Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 3.

[519] thrown across the river, Wilson's army did not make the passage of the stream until the 10th.

April, 1865.

McCook had rejoined him on the 5th, and now the whole army, excepting Croxton's brigade, on detached service, moved upon Montgomery, where General Wirt Adams was in command. Adams did not wait for Wilson's arrival; but, setting fire to ninety thousand bales of cotton in that city, he fled. Wilson entered it, unopposed, on the morning of the 12th, when Major Weston, marching rapidly northward toward Wetumpka, on the Coosa, captured and destroyed five heavily laden

Union Prison at Cahawba.1

steamboats, which had fled up that stream for safety Montgomery was formally surrendered to Wilson, by the city authorities with five guns, and a large quantity of small-arms, which were destroyed. So it was that the original “Capital” of the Confederacy of Rebels was “repossessed” by the Government without hinderance and the flag of the Republic was unfurled in triumph over the State House, where, on the 4th of March, 1861, the first Confederate flag Was given to the breeze, when it was adopted as the ensign of the Confederacy by the “Provisional Government,” at Montgomery.²

Wilson paused two days at Montgomery, and then pushed on eastward toward the Chattahoochee River, the boundary between Alabama and Georgia,--Columbus, in the latter State, ninety miles distant, being his chief objective. At Tuskegee, Colonel La Grange was detached and sent to West Point at the crossing of the Chattahoochee River by the railway connecting Montgomery and Atlanta while the main column passed on toward Columbus. That city was on the east side of the Chattahoochee, and when Wilson came in sight of it, in front of the Confederate works, on the evening of the 16th, he found one of the bridges on fire. Upton's division, was at once arranged for an assault, and in the darkness of the evening a charge of three hundred of the Third Iowa Cavalry, supported by the Fourth Iowa and Tenth Missouri Cavalry, and covered by a heavy fire of grape, canister, and. musketry, was made. They pushed through abatis that covered the works, and pressed back the Confederates. Two companies of the Tenth Missouri then seized another and perfect bridge, leading into Columbus, when Upton made another charge, sweeping every thing before him, and captured the city, twelve hundred men, fifty-two field guns in position, and large quantities of small-arms and stores. He lost only twenty-four men in achieving this conquest.³ There Wilson destroyed the Confederate ram Jackson,