sentences:  However, residents of the nearby towns did not fare as well.The Union troops were forced to retreat only a few months later, but they returned to Huntsville in the fall of 1863 and thereafter used the city as a base of operations for the war, except during the last months of 1864.While many homes and villages in the surrounding countryside were burned in retaliation for the active guerrilla warfare in the area, Huntsville itself survived because it housed Union Army troops.