JANUARY 11, 1865–APRIL 26, 1865
On November 15, 1864, Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman provisioned his army with 20 days’ hard rations and abandoned the devastated city of Atlanta. Behind him he left wrecked railroads, leveled fortifications, and a city inflames. His new target was Savannah, Georgia, about 225 miles to the southeast, on the Atlantic coast. Marching in two wings, Sherman’s army of 62,000 men advanced against light opposition from Confederate Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler’s cavalry and the Georgia Militia, cutting a 60-mile-wide swath of destruction through the heart of Georgia. After a savage fight at Griswoldville (November 22), lesser engagements at Ball’s Ferry and Sandersville, and running cavalry fights in and around Waynesboro, Sherman arrived at the gates of Savannah on December 11, 1864. To facilitate a linkup with the Federal fleet, Sherman sent Brig. Gen. William B. Hazen’s division to capture Fort McAllister on the Ogeechee River. The fort fell on December 12. Unable to hold the city, Lt. Gen. William J. Hardee evacuated Savannah on the night of December 20, marching his troops across a series of pontoon bridges built on rice barges appropriated from nearby plantations. On Christmas Eve, President Lincoln received a telegram from Sherman: “I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, and also about 25,000 bales of cotton.”
Sherman is troubled by the messages he gets from Ulysses S. Grant apprising him of Washington’s desire for Sherman to leave a small force to hold Savannah and transport the rest of his army to City Point, Virginia, by ship and join Grant’s “army group” operating against Lee. Now Sherman has to carry out a long-distance debate with the War Department and General Grant to sell his program of marching his army through the Carolinas, rather than playing it safe by leaving a small force to hold Savannah and moving his army by water to join Grant’s army group in Virginia. He wishes to bring fire and sword to South Carolina. “I do sincerely believe,” he states, “that the whole United States, North and South, would rejoice to have this army turned loose on South Carolina to devastate that State, in the manner we have done in Georgia.” South Carolina is a state in which Sherman had been stationed for nearly four years. His years at Fort Moultrie were pleasant. He knows South Carolina as well as northwest Georgia. This remarkable man has an almost photographic memory for topography as well as an inquiring mind. He seems to know the geography of both Georgia, where he spent little time, and the Carolinas, particularly South Carolina, better than most of the opposing Confederate generals. In Georgia this is particularly galling to Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, a former topographical engineer, who has spent more time in the state than Sherman.
But Sherman has to sell his program to the Lincoln Administration. A strong issue in his favor is that it would take almost two months to assemble the shipping and to transport his army from Savannah to the Richmond and Petersburg area. And that’s a lot of time. He also argues that a march through the Carolinas will bring the war home to the Southern people and particularly to the Southern troops—especially the Carolinians serving in Robert E. Lee’s army—the same as he had brought it home to Lee’s Georgians on his march from Atlanta to the sea.
After the war, Sherman, in speaking about his two great marches, believed the one through the Carolinas was far more challenging. Not since the armies of Julius Caesar had there been such an army as Sherman led on the 500-mile march from Savannah and Port Royal Sound to Goldsboro, North Carolina. Half men and half alligators, his soldiers during February and the first three weeks of March bridged eight rain-swollen rivers—the Savannah, Salkehatchie, Edisto, Saluda, Broad, Wateree, Great Peedee, and Cape Fear—flowing southeast to the sea. They corduroy miles of roadways across swamps deemed by the foe to be impassable during the worst season of the year for campaigning. They foraged for rations “from a poor and wasted countryside,” and as Sherman would later boast, reached “our destination in good health and condition.”
Ruins of a train depot destroyed during Sherman’s departure from Atlanta. In November 1864, Sherman began his destructive march through the heart of the Confederacy to Savannah.
Let us look at the situation faced by Confederate armies as they enter the new year. Sherman and his army group is in and around Savannah with another strong force, supported by the Navy, holding the Port Royal Sound enclave. Sherman’s “March to the Sea” has been a disaster for the Rebels. Before leaving Atlanta, Sherman sends two corps and Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas back to Middle Tennessee to guard against Gen. John Bell Hood and his gallant Army of Tennessee. Hood strikes out for Tennessee as Sherman heads in the opposite direction toward the sea. Despite head-shaking in Washington and loss of nerve on Grant’s part, Thomas successfully copes with Hood. On November 30 at Franklin, Maj. Gen. John M. Schofield’s bluecoats savage Hood’s frontal attacks, and at Nashville in mid-December, Thomas routs Hood.
As the defeated Rebels cross the Tennessee River on December 26–27, the dispirited soldiers sing a parody of the “Yellow Rose of Texas” as they trudge southward—“Gallant Hood Played Hell in Tennessee.” Hood retreats to Tupelo, Mississippi. There he asks to be relieved of his command, and on January 17, his request is accepted. Within a short time the once formidable Army of Tennessee scatters—one division goes to Mobile, while the three corps, mere shadows of the army they had once been, start for the Carolinas. There they will be part of the force that will fight Sherman at Bentonville in mid-March. Many discouraged veterans go home, on either furlough or “French leave,” not to return. Bedford Forrest and his horse soldiers will finally meet defeat at Selma, Alabama, on April 2 at the hands of James Harrison Wilson, who has learned a lot about cavalry fighting since his bad days in the Wilderness, 11 months before.
In the Trans-Mississippi, Maj. Gen. Sterling Price’s formidable mounted command that had advanced deep into Missouri has likewise run into disaster. Defeated at Westport (October 23), routed at Mine Creek (October 25), and chased out of Missouri at Newtonia (October 28), Price does not halt his retreat until he crosses the Red River.
The Shenandoah Valley, the Union vale of disaster, has finally been neutralized. After the defeat of Lt. Gen. Jubal Early’s Confederates at Cedar Creek on October 19, 1864, the Federals leave Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan in the valley with two cavalry divisions, and both sides redeploy most of their infantry. Maj. Gen. Horatio Wright, with VI Corps, returns to Petersburg. Jubal Early, discredited, remains in the Valley with a small force. Maj. Gen. John B. Gordon, having replaced Early, rejoins Lee at Petersburg with a much reduced II Corps. The threat posed by Sherman’s advance into South Carolina causes Lee to rush Wade Hampton to his home state with a cavalry division and an infantry brigade he can ill afford to spare.
In the siege lines around Richmond and Petersburg there is still a stalemate as Sherman prepares to move north. It’s been a grim winter for the Confederates, but particularly for the Carolina and Georgia boys in Lee’s army. Many of them know what is about to occur there. Georgians know what has happened in their home state. They know that the Confederate government, for whom they are fighting in Virginia, is unable to do much to protect the “home folks,” permitting Sherman to go wherever he wants. Railroads are cut, supplies grow short, and Brig. Gen. Lucius Northrop, a favorite of President Davis, retains his office as chief of the Confederate Commissary Department. He is undoubtedly the most incompetent of any senior staff officer holding a key position in either the North or the South.
The only place where you can look for any solace at the end of the year, if you were a Confederate, is the temporary success at Fort Fisher scored over a mighty Union amphibious force led by Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler and Rear Adm. David D. Porter.
Fort Fisher was the massive earthen fortification that guarded the port of Wilmington, North Carolina, the South’s last major gateway to the outside world. In early December 1864, Grant ordered General Butler to capture Fort Fisher. With a force of 6,500 men on transports, Butler sailed from Virginia and joined Porter’s fleet in North Carolina.
After completing his march to Savannah, Sherman, pictured here astride his horse at Atlanta, turned north, wrecking a path of destruction through the Carolinas meant to force the South to surrender.
Butler, as always, has a scheme. He has read an article about an explosion on two barges loaded with powder in England that leveled nearby warehouses. He gets an abandoned ship, the Louisiana, and packs it with 215 tons of gunpowder. Butler and Porter despise one another, but upon reflection Porter decides that Butler may be onto something, and the Navy takes over when foul weather compels Butler’s convoy to put into Beaufort. The Army not being present, Porter’s tars on the night of December 23–24 position the Louisiana off Fort Fisher. At 1:40 a.m. the fuse is lit and the volunteers abandon ship.
Porter and the absent Butler are certain that the force of the explosion will level the fort and kill or paralyze the defenders. But what they had planned to be the Civil War equivalent of the Hiroshima atom bomb proves to be a dud. After the debris settles, Porter’s waiting armada opens fire. The bombardment makes a lot of noise but the Rebels stand tall.
Porter and Butler point fingers at each other, holding the other responsible for the bomb’s failure. Butler is understandably livid when he returns from Beaufort and his soldiers come ashore on Christmas Day. A nor’easter roars in. Butler, despite a reconnaissance that gives promise of a successful attack, pulls his troops off the beach and heads back to Hampton Roads, whereupon Porter informs Grant that before the Navy returns to Fort Fisher, “Butler has to go!” Grant has put up with Butler’s shortcomings for some time, and before the Federals return Butler will be relieved of his command.
In January 1865, a new commander, Brig. Gen. Alfred Terry, assumed command of land operations against Fort Fisher. Terry organized a force at Bermuda Hundred on the James River and transported it by sea to join Admiral Porter’s North Atlantic Blockading Squadron for another try at Fort Fisher. Backed by the 594 guns of Porter’s 58 warships, Terry’s 9,000 infantry and artillery landed near the fort on the morning of January 13, 1865. After a massive two-and-a-half-day naval bombardment in which the ships expended almost 30,000 rounds, the Federals prepared to assault Fort Fisher on January 15.
Fort Fisher sits on a peninsula, known before the war as Federal Point. The garrison of Fort Fisher under Col. William Lamb numbers about 1,300 men, but Lamb gets some 350 reinforcements early on the day of the attack. Gen. Braxton Bragg has Maj. Gen. Robert Hoke’s 6,000-man division posted at Sugar Loaf four miles north of Fort Fisher. The fort, known as the Goliath of the Confederacy, is a massive L-shape work, consisting of a short land face and a long sea face. The latter is anchored on the land face at the Northeast Bastion and on the right by the Mound Battery. Commanding New Inlet and the wharf is Battery Buchanan. Twenty big guns are positioned in 16 gun chambers on the land face and larger numbers on the sea face.
Working together, Porter and Terry coordinate plans for an all-out onslaught scheduled for mid-afternoon of January 15. The Navy’s landing force consists of three battalions of sailors 1,600 strong, armed with cutlasses and revolvers, and one battalion of 400 marines with rifled muskets. The bluejackets are to charge down the beach and storm the Northeast Bastion, and the marines are to pin down the defenders with their small-arms fire. Brig. Gen. Adelbert Ames’s army division, led by Col. N. Martin Curtis’s brigade deployed in battle line, is to sweep down the Wilmington Road and fight its way into the fort through the riverside Sally Port, known as the Bloody Gate. North of the fort, a division of black troops is posted to hold Hoke’s division at bay should he seek to assist Lamb and his defenders.
At 3:25 p.m. the warships blow their steam whistles—the attack is about to begin. The warships redirect their fire from Fort Fisher’s land front south to its sea front. Hoping to reach their goal first, the sailors surge forward to meet a short but costly repulse.
The brigade led by six-foot-seven-inch Colonel Curtis takes up the attack. The pioneers use their axes to widen gaps made by naval fire in log palisades. After a desperate struggle, soldiers of the 117th New York gain a toehold in Battery Shepherd and seize the Bloody Gate. Union reinforcements come forward and the tide turns against the Rebels. Within 30 minutes after the battle opens, more than 4,000 Yankee soldiers have either entered Fort Fisher or are seeking to do so. Among the desperately wounded Confederates is Colonel Lamb. The struggle continues until the bluecoats overrun the last gun chamber on the land front. Efforts by the Confederates to re-form for a last-ditch stand at Battery Buchanan are frustrated when Rebel sailors and marines desert their post. The only option remaining to the handful of defenders is surrender.
Fort Fisher protecting the mouth of the Cape Fear River and the Confederate port of Wilmington, North Carolina, was a formidable earth-and-sand fortification with a mile of seacoast earthworks armed with 22 heavy guns emplaced in protected batteries. On December 24 a Federal amphibious expedition under Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler arrived. Butler planned to level the fort using a bomb ship loaded with 215 tons of gunpowder, but the vessel was detonated too far offshore. On Christmas morning, following a bombardment by Federal warships, Butler landed his forces north of the fort. They approached to within 50 yards of the fort before Butler, learning of the approach of Confederate reinforcements, called off the expedition and returned to Hampton Roads.
The storming and capture of Fort Fisher costs the Union Army 955 casualties and Porter’s Navy 383. The Confederates lose about 500 killed or wounded and more than 1,000 prisoners. The Federals also close off the mouth of the Cape Fear to blockade runners.
Next Mr. Lincoln’s Army and Navy focuses its attention on Wilmington. To do so, the War Department transfers General Schofield and his XXIII Corps by rail and boat from Tennessee to the coast of North Carolina. When the Federals take the offensive, Terry’s troops advance north from their toehold on Federal Point and their Fort Fisher base, while Maj. Gen. Jacob D. Cox’s XXIII Corps division crosses the Cape Fear and advances on Fort Anderson.
The Rebels evacuate Fort Anderson on the night of February 18. The loss of Fort Anderson uncovers Sugar Loaf, and it is evacuated to be immediately occupied by Terry’s troops. The twin battles of Town Creek west of the Cape Fear and Forks Road on the Wilmington side of the river render the largest city and port of North Carolina untenable. The Confederates evacuate Wilmington, and the civil authorities surrender it on February 22 to General Terry. Meanwhile his black troops march in lustily singing “John Brown’s Body.” After securing Wilmington, Terry’s troops turn and advance up the Weldon Railroad, heretofore one of General Lee’s lifelines, repairing the railroad as they close in on Goldsboro. At the same time, Cox’s division is redeployed by boat to New Bern on the Neuse River. New Bern has been in Union hands since mid-March 1862. Cox’s mission is to rebuild the railroad leading by way of Kinston to Goldsboro. When and if Sherman reaches Goldsboro he will find friends and two railroads linking Piedmont North Carolina to the coast.
Maj. Gen. Henry W. Slocum, commander of the Union Army of Georgia under William T. Sherman.
Sherman, meanwhile, having sold his proposed campaign to Grant, completes preparations. A XIX Corps division is transferred from the Shenandoah Valley and will hold the Savannah enclave when Sherman’s Army group again takes the field. As on the March to the Sea, Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard’s Army of the Tennessee constitutes the right wing. Maj. Gen. Peter J. Osterhaus, a popular and competent soldier, has been replaced as commander of the XV Corps by Maj. Gen. John A. Logan. A former Douglas Democrat, Logan, a popular stump speaker, has spent the weeks preceding the general election on the campaign circuit rallying voters for the Lincoln-Johnson ticket. One of the most able of the political generals, Logan’s nom de guerre is “Black Jack” because of his jet-black hair, walrus mustache, and eyes. Frank Blair, like Logan a former congressman and son of an influential father, continues to lead the XVII Corps.
Maj. Gen. Henry W. Slocum retains command of the left wing, the Army of Georgia. An 1852 West Point graduate, he resigned his commission in 1856 and became a lawyer in upstate New York. He led a regiment at First Manassas and was wounded. A senior corps commander in the Army of the Potomac at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, he went west in September 1863 with General Hooker, whom he respected neither as a general nor as a gentleman. The Army of Georgia’s XIV Corps looks to Brig. Gen. Jefferson C. Davis, a career soldier, as its leader. He is not a West Pointer, having enlisted at 18 and served as a sergeant in the volunteers during the Mexican War. Davis possesses a hair-trigger temper and a grim visage. He is anti-black, able, and ambitious.
Commanding the XX Corps is Brig. Gen. Alpheus S. Williams. A Yale graduate, lawyer, and Mexican War soldier, he had been postmaster of Detroit. Although they call him “Pop,” he is only 54 years old. He has served both in the East and the West, and is deemed a good, solid soldier.
Sherman’s chief of cavalry is Brig. Gen. Hugh Judson Kilpatrick, West Point class of 1861. Kilpatrick is a would-be playwright, a widower, and a womanizer. Frequently referred to as either “Little Kil” or “Kil-Cavalry,” he attracts controversy like honey does flies. In November 1864 Sherman states, “I know that Kilpatrick is a hell of a damned fool, but I want just that sort of a man to command my cavalry in this expedition.”
Sherman’s force numbers about 60,000 strong—some 5,000 artillery and cavalry, the rest infantry. Strange to say, the Army has a huge wagon train, because travel will be more difficult in the Carolinas than on the Georgia march. There are more than 2,500 wagons and 600 ambulances. The wagons carry ammunition to suffice for one major battle, 7 days’ forage, and 20 days’ rations. On a good road the trains, if passing along a single route, would extend more than 25 miles. Each corps accordingly travels a separate road.
Although Sherman is not apprised of it as he begins his march, President Lincoln and Secretary of State William Seward on February 3 meet with three high-ranking Confederates headed by Vice President Alexander Stephens aboard the presidential yacht River Queen anchored in Hampton Roads. The meeting intended to end the war comes to naught. Lincoln demands the preservation of the Union and the Confederate representatives insist on the South’s independence.
Sherman, preparatory to again moving out, redeploys Howard’s right wing from its Savannah camps to Beaufort. Most of the troops make the trip by water. On January 20 Slocum’s left wing leaves Savannah by roads many of the troops had traveled on the March to the Sea. They are en route to Sister’s Ferry, 40 miles away. The next day Sherman takes a steamboat to Beaufort, and the Carolinas campaign is under way. But is it? Heavy rains and terrible roads slow Slocum’s march, and it is January 29 before the last of his columns cross the Savannah River at Sister’s Ferry and enter South Carolina.
Sherman, as he had on his earlier march, hopes to keep the Confederates in the dark that Columbia is his immediate goal. Thus, by sending Howard to Beaufort, General Hardee, who now commands at Charleston, will believe that the “Citadel of the Confederacy” is the enemy’s initial destination. Advancing by way of Sister’s Ferry, Slocum seems to be heading toward Augusta, where Gen. P. G. T. Beauregard watches and waits.
Abandoning his initial plan to defend Charleston, Gen. P. G. T. Beauregard decided instead to evacuate the city and move his Confederate forces to Cheraw, South Carolina.
The worst rains in 20 years beat down, drenching the columns and turning the roads into ribbons of mud. The first serious resistance is encountered and mastered by Howard’s wing at Rivers Bridge across the Salkehatchie Swamp on February 2–3. By the ninth both wings, though slowed by swollen rivers and creeks and washed-out bridges and impassable fords, have reached the Charleston & Augusta Railroad on a broad front from Midway to Blackville. While the soldiers wreck the railroad, twisting rails into “Sherman neckties,” Kilpatrick’s cavalry on February 11 gallops into Aiken and has a shootout with Wheeler’s cavalry in the town’s streets. This is as close as the Federals get to Augusta. By that day much of the lower part of the state is a smoldering ruin, and Union soldiers jest that the town of “Barnwell was now Burnwell.”
General Beauregard, the commander of all Confederate forces in South Carolina, ordered Hardee to evacuate Charleston and move his forces up the Northeastern Railroad to Cheraw. While the Confederates evacuated Charleston, Howard’s wing marched through Orangeburg and headed toward Columbia, the capital of South Carolina. Sherman’s other wing, under Slocum, moved parallel with Howard to the west, marching via Duncan’s Bridge and Lexington.
The Confederates had planned to defend Charleston, but Beauregard becomes convinced that if he does so, Hardee’s 10,000 troops will be lost along with the city. There are signs that the Confederates are pulling out, and the Union fleet, accordingly, feigns a landing at Bull’s Bay, north of Long Island (today’s Isle of Palms). Hardee orders evacuation on the night of February 17–18. For several nights prior to the evacuation, supplies and equipment are sent off by train. Many Charlestonians flee the city and become refugees. There is an exodus of people—refugees as well as troops head for Florence and beyond. On February 17th Sherman marches into Columbia. With the fall of both Columbia and Charleston on the 17th, it is a grim night for the Confederacy.
On the morning of February 17 the vanguard of Howard’s right wing crosses Broad River and enters Columbia. The mayor and other officials ride out to meet the invaders and surrender the city. The Yankees remain until the 20th, and on the first night of their occupation, the night turns into noonday. Much of the city’s downtown area is torched; listed as fire-gutted and destroyed are six churches, 11 banks, Hunt’s Hotel (Columbia’s best), Evans & Cogswell, where much of the Confederacy’s currency was printed; and the Ursuline Convent and Academy.
By the end of the Civil War, much of the once beautiful port city of Charleston lay in ruins.
Who is to blame is still debated. Was it Union soldiers who marched in singing, “Hail Columbia, Happy Land. If I don’t burn you, I’ll be damned?” Was it whiskey, stragglers, and misfits? Was it cotton bales fired by Confederates to prevent them from falling into Union hands? Perhaps all of these, but in Sherman’s mind the last was the most important factor. To which Confederate Lt. Gen. Wade Hampton, whose nearby mansion Millwood was burned, took strong exception. Even today this is a subject that generates hot words. Whatever the cause, high winds quickly spread the flames across the city. After destroying the railroads in the vicinity of Columbia, Sherman resumes his advance.
Upon leaving Columbia, Slocum’s left wing marches north and then east, crossing the Great Peedee at Sneedsboro, while Howard, after passing through Winnsboro, crosses the Wateree at Peary’s Ferry. On March 4, the right wing battles Hampton’s cavalry at Cheraw before crossing the Great Peedee River. Prior to entering North Carolina, Sherman issues orders to afford the Tarheels gentler treatment. The “bummers” will be leashed, and foraging soldiers will no longer be permitted to enter dwellings under any circumstances.
As the wings close on Fayetteville, Little Kil and two of his cavalry brigades bivouac at Monroe’s Crossroads, right in the path of Wade Hampton, who now commands Wheeler’s cavalry as well as his own. On March 10, Hampton’s dawn attack takes the Yanks by surprise in what becomes known as “Kilpatrick’s Shirttail Skedaddle.” Kilpatrick’s embarrassment causes a few chuckles, but it does not slow Sherman’s march.
On the 11th the Union vanguard enters Fayetteville too late to prevent Hardee’s retreating column, composed of the two divisions that had accompanied the general on his retreat from Charleston, from destroying the Cape Fear River Bridge. Sherman makes a 26-mile ride to arrive in Fayetteville. The Arsenal’s quartermaster, a friend of his from the “Old Army,” meets with Sherman. Sherman makes caustic remarks to him about turning his back on the Union, but he details men to guard his house, the only building the Yanks don’t burn on the Arsenal grounds.
The most welcome things the troops find at Fayetteville are the steamboats, which have come up the Cape Fear River from Wilmington. The first item landed is the mail, and mail is always all-important to a soldier. It’s another reason why the soldiers liked Sherman. They appreciate officers who look after their welfare, officers they can see, officers they know are not back in a bombproof somewhere in the rear.
On January 22 President Jefferson Davis signed into law an act passed by the Confederate Congress providing for the appointment of a general in chief of the Confederate armies. The man Congress had in mind for this position was Robert E. Lee. Davis wasted more than two weeks before appointing Lee to this rank. On February 22, Lee used his new authority to recall Joseph E. Johnston to duty and place him in overall command of the forces arrayed against Sherman. While Johnston attempted to concentrate his scattered and reeling forces, Union General Cox, advancing along the railroad toward Kinston from New Bern, collided with Rebels under Gen. Braxton Bragg at Southwest Creek on March 8. Part of the Federal force was overrun and captured, but the rest of Cox’s force dug in during the night. Bragg’s and Cox’s forces skirmished the next day, and on the tenth, the Confederates launched a frontal assault and were repulsed. Apprised of the arrival of Union reinforcements, Bragg retreated across the Neuse and evacuated Kinston, falling back first to Goldsboro and then joining Johnston at Smithfield.
Johnston continues his efforts to assemble the scattered units that will constitute his army as he prepares to engage his antagonist from the Atlanta campaign. Both he and Sherman know and respect each other. As yet all the fragments of Johnston’s Army of Tennessee, making their way willy-nilly across Piedmont North and South Carolina, have not reported.
On March 15 Johnston assigns Hardee’s infantry and Hampton’s cavalry the vital task of buying time for him to call in more troops and organize his heterogeneous units into an army. Outnumbered as he is, Johnston must attack one wing of Sherman’s army and beat one or the other before it can be reinforced. And with Terry’s and Cox’s columns rapidly closing on Goldsboro, Johnston’s window of opportunity is narrowing. When Sherman crosses the Cape Fear, there might be such an opportunity.
Abandoning Atlanta, Sherman advanced into Georgia with four army corps marching in two major columns about 60 miles apart. The two armies marched largely unopposed, facing only sporadic opposition from Confederate cavalry under Gen. Joseph Wheeler. By December 11 Sherman’s troops reached Savannah, where they faced an entrenched Confederate force under General Hardee. Sherman captured Rebel Fort McAllister south of the city, and Hardee, fearing that his forces might become trapped, retreated on December 20. After taking Savannah, Sherman moved into the Carolinas, burning the state capital at Columbia before entering North Carolina the first week of March. Sherman defeated General Johnston’s forces at Bentonville on March 19–21. Johnston surrendered his troops on April 26, 1865.
Sherman moves out on March 15. Kilpatrick’s cavalry has the lead as the army crosses the Cape Fear River. Followed by Slocum’s left wing, the horse soldiers turn into the Raleigh Plank Road. Kilpatrick and Slocum are feinting due north toward Raleigh to keep Johnston guessing as to Sherman’s objective, which is Goldsboro. Paralleling the road to the west is the Cape Fear, and a few miles to the east is the Black River. Ahead is the community of Smithfield, where Hardee has been camped since the evening of the tenth. Howard’s right wing, accompanied by two divisions of the Army of Georgia, as well as Slocum’s “nonessential wagons,” takes a more direct Goldsboro Road. Sherman travels with Slocum because that is where he expects to encounter the foe. Apprised of Kilpatrick’s approach, Hardee, familiar with the terrain, posts his men behind three parallel lines of breastworks, the first held by Col. Alfred Rhett’s brigade, the second by Stephen Elliotts’ brigade. These two brigades comprise Taliaferro’s division, longtime Charleston defenders. The third line is held by Maj. Gen. Lafayette McLaws’s division. In the initial fighting Kilpatrick’s people, armed with breech-loading carbines, hold their own, and among the Rebels captured is Colonel Rhett, a Harvard-educated Charleston dandy and son of archsecessionist Robert Barnwell Rhett.
The next morning, March 16, Kilpatrick’s cavalry opens the fight by engaging Rebel skirmishers. Two XX Corps divisions arrive from the vicinity of Bluff Church, and Brig. Gen. William Ward’s division deploys on the left. Three Union batteries unlimber 12 cannon near Oak Grove, the John Smith house, and hammer Rhett’s men posted behind breastworks to their front with shot and shell. A charge into the Confederate right flank by Col. Henry Case’s brigade shatters Rhett’s former command, causing one of the Yanks to boast, “I was never so pleased in my life as I was to see the rebs get up and try to get out of the way. I tell you there was a good many of them bit the dust.”
Although Slocum commits more troops, Hardee makes skillful use of the terrain to fight a delaying action as rain continues to beat down. By dusk Confederates of McLaws’s division still hold the third line of breastworks where they had begun the day. Hardee has stalled Sherman for 24 hours and gained an extra day for Johnston to concentrate his army. But the Confederates remain uncertain as to the enemy’s destination—is it Goldsboro or Raleigh? Union losses at Averasboro, as the battle is called, number 682 and the Confederate 500.
After reaching Averasboro Slocum’s wing turns east toward Goldsboro. Nightfall on March 18 finds its lead division halted on the Goldsboro Road two miles north of Blackman Lee’s store, where the advance of Howard’s right wing camps. During the day Slocum’s vanguard has clashed frequently with Hampton’s cavalry, but Union bummers complain that the Rebels didn’t drive worth a damn. Hampton, satisfied that the open ground near the Willis Cole plantation, two miles south of the rural village of Bentonville, is the place to fight Slocum, relays this information to Johnston. Johnston orders his troops to assemble there, many of them making a forced march. Johnston hopes to overwhelm Slocum’s 20,000-man wing before Howard can come to his assistance. Unaware of Slocum’s danger, Sherman joins Howard on the morning of the 19th confident that the day would see no battle.
By 10 a.m. the vanguard of Davis’s XIV Corps—Brig. Gen. William Carlin’s division—finds its way barred by Bragg’s command facing west and Lt. Gen. A. P. Stewart’s hard-core Army of Tennessee veterans fronting south. Carlin probes Stewart’s right and Bragg’s left, only to be beaten back. Both Slocum and Johnston up the stakes, calling up reinforcements. “Little Jimmy” Morgan’s XIV Corps division goes into position south of the Goldsboro Road on Carlin’s right. When Hardee’s corps, slowed by poor maps and confused guides, arrives on the field, Johnston posts Taliaferro’s people on Stewart’s right and rushes McLaws’s to Bragg’s left.
A slashing attack by Army of Tennessee troops and Taliaferro’s Charleston defenders overwhelms Carlin’s people, capturing three cannon and many bluecoats. General Carlin, who is wearing his dress uniform, narrowly escapes capture. Demonstrating they are fleet of foot, one of Morgan’s brigades counterattacks Stewart’s flank north of the Goldsboro Road, which slows and then stops the Confederate surge. Morgan’s people then stand tall in the “Bull Pen.” They are first assailed from the front by Bragg and then the rear by four undersized Army of Tennessee brigades.
The 3 p.m. arrival of Williams’s XX Corps, which had spent the night of the 18th ten miles in rear of the XIV Corps bivouacs, gives Slocum a much needed boost, and Ward’s and Brig. Gen. Nathaniel J. Jackson’s divisions take position on the Reddick Morris Farm in support of Morgan’s people, who continue to hold out in the Bull Pen south of the Goldsboro Road. In a final effort to build on his successes at the expense of Carlin’s division, Johnston hurls Taliaferro’s and then Maj. Gen. William Bate’s Army of Tennessee boys against the Union strongpoint on the Reddick Morris Farm. Supported by six batteries manning 21 cannon, the Federals repulse four desperate Confederate attacks. Whereupon the Confederates pull back and entrench on the ground from which they had launched their initial attack more than seven hours earlier.
Slocum has messaged Sherman several times that Johnston has turned on him and that his troops have given ground. By the time the first of these communications reaches Sherman, Howard’s nearest corps has halted for the night near Cox’s Crossroads at the intersection of the Goldsboro and New Goldsboro Roads. The crisis had passed, but this is unknown to Sherman. It catches “Uncle Billy” in his longhandled underwear, and as he strides about puffing on cigars, he orders Howard to march to Slocum’s aid.
The first right wing troops reach the Bentonville area and establish contact with Slocum by midday on the 20th. Johnston, apprised of their approach, pulls back his right and left flanks and entrenches. There is continuous skirmishing on Johnston’s left as first the XV and then the XVII Corps arrive, press in the Rebels, and dig in. Johnston establishes a bridgehead south of Mill Creek on the 21st, which chances fate. Late that afternoon Maj. Gen. Joseph Mower, a fighting general, assails and routs the cavalry holding Johnston’s extreme left. Disaster threatens the Confederates. Hardee launches a slashing counterattack in which his only son, 16-year-old Willie Hardee, is mortally wounded, and a cautious Sherman recalls Mower. That night Johnston abandons the field, and, under cover of darkness, retreats to Smithfield.
The Confederates gone, Sherman resumes the march to Goldsboro. Here he links up with Schofield’s columns under Cox and Terry on March 23. Bentonville is the last battle between Sherman’s and Johnston’s armies. Union casualties in the three-day fight number 1,527 and Confederate, 2,606.
But this would not be the two commanders’ last wartime meeting. The next time they would meet as peacemakers.
In the fourth week of March President Lincoln comes to City Point on the River Queen to meet with General Grant. With the Confederacy on its last legs, Sherman soon departs Goldsboro by rail and boat for City Point and a meeting with far-reaching implications. At City Point, Sherman meets with President Lincoln, Grant, and his old friend from Vicksburg days Admiral Porter. Their gathering takes place on March 28 aboard the River Queen, and their discussion centers on strategy for ending the war and putting the nation on the road to peace and reconciliation. Sherman’s desire that Sheridan’s formidable cavalry corps join him in North Carolina is discussed. Concerns are voiced that if Sherman comes north and flushes Lee’s army out of the Petersburg lines, it could cause postwar political problems between the East and West. It is decided to trust the fate of Lee’s army to Grant and his army group and the offensive that he has scheduled to begin the next day. Sherman returns to Goldsboro and plans to have his troops ready to move against Johnston on April 10. Although no notes were taken, Sherman comes away from the meeting believing that Lincoln’s intent was that once the Rebel armies had laid down their weapons, the Southern people “would at once be guaranteed all the rights” as citizens. Sherman is back at Goldsboro on March 30.
As planned, Sherman’s army breaks camp at Goldsboro on April 10 and advances on Smithfield. Johnston immediately withdraws from Smithfield, pulls back to Raleigh, and then retreats westward to Hillsborough. The Federals enter Raleigh on the 13th. Jefferson Davis and senior members of his government flee Richmond by train on Sunday night, April 2, en route to Danville. They pause there for a week before learning of Lee’s Appomattox surrender and move on to Greensboro, North Carolina. In Greensboro Johnston and Beauregard meet with Davis and his Cabinet on the 13th, and Johnston is empowered to meet with Sherman. Sherman agrees to meet with Johnston and approves the Confederate’s request for an armistice limiting troop movements and establishing a truce line. Their meeting will take place on the Bennett Farm, five miles by railroad west of Durham Station on April 17. Before starting out that morning Sherman receives a coded telegram advising him of Lincoln’s assassination. After swearing the clerk to secrecy, Sherman heads west. The two generals and their escorts meet at the home of James Bennett, a farmer. Once inside, Sherman shares the telegram with Johnston. They then turn to the subject that brought them together. Sherman states that as Lee has surrendered Johnston could do likewise “with honor and propriety.” Johnston agrees, and the two generals expand their discussion to the possibility, if President Davis would agree, of the surrender of all Confederate forces in the field. Sherman later recalls, “It did seem to me that there was presented a chance for peace that might at least be worth the few days that would be consumed in reference.” They agree to return the next day after Johnston had consulted Davis.
Fearing the worst when his soldiers learned of the President’s assassination, Sherman takes stern measures to keep the troops in their camps, away from whiskey, and off the streets. He is successful and there is no rioting or burning in Raleigh.
Having gained Davis’s reluctant acquiescence, Johnston, accompanied by Confederate Secretary of War John C. Breckinridge, returns to the Bennett Place as scheduled. Carried away by his role as peacemaker, Sherman’s peace terms—called the “Memorandum or Basis of Agreement”—go far beyond what Davis or Johnston expect, or what the authorities in Washington will authorize. In addition to providing for the surrender and disbanding of all Confederate forces, the President of the United States was to recognize existing state governments when their officials took an oath of allegiance to the United States, and so on.
Needless to say, President Andrew Johnson rejected Sherman’s “Memorandum.” Secretary of War Stanton even branded Sherman’s terms as treasonous. But the furor over Sherman’s agreement soon died down in the North, and he was once more a hero. When Sherman next met with Johnston on April 26. They signed a surrender document including terms similar to those agreed upon by Lee and Grant at Appomattox Court House. The number of Confederate troops—more than 89,000—embraced by the Bennett Place surrender far exceeded those paroled at Appomattox Court House.