On the afternoon of 19 March 1865, in the pine woods near the hamlet of Bentonville, North Carolina, Confederate infantry under General Joseph E. Johnston charged the left wing of William T. Sherman's army and drove part of it from the field. It was the last battle between the field armies of Sherman and Johnston. The Union line held, Sherman's other wing arrived the next day, and after three days of fighting Johnston withdrew. A month later he surrendered.
Sherman in the Carolinas
After his March to the Sea, Sherman turned north through the Carolinas in early 1865, destroying railroads and supply lines on his way toward Grant's armies in Virginia. He marched in two wings: the Left Wing under Major General Henry W. Slocum and the Right Wing under Major General Oliver O. Howard, both heading for Goldsboro, where more Union troops under John M. Schofield were to join him. On 16 March Slocum's wing was held up for a day by William J. Hardee's Confederates at Averasboro.1
Johnston had been given the task of gathering what was left of the Confederate forces in the region and stopping Sherman. He concentrated about 21,000 men near Bentonville, against a Union army of about 60,000. The state historic site gives Johnston about 16,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry. His plan was to fall on Slocum's wing and crush it before Howard's wing could come to its help.2
The attack of 19 March
Johnston drew up his army in a hook-shaped line across the Goldsboro road at Cole's Plantation. Among the troops on his left were the boys of the North Carolina Junior Reserves, aged 17 and 18, according to the Encyclopedia of North Carolina. Slocum believed he faced only cavalry, and a Union probing attack was thrown back.3
The main Confederate assault began late in the afternoon, at 3:15 according to the Encyclopedia of North Carolina. It drove William P. Carlin's division from the field and sent the Union left reeling. James D. Morgan's division held on while attacked from three sides, and Union reinforcements of the 20th Corps formed a new line at the Morris farm. Repeated Confederate attacks failed to break it, and by nightfall the Confederates fell back to their starting positions. The American Battlefield Trust and the state historic site both describe the first day as a tactical draw.4
Mower's charge and the retreat
Howard's wing reached the field on 20 March, leaving Johnston badly outnumbered. He stayed in his entrenchments anyway, guarding his only line of retreat over Mill Creek and hoping Sherman would attack him head-on. On 21 March, in heavy rain, Major General Joseph A. Mower turned what was meant to be a little reconnaissance into an attack on the Confederate left that came close to the Mill Creek bridge. A counterattack led by Hardee and Sherman's own order to pull back ended the threat. Hardee's only son, aged sixteen, who had joined the 8th Texas Cavalry, was mortally wounded in the counterattack. That night Johnston withdrew toward Smithfield.5
The losses were 1,527 Union, with 194 killed, 1,112 wounded and 221 missing, and 2,606 Confederate, with 239 killed, 1,694 wounded and 673 missing, for a total of 4,133. A mass grave next to the Harper family cemetery holds 360 Confederate dead.6
The end in North Carolina
Sherman did not pursue far. He marched on to Goldsboro, which he reached on 23 March according to the Encyclopedia of North Carolina, and joined Schofield and Alfred Terry there. Robert E. Lee's army surrendered to Grant about three weeks after Bentonville, and on 26 April 1865 Johnston surrendered to Sherman at Bennett Place near Durham, which the state historic site calls the largest troop surrender of the war. The Encyclopedia of North Carolina describes Bentonville as the largest land battle of the war in the state, and the American Battlefield Trust calls it the last large-scale battle of the Civil War. Sherman's earlier campaign is told in our article on the March to the Sea, and his life in our profile of William Tecumseh Sherman.7
Also on this day
- 1643: Battle of Hopton Heath. On Hopton Heath in Staffordshire, Royalist cavalry under the Earl of Northampton attacked Parliamentarians under Sir John Gell and Sir William Brereton in the English Civil War.
