During the war between the states, Carrollton was spared a bloody battle but endured four raids by Union troops. The last raid came 15 days after the surrender at Appomattox, when troops commanded by Union General John Croxton, returning from a raid on Tuscaloosa, camped 2 miles west of Carrollton on the night of 25 April 1865. On the morning of 25 April, the Union troops pillaged the town and burned buildings on the town square. They departed by way of Dixie Street, then called Bowen or Lower Ferry Road, as the home guard Tallapoosa Rangers under command of Colonel John Beall approached. The Confederates were singing "Dixie" as they came, and local tradition holds that the prominent resident H.F. Merrell, moved by the sight and sound, exclaimed that the road should be renamed Dixie Street, the name it bears today.