IN the closing months of 1864 events occurred in rapid succession in the southwest. The Confederates, under Hood, driven from Georgia by Sherman, invaded Middle Tennessee. General Price began his invasion of Missouri and destroyed property valued at three millions of dollars and seized a vast quantity of supplies. The Union forces, under General Thomas, were concentrated at Nashville. There were continual skirmishes and at nightfall, on the sixteenth of December, General Thomas ordered his troops into line of battle, with the intent of driving Hood's Army from the territory. In a terrific fire of musketry, grape and canister, the Federals pushed forward. In the next two days the Confederates lost all their artillery. General Thomas took four thousand, five hundred prisoners, nearly three hundred being officers. The fleeing Confederate columns left nearly three thousand dead and wounded on the ground, while the Federal loss was three hundred. The weather was very cold, but Thomas pursued his foe relentlessly. Flood's men were in a desperate condition, barefooted, ragged and disheartened. They were pressed to the Tennessee River where thirteen thousand were taken prisoners, and Hood's great army was practically annihilated, their small arms scattered along the roads, and cannon, caissons and wagons abandoned. Hood took the remnants of his army into Mississippi where he was relieved from command by his own request and retired minus the arm he left at Gettysburg and the leg he left at Chickamauga. On the thirtieth day of December, in 1864, Thomas went into winter quarters. One of the last photographs of the year was taken in Fort Negley, Nashville, Tennessee, showing the ironclad casemates and the interior of the fort. [Illustration: PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN ON GRANT'S MILITARY RAILROAD WHEN THE 13-INCH MORTAR "DICTATOR" OR "PETERSBURG EXPRESS" WAS THROWING SHELLS INTO PETERSBURG IN 1864]