The battle of Bentonville is noted for several distinctions in its place in the Civil
War. It is the largest land battle fought in North Carolina over an area of about six
thousand acres of piney woods and fields; casualties 543 killed, 2800 wounded, and
almost 900 missing (Bradley 409). It is the only significant attempt by the Confederate
Army to stop and defeat Union General William T. Sherman and his army on his march
north from Atlanta through the Carolinas. It was the last major Confederate offensive of
the War between the States.
It was mid March 1865 and Sherman was in command of 60,000 Union troops in
North Carolina, marching from Fayetteville and heading north to Virginia with the
intention to join forces with Union General Ulysses S. Grant (Bradley 2). Confederate
General Joseph E. Johnston, commander of all Confederate troops from Florida to North
Carolina, wanted to stop Sherman from meeting up with Grant in Virginia (Hughes 21-
22). Johnston marched his 20,000 troops towards Bentonville with the intention to
engage Sherman (Barrett 408).
Early on the morning of March 19, Johnston’s troops charged the Union’s left
wing of 30,000 men but failed to break through and overrun the Union line (Hughes
167). Nightfall brought a halt to the attack and the remainder 30,000 troops, the right
wing, arrived on March 20 (Hughes 169). Heavy rain made fighting difficult and the rain
continued during the night but cleared by the morning of March 21. Later that day,
Johnston’s only line of retreat across Mill Creek was nearly cut off by Union General
J.A. Mower, who himself was forced to retreat to his original position due to lack of
supportive units (Hughes 187).
During the night of March 21 and 22, Johnston received a communication that
Union General John Schofield had reached Goldsboro, North Carolina, to connect up his
troops with 40,000 other Union troops who were already waiting there (Bradley 400-
401).
Johnston realized there was now no chance for his Confederate troops to stop
Sherman in his relentless march north to Virginia. Under the cover of night he began the
withdrawal of his men towards Smithfield. On the morning of March 22, Johnston’s
troops were completely withdrawn from Bentonville and he burned the bridge behind him
(Bradley 400-401). The Union troops half-heartedly pursued Johnston for a few miles
but that would have been a waste of Sherman’s time and manpower when their objective
was to get to Goldsboro (Bradley 407).
The South had failed to halt the Union advance in what was the last ditch
Confederate effort to stop General William T. Sherman, and it was eventually recognized
as the last great battle of the Civil War. The Carolina war lasted for about another month,
but on April 26, near Durham, in the private home of James and Nancy Bennitt,
Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston surrendered his army and the Civil War was
officially over in the Carolinas, Florida, and Georgia.
Sherman’s devastating campaign throughout the south was the “total war”
approach to fighting (Sullivan 10). The historical theory of “total war” is familiar to most students of the Civil War, for it is the interpretation of the Union
fighting and victory. This view argues that the North won only when it abandoned the
limited war techniques and objectives of the eighteenth century - seizing territory,
capturing the enemy’s capital, maneuvering to concentrate armies, and respecting civilian
lives and property - and instead applied “total war,” fighting relentlessly against the
whole Confederate society, not only its organized armies, but also its economy and its
civilians (Sullivan 10). Typically, the sort of fighting engaged by Sherman and
Grant, and used to demoralize southerners.
Heroic individualism, greatly valued before the nineteenth century, paled in
comparison to victory by increased firepower and range of weaponry, and by the
calculations of production and supply necessary to keep mass armies in the field
(Sullivan 10). Rivers were crucial arteries of transport for feeding and equipping the
armies, which moved about the countryside as one massive destructive force. That an
innocent pastoral town was laid waste and destroyed by cruel industrial war machine
tactics to bring about a Union victory was utilized by Sherman time and again.
However, much of the real war was conducted at musket range - the length of a
football field - by individuals on foot, firing hand-held weapons. The vast Civil War
armies, almost all of them volunteers, rushed to don their patriotic colors, and they died in
numbers that today would be unconscionable - more than twenty-five percent of those
who served in the Confederate army died in the war (Sullivan 15). Americans have
never fought harder, and they volunteered to do it. They were never more dedicated to a
public cause and less preoccupied by private concerns.
Before 1864, captured soldiers stood a good chance of being exchanged for comrades held by the opposing side (Sullivan 116). But the exchange system broke
down when the North determined to hold on to its prisoners, thus draining the South of
manpower in an increasingly grim war of attrition.
Bentonville, North Carolina was the site of the last great battle of the Civil War.
However, Charleston, South Carolina holds great symbolic value, too. It is where the
first shot of the war was fired, and the Union expended great effort and thousands of lives
Sherman’s advancing forces compelled the evacuation of the confederate garrison in
On the afternoon of April 14, 1865, the same Stars and Stripes that had been
lowered four years earlier, was raised again over the battered rubble of Fort Sumter
(Sullivan 138). That evening, at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C., Abraham
Lincoln became a final sacrifice to the war that claimed the lives of 620,000 Americans.
Works Cited
Barrett, John G. “Bentonville, North Carolina (NC020), Johnston County, March 19-21,
1865.” The Civil War Battlefield Guide, second edition. Francis Kennedy, ed.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1998. Print.
Bradley, Mark L. Last Stand in the Carolinas: The Battle of Bentonville. Campbell,
California: Savas Publishing Co., 1995. Print.
Hughes, Nathaniel Cheairs, Jr. Bentonville: The Final Battle of Sherman and Johnston.
Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1996. Print.
Sullivan, Constance. Landscapes of the Civil War. Alfred A Knopf, New York, New
York, 1995. Print.
Works Consulted
Broadwater, Robert P. Battle of Dispair: Bentonville and the North Carolina Campaign.
Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 2004. Print.
www.visitfouroaks.org/history-and-heritage/82-bentonville-battlefield-state-historic-site?gclid. 4 July 2012. Web.
