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Historical significance: Bentonville
The Battle of Bentonville:
"A Bold and Unexpected Attack"

By Mark A. Moore

From Hallowed Ground magazine. Vol. 4, No. 3 (Fall 2003). Published by the Civil War Preservation Trust.
Special thanks to North Carolina Historic Sites

As the momentous year 1864 drew to a close, the Armies of the Union stood poised to deal their final blows to the Confederate war effort. Atlanta had fallen, President Abraham Lincoln had been reelected, and the Confederate Army of Tennessee had been soundly crushed. The western armies seemed unstoppable, as Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman presented Savannah, Georgia to Lincoln as a Christmas offering. Georgia howled, and the tide of war shifted permanently in favor of the North.

In Virginia, the Union general-in-chief, Ulysses S. Grant, was making plans. Having relentlessly pursued the Army of Northern Virginia, Grant was stalled against his old nemesis in the trenches around Richmond and Petersburg. Robert E. Lee's vaunted Confederate army, on its last legs after more than three years of brilliant campaigning, stood defiantly between Grant and the Southern capital.

Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman

Grant now wanted Sherman's men ferried by sea to Virginia, where their combined armies might administer the coup de grace to the South's principal army. Sherman, however, had been making plans of his own. On Christmas Eve, he coolly laid them out for his superior — an overland strike into the heart of the Confederacy with 60,000 men. It was vintage Sherman, and a proud Grant replied: "Your confidence in being able to march up and join this army pleases me . . . The effect of such a campaign will be to disorganize the South, and prevent the organization of new armies from their broken fragments . . . [M]ake your preparations . . . without delay. Break up the railroads in South and North Carolina, and join the armies operating against Richmond as soon as you can."

In mid-January 1865, as Sherman moved into South Carolina, the Confederacy received another irreversible blow when Fort Fisher — guarding access to Wilmington, N.C. — fell to the largest Union combined operation of the war. The amphibious attack sealed Wilmington's doom and closed the last major blockade-running seaport open to the South, choking Lee's supply line.

Campaign Map Full State Overview (PDF)

Against poorly arrayed Confederates under Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard, Sherman's minions blazed northward virtually unopposed. By February 22, Columbia was ruined and Wilmington was in the control of Federal forces under Maj. Gen. John Schofield and Maj. Gen. Alfred Terry. With the beaten remnants of the Army of Tennessee and other Rebel units widely scattered across the South, only North Carolina lay between fast-moving Sherman and a junction with Grant's armies.

Schofield had direct orders from Grant to act in cooperation with Sherman's march. Their joint objective in North Carolina, as outlined by Grant, was the rail hub of Goldsboro. There, the combined armies (under Sherman) would secure a supply base to rest and refit before continuing the campaign.

General Lee, newly appointed commander-in-chief of all Southern armies, lost faith in Beauregard and took his case to the Confederate War Department. Lee's choice for a replacement offered one of the sad ironies of the war for Jefferson Davis. With few options as the noose tightened on his dying nation, the Confederate president reluctantly approved Lee's candidate — a personal enemy Davis had sacked in Georgia seven months earlier.

Gen. Joseph E. Johnston

Thus, on the day Wilmington fell, Lee wired Gen. Joseph E. Johnston at Lincolnton, N.C.: "Assume command of the Army of Tennessee and all troops in Department of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida . . . Concentrate all available forces and drive back Sherman."

Johnston knew it was too late to stop Sherman, and he told Lee as much. Even slowing the Union advance seemed a stretch at this point, given the far-flung units at Johnston's disposal. Reluctantly, the veteran commander assumed his final responsibility. Time was short, and "Old Joe" faced a daunting task.

As the Union army crossed into North Carolina on March 7-8, it was traveling in familiar fashion — two separate wings of roughly 30,000 men each, living off the land as they went. The march was a marvel of military engineering and logistics. Sherman knew that his "special antagonist" from the Atlanta Campaign had been restored to command. That first week of March, Sherman urged his top commanders to keep a sharp watch for enemy activity, and to prepare to fight Johnston if necessary.

The Confederate commander was waiting at Fayetteville, where he informed Lee on the eighth that he would endeavor to strike a portion of the enemy's divided army. Evacuating Charleston and falling back through South Carolina, Confederate Lt. Gen. William J. Hardee's corps of seasoned veterans and raw garrison troops reached Fayetteville just one step ahead of Sherman. As the Federals approached town on March 10, the first indication of organized resistance came when opportunistic Rebel troopers under Lt. Gen. Wade Hampton mauled a portion of Maj. Gen. H. Judson Kilpatrick's cavalry division. Hardee then withdrew northeast along the banks of the Cape Fear River and took position several miles south of Averasboro. Having left Fayetteville for Raleigh, Johnston directed Hardee to stay "as near the enemy's line of march as possible, which will enable us to unite [our] other troops with yours."

 

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