-- One hundred and fifty years ago today, on April 11, 1862, Union forces took Huntsville, starting a three-year occupation that would last until the end of the Civil War in 1865.

Huntsville, despite its strategic position along the Memphis-Charleston Railroad, had stayed relatively unnoticed until then. But a few days after the bloody battle of Shiloh, Tenn., Union Gen. Ormsby MacKnight Mitchel rode into Huntsville - then with a population less than 4,000 - and took the city.

Huntsville's capture was not a complete surprise, wrote author Charles Rice in "Hard Times: The Civil War in Huntsville and North Alabama 1861-1865."

"A messenger, evidently local druggist Sidney Darwin, had already ridden away to alert the city," Rice wrote. "The first notice the city had of its impending fate was the shrill shriek of a locomotive steam whistle, quickly followed by the booming of a cannon."

Mitchel reported back on April 11: "Entered Huntsville this morning at 6 o'clock." He arrested 12 prominent citizens he suspected of supporting guerrillas.

"Everyone seemed to think that Huntsville was someone else's responsibility, and the strategic city went undefended," wrote Rice.

Read more about the Union occupation of Huntsville in Sunday's Huntsville Times.