Hood had departed from Gadsden on October…

Hood had departed from Gadsden on October 22, en route to Guntersville, Alabama, where he had planned to cross the Tennessee River.

Learning that that crossing place was strongly guarded, and concerned that Federal gunboats could destroy any pontoon bridge he might deploy, he had impulsively changed his destination to Decatur, forty miles west.

When Hood arrived at Decatur on October 26, he had found a Federal infantry force of three thousand to five thousand men defending an entrenched line that includes two forts and sixteen hundred yards of rifle pits.

Two Federal wooden gunboats patrolled the river.

On October 28, Confederate skirmishers advance through a dense fog to a ravine within eight hundred yards of the main fortifications.

Around noon, a small Federal detachment drives the sharpshooters and skirmishers out of the ravine, capturing one hundred and twenty-five men.

Hood, concluding that he cannot afford the casualties that will ensue from a full-scale assault, withdraws his army.

He decides once again to move to the west, to attempt another crossing near Tuscumbia, Alabama, where Muscle Shoals will prevent interference by Federal gunboats.