As 1865 began, the Confederacy was teetering. Its army west of the Mississippi could do little to affect the outcome. The entire Mississippi River was under Union control. In Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, and Mississippi, Confederate forces could do no more than harass Union outposts. Grant's army had Lee's Army of Northern Virginia locked in the trenches outside Petersburg, and Sherman was at Savannah, ready to go in just about any direction he chose. The Confederate soldiers still in the field were poorly clothed and poorly fed. The end was in sight.