Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/271

Rh Lee, had gained a great victory June icth in the battle of Tishomingo Creek, in Mississippi, thoroughly beating Grierson and Sturgis, capturing 1,600 officers and men, 16 guns, 1,500 small-arms, besides a vast amount of ordnance and quartermaster stores. This brilliant battle was followed by other remarkable exploits of this great cavalry general at Pontotoc and Harrisburg, Miss. ; at Memphis, Tenn., and in various other expeditions. During the same period of activity, the Federal Admiral Farragut, with four ironclad monitors and fourteen other vessels, attacked the small Confederate fleet commanded by Admiral Buchanan in Mobile bay, and passing Fort Morgan, disabled several Confederate vessels and drove the remainder up the river. Having gained this advantage he soon captured the forts, with their guns and men, but was unable to wrest Mobile from the defenders in the intrenchments.

The Confederate activity in the States west of Georgia ceased somewhat on account of the great need of Hood for reinforcements during his advance northward into Tennessee, in which his army, although fighting with wonderful courage at Franklin, and afterward at Nashville, became so shattered that its retirement southward again became imperative. The remnants of this splendid army, which had fought so long under Albert Sidney Johnston, Beauregard, Bragg, Joseph E. Johnston and Hood, on returning through Georgia appeared once more in front of Sherman in South Carolina.

Meantime the Confederate line of Lee extended thirty-five miles along the breastworks which engineers, the most skillful of any army, had constructed for the protection of the Confederate capital. Fortressed by these defenses, which were manned their whole length by men far too few to occupy them, the cities of Petersburg and Richmond withstood all the assaults of the great Federal army, through the summer and winter months until the spring of 1865 had come, the details of which