page_title: Wilson's Raid
section_title: Raid
hierarchical_section_title: Wilson's Raid / Raid
caption_attribution_description: English: The campus of the University of Alabama in 1859. View of the Quad, with the Rotunda at center and dormitories in the background. All of these buildings were destroyed by the Union army under the command of Brigadier General John T. Croxton on April 4, 1865.
context_page_description: 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.
context_section_description: Wilson was delayed in crossing the rain-swollen Tennessee River, but he got underway on March 22, 1865, departing from Gravelly Springs in Lauderdale County, Alabama. He sent his forces in three separate columns to mask his intentions and confuse the enemy; Forrest learned very late in the raid that Selma was the primary target. Minor skirmishes occurred at Houston (March 25) and Black Warrior River (March 26), and Wilson's columns rejoined at Jasper on March 27.
  On March 28, at Elyton, in present-day Birmingham, another skirmish occurred and the Union troopers destroyed the Oxmoor and Irondale iron furnaces. A detachment of General Emory Upton's division destroyed the C.B. Churchill and Company foundry in Columbiana and the Shelby Iron Works in Shelby on March 31, 1865.
caption: View of the Quad at the University of Alabama in 1859. The Rotunda can be seen at center, with the halls visible in the background.  All of these buildings were destroyed during Wilson's Raid on April 4, 1865.
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