March 20, 1865---The Battle of Bentonville (Day Two)

MARCH 20, 1865:    

The Battle of Bentonville       (Day Two):

The sun rises on a very different battlefield at Bentonville. Overnight, a massive part of Sherman’s right wing (the Army of the Tennessee) has arrived to bolster the Army of Georgia. Joseph E. Johnston C.S.A.’s forces are outnumbered at better than three-to-one.

Realizing that he is badly overmatched, Johnston has spent the night realigning his troops into an easily-defensible “U” shape, with the open end pointing north, toward Mill Creek, and away from the Union lines. Sherman realistically expects Johnston to retreat; however, Johnston is making arrangements for his wounded. He is hoping too to lure Sherman into an ill-considered attack, much as had happened at Kennesaw Mountain back in June. Light skirmishing covers the entire field of battle all day, but nothing develops into a major exchange.

 

The Harper family's home was used as a Union field hospital after the battle. When the armies withdrew, 45 wounded Confederates were left behind in the Harpers' care, a not uncommon occurrence during the Civil War. Formal field hospitals were not the norm until World War I

March 19, 1865---The Battle of Bentonville (Day One)

MARCH 19, 1865:     

The Battle of Bentonville       (Day One):    

The United States’ Army of Georgia moves inexorably toward Goldsboro, North Carolina. Bloodied in the Battle of Averasboro, the Army of Georgia is about to meet its greatest challenge. General Joseph E. Johnston C.S.A. is going to go for broke in an attempt to stall the Union advance. He throws his full 22,000-man force against Sherman’s left wing. 

The Union is lulled into a false sense of security when Johnston’s units take up a blocking position south of the Neuse River. Having the river at his back limits Joe Johnston’s maneuverability, or so Sherman believes. 

Thinking that they have encountered only an advance guard, the endless blue line halts and emplaces, by and large using natural features in the landscape as defensive positions rather than formally entrenching and building breastworks. Clearly, they expect to be on their way rapidly. 

This expectation is crushed, and so is the Union’s defensive line, when a massed Confederate attack occurs around 3:00 P.M.. Quickly exploiting the weaknesses in the Union line, the Confederates manage to send them reeling back in confusion. As the Federals withdraw, additional Confederate forces on their flank open up a withering enfilade fire. Only the arrival of Union reserves prevents a rout. Under heavy close-range fire, the Union entrenches, succeeding in throwing back five furious Confederate charges. The weight of sheer numbers tells. As darkness falls, the two sides remain in place. 

 . . . It looked like a picture and at our distance was truly beautiful . . . But it was a painful sight to see how close their battle flags were together, regiments being scarcely larger than companies and a division not much larger than a regiment should be. 

--- Col. Charles W. Broadfoot, 1st North Carolina Junior Reserves.  

March 18, 1865---The House stood adjourned

MARCH 18, 1865:     

"The hour of 2 o'clock having arrived, / The Speaker announced that the House stood adjourned sine die." (7 J. Cong. C.S.A. 796 (Mar. 18, 1865). 

With those words, the Second Congress of the Confederate States of America adjourns --- and the Confederate Congress adjourns forever. It is in fact the end of only the first session of its expected two year term, but the Confederacy collapses before Congress can reconvene. 

For an eminently political people, Southerners did not establish formal political parties. Parties were considered “anti-democratic” by their very nature. However, a de facto divide did develop, between “nationalists” (hardline secessionists aligned with Davis who dominated the First Congress) and “libertarians” (who dominated the Second Congress and who felt that even the Confederate central government was too strong). The shift in power between these two groups in the election of 1863 may be one of the lesser-known but more impactful reasons for the failure of the C.S.A.

March 17, 1865---He Who Would Fight To Be A Slave Deserves To Be A Slave

MARCH 17, 1865:     

President Lincoln addresses an Indiana Regiment at the National Hotel in Washington D.C.. His brief speech reads in part:

It will be but a very few words that I shall undertake to say. I was born in Kentucky, raised in Indiana, and lived in Illinois; and now I am here, where it is my business to care equally for the good people of all the States. I am glad to see an Indiana regiment . . .   

There are but few views or aspects of this great war upon which I have not said or written something . . . But there is one --- the recent attempt of our erring brethren . . . to employ the negro to fight for them . . . The great question . . .  [is] whether the negro . . . will fight for them. I do not know . . . They ought to know better than me. 

I have in my lifetime heard many arguments why the negroes ought to be slaves; but if they fight for those who would keep them in slavery, it will be a better argument than any I have yet heard. He who will fight for that, ought to be a slave . . . While I have often said that all men ought to be free, yet would I allow . . . persons to be slaves who want to be . . . I do know [a slave] cannot fight and stay at home and make bread too. And . . .  one is about as important as the other . . . 

I am rather in favor of having them . . .  as soldiers . . . I wish I could send my vote over the river so that I might cast it in favor of allowing the negro to fight. But they cannot fight and work both. We  . . . now see the bottom of the enemy's resources . . . I am glad to see the end so near at hand . . . 

This is one of the President’s first public appearances since the Inauguration, and Lincoln is so worn out afterward that he changes his evening plans. He is supposed to attend a charity performance of the play Still Waters Run Deep to be given at Campbell Military Hospital on the outskirts of Washington City. Instead, he returns to the White House and goes to bed. 

What Lincoln does not know is that he has unwittingly foiled John Wilkes Booth’s plot to kidnap him.

Booth happens to be staying at the National Hotel. Lincoln appears there whilst Booth and his cronies are traveling out to Campbell Hospital. The group is intent on intercepting the President’s carriage, seizing the man bodily, and taking him to Jefferson Davis bound and gagged. When Lincoln does not appear, the group disperses in disappointment and disgust. Booth goes back to the National Hotel only to discover to his outrage that he has missed his quarry by scant minutes. He retires to his rooms fuming, to brood on the injustices of his life.

March 16, 1865---The Battle of Averasboro (The Battle of Averasborough)

MARCH 16, 1865:      

The Battle of Averasboro (The Battle of Averasborough):

The relative strength of the Union (blue) and Confederate (red) forces at Averasboro is easy to see on this battle map

 

The history of Averasborough, North Carolina, told in brief, is an interesting glimpse into the history of many such small country towns. The town was founded around 1740 on the banks of the Cape Fear River. At the time of its founding, Averasborough represented the navigable head of the river. As such, it became an important market town for inland farmers to sell their produce. Averasborough grew, becoming the third largest city in the State (after Wilmington and Fayetteville), and competing for the honor of becoming the State capital (an honor it lost by one vote, supposedly because the town’s delegates were given spiked cherry juice to drink at the convention and they were too drunk to cast ballots). 

Throughout its history, Averasborough kept attempting to widen the river and bypass the rapids that limited navigation, but before the invention of dynamite there was no way to do so. Instead, a series of locks and canals were built, allowing riverboats to bypass the rapids. On September 11, 1859, a hurricane caused the Cape Fear River to flood, destroying the lock and canal system. Nevertheless, Averasboro (the spelling varies) thrived during the Civil War as a regional Confederate Recruiting Center, a munitions dump, and a hospital town. 

The Battle of Averasboro in a contemporary rendering. The road and the Oak Grove House are recognizable landmarks

The fighting war reached Averasboro on this day when General William J. Hardee C.S.A. received orders from Joseph E. Johnston to attack William T. Sherman’s left wing (now called the Army of Georgia). This represented the first large scale attempt to disrupt Sherman’s March. 

Averasboro today, looking toward the Union lines

Looking toward the Confederate lines. The Old Town Cemetery is to the left, the museum at center

Hardee’s 6,000 troops attacked the Army of Georgia’s 26,000 troops just outside Averasboro. Catching the Union forces by surprise, the Confederates threw them back in three successive waves, causing 700 Federal casualties; however, when a mass of Union reinforcements entered the field, Hardee’s men were hard put to it. Facing the utter destruction of his force, Hardee finally withdrew. He had delayed Sherman for exactly one afternoon at a price he could not afford. 

Janie Smith, a 17 year old resident of Averasboro, described the scene after the battle thus:

Oak Grove House, the last remaining structure in what was Averasboro

The scene beggars description, the blood lay in puddles in the grove, the groans of the dying and the complaints of those undergoing amputation was horrible, the painful impression has seared my very heart. I can never forget it. 

Battle damage is still evident on the Oak Grove House

Averasboro never forgot it either. Of the almost 1,000 Confederates lost at Averasboro, about half were from Averasboro itself. The loss of so much of its young male population was a disaster for the town. Although Sherman did not burn Averasboro, the town’s importance waned after the battle. 

Averasboro suffered the same postwar stagnation that affected so many other rural areas of the South. Its economic fate was sealed when the Atlantic Coast Railway bypassed the town in the 1870s, instituting a stop in nearby Dunn, about seven miles away. Its social fate was sealed during Reconstruction, when Averasboro became the epicenter of Ku Klux Klan activity in the center of the State. After rounds of Klan violence and several spectacular murders / lynchings, the Federal Government took the extreme step of placing troops in Averasboro. The town’s Klan population scattered, some going as far away as Texas. Eventually, the few remaining people of Averasboro moved on. By the early Twentieth Century only the old town cemetery and the Oak Grove House remained to mark the fact that there had been a town named Averasboro.  

Today, Averasboro is a “Point of Interest.” A Civil War Museum stands not far from the battlefield, which was made an Historic Site in the 1980s. During North Carolina’s 1990s economic boom, the City of Dunn annexed what had been Averasboro.

The Battle Museum