– or rather to sound methods of grand tactics – as a means of concealing, not the fact that he was advancing, but the real direction and objective point of his advance. He moved southward, taking care to make demonstrations upon his flank which were calculated to deceive his enemy. He threatened the settlements in the peninsula, and constantly kept up a front of observation in a direction different from that in which his main body was actually moving. In this way he managed to advance to McGirth's plantation, on the Alabama River, in the neighborhood of the place where the town of Claiborne now stands, without revealing the purpose of his advance, and as this halting point was one at which his presence seemed to threaten an attack upon Fort Glass, Fort Sinquefield, and the other posts in what is now Clarke County, his real purpose was still effectually concealed.
