. With our limited resources of transportation, it was a slow
business to forward troops to Johnston in North Carolina; but at length
it was accomplished, and the month of March came round to raise the
curtain for the last act of the bloody drama. Two clouds appeared on the
horizon of my department. General Canby, a steady soldier, whom I had
long known, had assumed command of all the Federal forces in the
southwest, and was concentrating fifty thousand men at Fort Morgan and
Pensacola against Mobile. In northern Alabama General Wilson had ten
thousand picked mounted men ready for an expedition. At Selma was a
foundry, where the best ordnance I have seen was made of Briarsfield
iron, from a furnace in the vicinity; and, as this would naturally
attract the enemy's attention to Selma, I endeavored to prepare for him.
The Cahawba River, from the northeast, enters the Alabama below Selma,
north of which it separates the barren mineral region from the fertile
lands of the river basin; and at its crossing I directed Forrest to
concentrate.

Wilson, with the smallest body, would probably move first; and, once
disposed of, Forrest could be sent south of the Alabama River to delay
Canby and prolong the defense of Mobile. For a hundred miles north of
the gulf the country is sterile, pine forest on a soil of white sand;
but the northern end of the Montgomery and Pensacola Railway was in our
possession, and would enable us to transport supplies. In a conference
with Maury at Mobile I communicated the above to him, as I had
previously to Forrest, and hastened to Selma. Distributed for forage,
and still jaded by hard work, Forrest ordered his brigades to the
Cahawba crossing, leading one in person. His whole force would have been
inferior to Wilson's, but he was a host in himself, and a dangerous
adversary to meet at any reasonable odds.

Our information of the enemy had proved extremely accurate; but in this
instance the Federal commander moved with unusual rapidity, and threw
out false signals. Forrest, with one weak brigade, was in the path; but
two of his brigadiers permitted themselves to be deceived by reports of
the enemy's movements toward Columbus, Mississippi, and turned west,
while another went into camp under some misconception of orders. Forrest
fought as if the world depended on his arm, and sent to advise me of the
deceit practiced on two of his brigades, but hoped to stop the enemy if
he could get up the third, the a