BATTLE OF BENTONSVILLE. 501 division, rode rapidly to the right, faced Fearing's brigade to the left, and hurled them upon the flank of the Confederates, who were heavily pressing the broken center. The scene of conflict was in a densely wooded swamp, dark, and wet, and dismal. "Push right in the direction of that heaviest firing," shouted Davis to Fearing, as he gave him the order to move, “and attack whatever is in that swamp! Fight them for the best that is in your brigade! You'll stop that advance, sir, and we'll whip them yet!" The men caught up the words "we'll whip them yet," and dashed forward in an impetuous charge, under the immediate directions of Davis. That charge was a magnificent display of courage, discipline, and enthusiasm. The Confederates were staggered and paralyzed by this unexpected and stunning blow from a force hitherto unseen by them. They reeled and fell back in amazement, fearing they knew not what, and the attack was not renewed on that part of the field for more than an hour afterward. The army was saved! In that charge the gallant young General Fearing, the commander of the brigade, was disabled by a bullet, and hundreds of its dead and wounded strewed the field of conflict. The check thus given to the Confederates was of infinite value to Sherman's army, for it gave an opportunity for re-forming the disordered left and center of Davis's line. It was drawn back and formed in open fields, half a mile in the rear of the old line. The artillery was massed on a commanding knoll, so as to sweep the whole space between the woods wherein the Confederates were stationed and the new line; and Kilpatrick massed his cavalry on the left. Meanwhile, the attack upon Morgan was terrible and unceasing. "Seldom have I heard such continuous and remorseless roar of musketry," said an actor in the scene.' "It seemed more than men could bear. Twice General Davis turned to me and said, 'If Morgan's troops can stand this, all is right; if not, the day is lost. There is no reserve-not a regiment to move-they must fight it out.' And fight it out they did. They were entirely surrounded. I, myself, trying to get to them from the rear, three times ran into heavy bodies of the enemy's troops. Two or three different times, after resisting attacks from the front, they were compelled to jump over their own works and fight to the rear. Soldiers in that command who have passed through their score of battles, will tell you they never saw any thing like the fighting at Bentonsville. In the midst of the hottest of it, at perhaps five o'clock, Coggswell's brigade of the Twentieth Corps, arrived to fill the gap between the new formation of Carlin's line and that of Morgan. They moved forward, and the roar of musketry resounded along that line as it did along Morgan's. They seized the position, and gallantly held it. Meanwhile, the enemy on the left moved to the attack several times, but the repulse they had already received seemed to have dispirited them, and the terrible havoc of our massed artillery drove them back almost before they reached the fire of the infantry, who were burning to avenge the morning's disaster." The National forces received, Sherman said, "six distinct assaults by the combined forces of Hoke, Hardee, and Cheatham, under the immediate command of General Johnston himself, without giving an inch of ground, 1 Brevet Brigadier-General (then Colonel) A. C. McClurg, in a letter to the author, dated “Chicago, February 18, 1868." See page 390. 502 THE BATTLE OF BENTONSVILLE. and doing good execution on the enemy's ranks, especially with our artillery, the enemy having little or none." 1 With the coming of darkness ended the conflict known as THE BATTLE OF BENTONSVILLE, which, in brilliancy of personal achievements, and in lasting advantage to the cause of the Republic, must ever be ranked among the most memorable and important contests of the war. Indeed, it seems SHERMAN'S MARCHI THROUGH THE CARO LINAS. proper to consider it the key-bat tle of the Civil War. Had Johnston won there, the sad consequences would probably have been the Rich loss of the whole of Sherman's army, and the quick and fatal dispersion or capture of Grant's army before Petersburg and mond, by the combined forces of Lee and Johnston, attacking him in overwhelming numbers, in front and rear. In this view the solid importance of the victory of Bentons ville can not be over-estimated. In that, his last battle, as in all others during the war, General Jefferson C. Davis exhib ited in full relief those qualities which always distinguished him as a cool, discreet, and vigorous fighting commander. 4 March 19-20. During the night after the battle Slocum's wagon-trai 11 and its guard of two divisions of the Twentieth Corps, also Hazen's 1 General Sherman's Report, April 4, 1865. The 2 The aggregate loss of the National army near Bentonsville was reported by Sherman at 1,643, of which nearly 1,200 were from the divisions of Carlin and Morgan, of the Fourteenth Corps, which numbered between 10.000 and 12,000 men. The loss of the Confederates was never reported. It must have been heavyNationals captured 1,625 of their men, and buried 267 of their dead. Johnston's force numbered between 30,000 and 40,000 men. JUNCTION OF THE ARMIES. 503 division, of the Fifteenth Corps, came up and made the position of the left wing almost impregnable. The right wing moving to the relief of the left, found its approach opposed by a considerable body of Confederate cavalry behind a barricade at the forks of the road near Bentonsville. Johnston's cavalry were soon dislodged, and Howard moved forward and joined his left to Slocum's right. The Confederates had thrown back their left flank, and had constructed a line of parapet connected with that in front of Slocum, in the form of a bastion, its salient on the main Goldsboro' road, interposing be tween Slocum on the west and Howard on the east, while the flanks rested on Mill Creek, covering the road back to Smithfield. By four o'clock in the afternoon, after more or less skirmishing all day, the Nationals had a strong line of battle confronting this position, and putting Johnston on the defensive. The skirmish line pressed him steadily, and on the following day this pressure became so vigorous, that it almost amounted to a general engagement. There was skirmishing and hard fighting all day long. • March 20, 1865. • March 21. Meanwhile, Schofield and Terry, as we have seen,' had been approaching Goldsboro', and at the very time' when Sherman was pressing Johnston at Bentonsville, the former entered that place, and Terry laid a pontoon bridge over the Neuse River, ten miles above, at Cox's Bridge. So the three armies were now in actual connection. Johnston, informed of this, perceived that all chance of success against Sherman had vanished; and that night, after having his only line of retreat seriously menaced by a flank movement by General Mower, covered by an attack along the Confederate front, he withdrew, and fled toward Smithfield in such haste that he left his pickets, many dead, and his wounded in hospitals, to fall into Sherman's hands. Pursuit was made at dawn, but continued for only a short distance. • March 22. On the 23d of March all the armies, in the aggregate about sixty thousand strong, were disposed in camps around Goldsboro', there to rest and receive needed clothing. On the 25th, the railroad between Goldsboro' and New Berne was completed and in perfect order, by which a rapid channel of supply from the sea was opened. So ended, in complete triumph, and with small loss, Sherman's second great march through the interior of the enemy's country; and he was then in a desirable position of easy supply, to take an efficient part in the spring and summer campaign of 1865, if the war should continue. Considering it important to have a personal interview with the General-in-chief, Sherman placed Schofield temporarily in chief command of the army, and hastened by railway to Morehead City, and thence by water to head-quarters at City Point, where he arrived on the evening of the 27th of March. There he met Generals Grant, Meade, Ord, and other leading army commanders, and President Lincoln. He "learned," he said, "the general state of the military world," and then returned to New Berne in a navy steamer, and reached Goldsboro' on the night of the 30th." After his winter campaign in Southwestern Virginia, already ne cized,' General Stoneman returned to Knoxville, and was ordered to make a cavalry raid into South Carolina, in aid of Sherman's • March. • Feb by 7 1 See page 494. 504 1865. STONEMAN'S GREAT RAID. rest of movements. Before Stoneman was ready to move, Sherman had marched March 29. April 2. Having performed his prescribed duty, General Stoneman turned his face southward, and, on the 9th of April, struck the North Carolina railroad between Danville and Greensboro'. At Germantown several hundred negroes, who had joined the column, were sent back into East Tennessee. At the same time Colonel Palmer was sent to destroy the railroad between Salisbury and Greensboro', and the factories at Salem, in North Carolina; while the main column moved on Salisbury, forcing the Yadkin April 11. at Huntsville, and skirmishing near there. Palmer performed his duty well, and near Deep River Bridge, he captured a South Carolina regiment of four hundred men. Salisbury was a prisoner-depot, and a considerable Confederate force was stationed there, under General W. M. Gardiner. They were about three thousand strong. They were found at Grant's Creek, ten miles east of Salis bury, early on the 12th, with eighteen guns, under the direction ⚫ April. of Pemberton, Grant's opponent at Vicksburg, now reduced from a lieutenant-general to a colonel. This force was gallantly charged by the brigades of General A. C. Gillem and Colonel Brown, of the Eleventh Michigan Cavalry, and instantly routed. Its guns were all captured, and over twelve hundred of its men were made prisoners. The spoils, besides the cannon, were three thousand small-arms, and a vast quantity of stores of every kind. Those of the Confederates who fled were chased several miles. In Salisbury were found a vast collection of ammunition, provision, clothing, 1 Major E. C. Moderwell, of Palmer's brigade (from whom the author received a very interesting account of this raid), after describing the manner of destroying railroad tracks, similar to that mentioned in note 2, page 392 says, "A regiment of men could destroy from three to five miles an hour." ་ MODERWELL'S EXPEDITION. 505 and medicine, with ten thousand small-arms, four cotton factories, and seven thousand bales of cotton. These were all destroyed, with the railway tracks in each direction from Salisbury. The Union prisoners had been removed. The prison-pens where they had suffered were destroyed. On the 17th of April, Stoneman started, with a part of his command, for East Tennessee, taking with him the prisoners, captured artillery, and thousands of negroes. On the following day, General Palmer, whose command was at Lincolnton, sent Major E. C. Moderwell, with two hundred and fifty men of the Twelfth Ohio Cavalry, to destroy the bridge of the Charlotte and South Carolina railroad, over the Catawba River. At that time, Jefferson Davis, having fled from Richmond, was at Charlotte with a very considerable force; and the mounted men of Vaughn and Duke, who had come down from the borders of Virginia, were on the Catawba. On that account it was necessary to move with great RAILWAY BRIDGE OVER THE CATAWBA RIVER.1 4 April, 1865. caution. At Dallas, Moderwell had a skirmish with these cavalry leaders, but evaded a battle with them; and at daybreak on the 19th," the Union force arrived at the doomed bridge, where they captured the picket and surprised the guard. The bridge, delineated in the engraving, was a splendid structure, eleven hundred and fifty feet in length, and fifty feet above the water. Moderwell's men set it on fire at one end, and in thirty minutes it was completely destroyed. After skirmishing with Ferguson's Confederate cavalry (which came up on the north side of the bridge) for two hours, the raiders turned back, and, by marching all night, rejoined the brigade at Dallas, with three hundred and twenty-five prisoners, two hundred horses, and two pieces of artillery. This was one of the most gallant little exploits of the war. During the raid just recorded, the National cavalry captured six thousand prisoners, twenty-five pieces of artillery taken in action, and twenty-one abandoned by the foe, and a large number of small-arms; and they destroyed an immense amount of public property. 1 The writer is indebted to Major Moderwell for the above picture of the bridge. |