this success, Wilson pushed his raiders eastward toward Macon, Georgia, taking the city without a fight. Just ten days after the fighting at Columbus, General Joseph E. Johnston surrendered what remained of the Confederacy's last major army at Bennett Place in North Carolina, bringing the Civil War to its close.

In early May, in the middle of Georgia, Wilson's troops captured the two men most sought after in the entire country: Jefferson Davis, the Confederacy's president, and Captain Henry Wirz, who had commanded the prison at Andersonville.