Hayes Lowe
"last" battles
Mon Mar 19 13:07:40 2001


Like I said, everybody wants to say their own battle was the last one!

I have searched this site, the Miss. site, and the Texas site, for that discussion on the last battle. Can't find it.

There is some matter of dispute about Gen. Watie and whether there was an engagement. I'll leave that issue to those more in the know about it than I to resolve. If it did occur, it occured almost a month after the Texas engagement.

At any rate, none of these were really *the* last engagement. All these being discussed as possibilities are the last *land* engagements. A naval engagement occured well after all the land battles ended. This naval battle was truely the last engagement under the Confederate flag. Any other battle must be qualified in some way, i.e. "last land battle with regular Confederate Army", "last battle east of the Miss.", "last land battle", etc. Most have little validity to the claim, at all. [Heck, one group even claims that Forrest's Tenn. Cav. skirmish outside Selma, *before* the Battle of Selma, was the last battle of the war!] All these are really pretenders. It was the naval battle that was the last battle, period.

• Last Battle — Gpurvis, Mon Mar 19 20:54