Fort Blakeley, named for the town it surrounded, was one of two major Confederate defensive positions protecting the eastern approaches to Mobile during the Civil War. It consisted of a nearly three-mile-long series of entrenchments anchored by nine earthen redoubts, with trenches, artillery emplacements, and other earthen defensive structures within the line, and rifle pits a short distance in front of the main line for teams of skirmishers. Confederate troops and impressed African-American laborers had worked for many months before the battle in April 1865 to build the fortifications, clear fields of fire for about 800 yards in front of the main line, construct two lines of obstructions from tangled fallen trees, string telegraph wire between stumps as barriers to approach, and in places bury dozens of land mines then commonly called torpedoes. Blakeley was frequently misspelled in wartime records and on period maps as Blakely, and the fort and battle are still often referred to that way in historical literature and many official records of the war. At the time of the battle, Brigadier General St. John R. Liddell commanded the approximately 3,500 men in the garrison at Blakeley, including veteran brigades under Brigadier General Francis M. Cockrell and raw regiments of conscripts under Brigadier General Bryan Thomas.