The advance guard of the Gen. Ormsby M. Mitchel's 3rd division, Gen. Buell's Army of the Ohio, marched into Huntsville April 11, 1862. The entire division would arrive by the 15th. Huntsville was the first Alabama city to be occupied by the enemy. Upon learning the news of the battle at Shiloh, Mitchel commenced to march into Alabama with his division, after marching alone from Nashville, through Murfreesboro, Shelbyville, and Fayetteville, Tenn. With the Confederate armies concentrated in north Mississippi to oppose the main Federal army, Mitchel faced virtually no organized opposition as he made his way into N. Alabama. Mitchel's mission was to cut the Memphis & Charleston railroad, the so-called "vertebrae of the Confederacy", while the rest of Buell's army was with Gen. Grant's army at Shiloh.