1865.]

HAMPTON AND KILPATRICK.

Berry good road, and eight or ten miles." "Any guerrillas?"

503

"Oh no, massa, dey all gone two days ago. You could ha' played cards on dere coat-tails, dey was in sich a hurry."

General Sherman, who was riding a very handsome and gay horse, motioned to his staff to follow, and turned down the road. Just then General Barry came along, and after questioning the negro further about the road, asked him what he was doing there.

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Dey say Massa Sherman will be along soon," he answered. Why," said General Barry, "that was General Sherman you were talking to.”

"De great God!" exclaimed the negro, "jus' look at his hoss!" And with a bound he ran after General Sherman and trotted along by his side for a mile or two. "But," says General Sherman, "he seemed to admire the horse more than the rider."

Cheraw was reached on the 3d of March in a drizzling rain. A large amount of stores and other things were found there, which had been sent from Charleston for safety; among them were twenty-five pieces of artillery, thirty-six hundred barrels of gunpowder, many muskets, and wagon-loads of fine wines and liquors, carpets, and household goods. In Cheraw General Sherman heard that Beauregard had been superseded by his old foe, General Joseph E. Johnston, and that he was collecting in his front all the remains of the different Confederate armies to oppose his further march toward Richmond. The Great Pedee River was crossed, and by the 6th of March the whole army was on the way to Fayetteville, which was reached five days later. The roads through the swamps and pine woods were very bad, and had to be corduroyed most of the way with fence-rails and split saplings. Skirmishing with parties of the enemy was almost of daily occurrence. Hardee's troops, which had retreated from Cheraw to Fayetteville, had crossed Cape Fear River and burned the bridge behind them. They had been followed closely by Kilpatrick's cavalry, who had several fights with both Wheeler and Hampton. Early one morning Hampton's cavalry surprised Kilpatrick's men in their camp, routed them, and captured their guns and most of Kilpatrick's staff officers. Kilpatrick himself barely escaped on foot. He

succeeded in rallying his men in a swamp, and attacked the enemy, who, supposing him utterly defeated, were engaged in plundering his camp. The Confederates were routed in turn, and Kilpatrick retook his guns; but Hampton got off with about two hundred prisoners.

Sherman halted three days at Fayetteville to rest his men, who were wearied with the incessant labor of marching, roadmaking, and bridge-building. While there he received dispatches from General Terry in Wilmington, the first official news he had had from the other armies since he began his march. Before leaving Fayetteville, the fine United States arsenal, to which had been brought much of the machinery from the armory at Harper's Ferry when it was captured in .1861, was completely destroyed, together with other public property. On the 15th of March the whole army was across Cape Fear River and on the way to Goldsboro. Skirmishing continued with Hardee's troops, and on the next day they were found in a strong position near Averysboro. A brisk engagement took place, with a loss of about five hundred on each side, ending in the retreat of the Confederates toward Smithfield. Another battle took place on the 19th and 20th with General Johnston's army, near Bentonsville. Johnston, who had succeeded in getting together the remnants of Hardee's, Bragg's, and Hood's forces, made a stand there and attacked General Slocum's column. Slocum, uncertain of the enemy's strength, stood on the defensive until the others came up. There was some hard fighting on the first day, in which the Confederates were repulsed, and they finally retreated to Smithfield. The Union loss at Bentonsville was about sixteen hundred, that of the enemy more than twenty-three hundred.

The route being then open to Goldsboro, Sherman pushed on to that place and formed a junction (March 23) with Generals Schofield and Terry, who, it will be remembered, had arrived there from Wilmington only two days before. The army was in splendid condition, and the trains were almost as fresh as when they left Atlanta; yet during the previous fifty days they had marched four hundred and twenty-five miles from Savannah to Goldsboro, across a country almost in a state of nature, through swamps and thickets, over mud roads which had to be mended at almost every mile, and across deep

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LINCOLN AND SHERMAN.

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rivers which had to be bridged. Nearly all the railroads of South Carolina had been destroyed, and a strip of country through the State, at least fifty miles wide, had been devastated and stripped of all its food. In North Carolina, where the Union feeling had been very strong in the beginning of the war, the soldiers had been much less destructive than in South Carolina, and but little private property had been injured.

With the armies of Schofield and Terry added to his own, General Sherman had nearly ninety thousand men. He had plenty of supplies, for the Neuse River was open from Goldsboro to the sea, and two lines of railway-one to Wilmington and one to New Berne and Beaufort-had been put in good working order. His success thus far was complete, for he had cut off Lee's resources, and had got behind him with an army large enough to keep him from moving southward from Virginia. This was the great object of the campaign, for if the Confederates had been allowed to retreat southward, they might have united their forces from the east and from the west and still have given much trouble. General Lee knew the danger of Sherman's advance, but he could do nothing to prevent it. There was some talk of giving up Richmond and marching against Sherman, in hope of defeating him before Grant could give him aid. It was believed by many that if Sherman could be overwhelmed Richmond could be regained. General Lee was in favor of this plan, but the Confederate authorities decided that the capital must be held at all hazards.

Although Sherman had received despatches from Grant giving a full account of operations, he felt that he ought to have a consultation with the general-in-chief before making any further movement. So, leaving his army in command of Schofield, he went by railroad to Beaufort and thence by steamer (March 27) to City Point, General Grant's headquarters before Petersburg. He found General Grant and his family living in a pretty group of huts on the banks of the James River, which, filled with war and merchant vessels of all kinds, presented a busy scene. After a long talk, the two commanders went to call on President Lincoln, who was then on board the steamer River Queen at the wharf. General Sherman says the President "was full of curiosity about the many incidents of our great march, which had reached him

officially and through the newspapers, and seemed to enjoy very much the more ludicrous parts-about the "bummers," and their devices to collect food and forage when the outside world supposed us to be starving; but at the same time he expressed a good deal of anxiety lest some accident might happen to the army in North Carolina during my absence. I explained to him that that army was snug and comfortable, in good camps, at Goldsboro; that it would require some days to collect forage and food for another march; and that General Schofield was fully competent to command it in my absence."

Both General Grant and General Sherman believed that the end of the war was at hand, but they thought that one more great battle would have to be fought. Mr. Lincoln was very anxious to avoid another battle, if possible. He said that enough blood had been shed, and he was in favor of giving Lee and Johnston the best of terms if they would agree to disband their armies and let their men go back to their homes. With their surrender he believed that all the other Confederates in the South and West would lay down their arms and the country would be once more at peace. "When I left him,” says General Sherman, "I was more than ever impressed by his kindly nature, his deep and earnest sympathy with the afflictions of the whole people, resulting from the war, and by the march of hostile armies through the South; and that his earnest desire seemed to be to end the war speedily, without more bloodshed or devastation, and to restore all the men of both sections to their homes. . . . Of all the men I ever met, he seemed to possess more of the elements of greatness, combined with goodness, than any other."

General Sherman returned to Goldsboro (March 30) and at once set about making preparations to march again on the 10th of April, the day agreed on with General Grant. But before that time great events occurred which changed all his plans.

CHAPTER XL.

MOBILE.

STONEMAN'S RAID.-SALISBURY.-MOBILE.-WILSON'S RAID.-FIGHT WITH FORREST.-TAKING OF SELMA.-COTTON BURNING.-SURRENDER OF MONTGOMERY.-CAPTURE OF COLUMBUS.IRON-CLAD RAMS.-MACON.-JOYFUL NEWS.- DEFENCES OF MOBILE.- CANBY'S PLAN.SPANISH FORT.-STORMING OF BLAKELY.-SURRENDER OF MOBILE.

BE

EFORE following further the armies of Grant and Sherman, let us see what has been doing meanwhile in the South and West. It will be remembered that after the defeat of General Hood's army at Nashville, General Schofield had been withdrawn, with the Twenty-third Corps, from Thomas's Army of the Cumberland and sent East to Sherman. Shortly afterward General Thomas was ordered to send the command of General A. J. Smith and some cavalry to General Canby, then in New Orleans, to aid in an attack on Mobile; and also a larger cavalry force, under General Stoneman, to make a raid into South Carolina toward Columbia, to destroy railroads and other public property, and thus aid General Sherman, who was then marching in that direction. But Stoneman was so long in getting ready that he was too late to help Sherman, who had moved rapidly; so he was ordered to march eastward and destroy the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad as far toward Lynchburg as possible. This was intended. to cut off General Lee's retreat southward, in case he should withdraw from Petersburg and Richmond. Stoneman, who had made a raid in the same direction near the close of the previous year (1864), left Knoxville on the 20th of March, and going into Virginia destroyed the railroad nearly to Lynchburg. He then moved into North Carolina, defeated three thousand Confederates near Salisbury, capturing nearly half of them, with fourteen guns, and dispersing the rest, and took Salisbury. This had been a prison-camp, but all the prisoners had been removed. Vast quantities of provisions, clothing, medicines, and ammunition, several thousand bales of cotton, and many small-arms were burned, and the railways torn up in every direction. Stoneman returned to East Tennessee in