The Federal Invasion of Pickens County, April 5-7, 1865: Croxton's Sipsey River Campaign

The Federal Invasion of Pickens County, April 5–7, 1865: Croxton’s Sipsey River Campaign IN APRIL 1865, AFTER FOUR YEARS OF CIVIL WAR, Pickens County in west Alabama finally felt the hand of the conflict upon its roads, hills, and streams. As a result of the movement of vast numbers of cavalry from the opposing sides in northern Alabama and eastern Mississippi, the invading United States Army collided in Pickens County with the tough but thinning ranks of the Confederate States cavalry. The collapse of the Confederacy was daily in evidence in early April 1865. On April 1 the Petersburg–Richmond lines of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia were nearly surrounded after the Federal victory at Five Forks, part of the Appomattox campaign. The next day Lee’s army began the evacuation of Petersburg when the Union besiegers assaulted along the whole line. President Jefferson Davis and his government abandoned Richmond as much of the capital burned. As the Army of Northern Virginia retreated toward Appomattox, Union troops occupied Richmond and Petersburg on April 3.1 In Alabama, Federal forces threatened Baldwin County’s Spanish Fort and Fort Blakely, strangling isolated Mobile, while the largest mounted force of the war crossed the Tennessee River and descended into the state. Brushing aside Lt. Gen. Nathan B. Forrest’s scattered Confederate divisions at Centerville, Ebenezer Church, S C O T T W. O W E N S Scott W. Owens is a practicing veterinarian in Mobile County. He would like to acknowledge the assistance of Steven Wright with his vast research on the Sixth Kentucky Cavalry, Eugene Buck for providing copies of National Archives materials, and the staff of the University of Alabama’s W. S. Hoole Special Collections Library. Special thanks are extended to the editorial staff of The Alabama Review. 1 A. Wilson Green, The Final Battles of the Petersburg Campaign: Breaking the Backbone of the Rebellion (Knoxville, 2008); Nelson Lankford, Richmond Burning: The Last Days of the Confederate Capital (New York, 2002). T H E A L A B A M A R E V I E W 84 Maplesville, and Plantersville, Maj. Gen. James H. Wilson’s three divisions drove toward Selma, the industrial and munitions center of the lower Confederacy. On April 2 Wilson surrounded, assaulted, and captured Selma, nearly taking Forrest himself. The loss of this military-industrial complex to the Confederacy was beyond estimation . The capture of Tuscaloosa and destruction of the University of Alabama two days later by a detached brigade under Brig. Gen. John T. Croxton marked the beginning of the end of the Confederacy and heralded the loss of the state of Alabama.2 While Wilson’s destruction of the Selma complex continued on April 5, Croxton turned west from Tuscaloosa toward Pickens County. The next day, however, Croxton’s force was assaulted by elements of Forrest’s corps under the command of Brig. Gen. William Wirt Adams, in what was to be the final success of Southern arms in Alabama.3 Croxton’s thrust into Pickens County has become an episode in Alabama history shrouded in uncertainty. Most recent descriptions of the events of April 5–7, 1865, appear in works elaborating on the destruction of the University of Alabama, and little original research into primary sources has been applied to the encounter between Croxton and Adams. In particular, the location of the action has been so variously and vaguely described that it is not even clear where the fight took place. How did such confusion over this last Confederate victory on Alabama soil come about? Within three days of the skirmish, the Jackson (Miss.) Times published a report that General Adams, with 1,500 men, defeated a Federal force under “Gen. Crayton [sic] of 2000, near Pleasant Ridge, Alabama.” The Times went on to cite casualty figures ten times higher than what were actually inflicted.4 Two years later Maj. Gen. Christopher Columbus Andrews, who had commanded the Second Division, Thirteenth Army Corps, U.S. Volunteers, wrote his History of the Campaign of Mobile, the final 2 Brian Steel Wills, A Battle from the Start: The Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest (New York...