Wilson's Raid

Wilson's Raid was a cavalry operation through Alabama and Georgia in March–April 1865, late in the American Civil War. Brig. Gen. James H. Wilson led his Union Army Cavalry Corps to destroy Southern manufacturing facilities and was opposed unsuccessfully by a much smaller force under Confederate Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest.

After his victory at the Battle of Nashville, Union Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas and his Army of the Cumberland found themselves with virtually no organized military opposition in the heart of the South. Thomas ordered Brig. Gen. James H. Wilson (who commanded the Cavalry Corps of the Military Division of the Mississippi, but was attached to Thomas's army) to lead a raid to destroy the arsenal at Selma, Alabama, in conjunction with Maj. Gen. Edward Canby's operations against Mobile. Selma was strategically important as one of the few Confederate military bases remaining in Southern hands. The town contained an arsenal, a naval foundry, gun factories, a powder mill, military warehouses, and railroad repair shops.

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