The city, based on two navigable rivers and a railroad, was used as the base for a number of Confederate installations and offices. These included commissary and quartermaster offices and warehouses, engineers' offices and workshops, a large ordnance depot, two large hospitals, and offices of the medical purveyor of the Department of Alabama, Mississippi, and East Louisiana. A huge military encampment was established at the fairgrounds in Webb's Bend. Thousands of soldiers entered the town at a time, which had only one thousand inhabitants prior to the war. Residents struggled to provide and secure sufficient food and accommodations.