In March 1865, bad news from other parts of the Confederacy reached the forts in southern Louisiana, and on April 15 General Robert E. Lee was forced to surrender to Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant. As these reports arrived, soldiers began deserting their posts. On May 8, 1865, Brigadier General Joseph L. Brent, commander of Front Line Forces in southern Louisiana, received orders from Major General Harry T. Hays, commander of the District of Western Louisiana, to evacuate the soldiers from the forts and destroy all artillery, central magazines, and bombproofs, but the soldiers still garrisoned there refused to evacuate or destroy the forts. By the end of May, only 86 soldiers remained. On June 3, 1865, a Union occupying force took control of Fort Randolph and Fort Buhlow, ending the war in this part of Louisiana. Although no attack occurred, the forts represented one last stand by the Confederate Army to stop another Union invasion up the Red River, and historians believe that with the forts' strategic locations and the Missouri anchored just below them, such an invasion would have been slowed or completely stopped.