While the general-in-chief had been "hammering" away at the rebel army in Virginia, Sherman, under his direction, had been striking heavy blows at the South. He had fought and flanked his way down to Atlanta, carrying dismay and desolation before his victorious banners. The series of disasters which attended the operations of Johnston caused his removal from the command, Hood taking his place. The "great flanker" punished him even worse than his predecessor, and Hood went into Tennessee, with an army of fifty thousand men, to overwhelm Thomas; but this veteran almost wiped him out, and drove him to the south, with the loss of half his force and more than half his guns and munitions. Farragut thundered into Mobile Bay with his squadron, and, having defeated or sunk the rebel fleet, captured all the forts which covered Mobile. During the winter, Fort Fisher fell, and Wilmington dropped quietly into the hands of the Union forces. To crown the disasters of the Confederacy, Sherman made his grand march to the sea, mowing a wide swath on his passage, and leaving desolation and ruin in his path. The Confederacy was on its last legs in the spring of 1865, though Lee still held his lines at Petersburg and Richmond. Jeff. Davis was still confident, though his general declared that he was no longer able to make a good fight. Some attempts to negotiate a peace were made, but they failed because the rebels still wanted terms which a conqueror might have asked. Grant had long ago demonstrated that the Confederacy was nothing but a "shell," and it had been broken in a hundred places. Still the rebels held out wherever they had a foot of ground whereon to stand. Still they prated about the "last ditch," and looked confidently, even up to the time of the final disaster, to foreign interference, or to some miraculous interposition of circumstances. Sherman continued his march, captured Savannah, caused the evacuation of Charleston, and occupied Columbia. Johnston was gathering an army in North Carolina for the purpose of overwhelming him. Grant feared that Lee would desert Richmond, and seek to join the forces of Johnston. Indeed, he had been partly moved by this consideration in the selection of the south side of the James as his field of operations. Richmond, without the rebel army which for four long years had been defending it, would be a showy, but not a substantial prize.