This text was obtained via automated optical character recognition.
It has not been edited and may therefore contain several errors.

---

Gen. Wilson started southeast on March 22 headed toward Selma. Meanwhile Pvt. Baxter had been ordered to Selma in late February, ostensibly to defend this munitions and material center, but practically to help destroy it before the Federals dashed on the city. In the face of Wilson?s well-mounted drive, Gen. Forrest attempted to stop his progress a few miles north of Selma, at Ebenezer Church on April 1. Forrest?s forces were not strong enough to stop the Federals, and he attempted to pull back his scattered units into a defense of Selma proper. Defense of Selma was impossible with the resources available to Forrest - militia, casuals, and his understrength cavalry brigades.
Late on Sunday, April 2, Selma fell to the superior forces available to Wilson - some 9,000 well-trained, highly disciplined cavalryment determined to destroy the last vestige of the South?s ability to produce war material. Forrest could not change the outcome of the conflict, and later that evening he barely managed to escape, along with a few officers and men, Pvt. Baxter among the latter.
The Federals took some 3,000 Southern prisoners and uncounted stores of guns, ammunition, and military supplies of every sort. The capture of supplies would no doubt have been much greater had not Baxter and his fellow soldiers in Selma destroyed as much as they did when it became obvious that Wilson?s Yankees could not be stopped from taking the town. The night of April 2 saw Selma in flames; before evacuating the city on the 9th, Wilson ordered all horses and mules not needed by his men to be killed. Witnesses said the decaying bodies of these animals set up a stench that made the town almost uninhabitable for weeks.
Curiously enough, on the same day that Selma, Alabama, fell, so did Richmond, Virginia, the Confederate capital. And the next day, Marion Baxter, along with what was left of the Confederate defenders at Selma fell back toward Montgomery. Gen. Wilson?s Federals followed on the 10th. Montgomery surrendered without a shot being fired when it became obvious the city could not be defended with the available Southern forces. Wilson stopped only long enough to destroy what ordnance remained and then continued his pursuit of the retreating
78