The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume 3: Red River to Appomattox

by Shelby Foote

  There was truth in that, and it was also true that Sherman wanted no more of it just now. Unlike Johnston, he was not seeking to fight his enemy piecemeal; he wanted him whole, for total destruction when the time came — after his and Schofield’s forces were combined beyond the Neuse. Averasboro had gained him nothing more than control of the field next morning, and had cost him 682 casualties, 149 of them dead or missing, which left 533 wounded to fill the left-wing ambulances and hinder still further the train’s hard-grinding progress through the mire. It had also cost him a day of critical time, both for Slocum and for Howard, who had to be told to slow his pace across the way, lest the space between them grow so great that mutual support would no longer be possible in a crisis. There seemed little likelihood of this last, however; Wheeler’s troopers faded back up the Raleigh pike which Hardee’s men had traveled the night before, apparently in delayed obedience to Johnston’s orders for a concentration in front of the threatened capital. Satisfied that his feint had worked, Sherman turned the head of Slocum’s column east for Bentonville and Cox’s Bridge, as originally planned, when he came in sight of Averasboro at midday, March 17. The rain was pouring down harder than ever, and one officer later testified that St Patrick’s Day and the two or three that followed were “among the most wearisome of the campaign. Incessant rain, deep mud, roads always wretched but now nearly impassable, seemed to cap the climax of tedious, laborious marching.… In spite of every exertion,” he added, “the columns were a good deal drawn out, and long intervals separated the divisions.”

  In short, aside from the irreducible disparity in numbers, blue and gray, Johnston could scarcely have asked for a situation more favorable to his purpose than the one reported to him before daybreak, March 18. As a result — for the first time since Seven Pines, nearly three years ago, with his back to Richmond’s eastern gates — he went over to the offensive. Informed by Hardee, who had fallen back not on Raleigh but to a point where the road forked east to Smithfield, and by Hampton, who was in touch with Butler and Wheeler, that both of Sherman’s wings were across Black River, bound for Goldsboro in separate columns, a day’s march apart and badly strung out on sodden, secondary roads, Old Joe called for a concentration at Bentonville that night and an all-out strike just south of there next morning, first at one and then the other of Slocum’s corps toiling eastward through the mud. By the time Bragg and the Tennesseans left Smithfield, shortly after sunrise, he had matured his plan so far that he could direct Hardee, a day in advance, to take position “immediately on their right” when he arrived. Hampton, already with Butler on the chosen field, two miles beyond the town, would skirmish with Slocum’s leading elements in an attempt to fix him in position for the execution Johnston had designed.

  Sherman, having remained with the left wing so long as he supposed it was in graver danger than the other, set out crosscountry next morning — Sunday, March 19 — to join Howard for the crossing of the Neuse and the meeting with Schofield the following day, as scheduled. Soon after he started he heard what he called “some cannonading over about Slocum’s head of column,” but he kept going, on the assumption that it amounted to nothing more than another try by Hampton to divert and slow him down. Nine air-line miles to the south and east, after a wearing day spent doubling the right-wing column — as badly strung out, tail to head, as was Slocum’s across the way — he came upon Howard at Falling Creek, where the roads from Fayetteville and Averasboro came together, four miles from Cox’s Bridge; Howard had made camp there, less than twenty miles from Goldsboro, to give his two corps a chance to close up before crossing the river next day. All seemed well in this direction, and any worries Sherman might have had about the cannonade that erupted in his rear when he set out that morning, just short of Bentonville, had been allayed by a staff officer Slocum sent to overtake him with word that the clash was with butternut cavalry, which he was “driving nicely.” Still, the rumble and thump of guns had continued from the northwest all day and even past sundown, when a courier reached Falling Creek with another left-wing message, altogether different from the first. Headed 1.30 p.m. and written under fire, it read: “I am convinced the enemy are in strong force to my front. Prisoners report Johnston, Hardee, Hoke and others present. They say their troops are just coming up. I shall strengthen my position and feel of their lines, but I hope you will come up on their left rear in strong force. Yours, truly, H. W. Slocum, Major General.”

  After reading the message in Howard’s tent, where he had removed his boots and uniform to get some rest, Sherman rushed out to stand ankle-deep in the ashes of a campfire, hands clasped behind him — a lanky figure dressed informally, to say the least, in a red flannel undershirt and a pair of drawers. He seemed bemused, but not for long. Presently he was barking orders, and there was much of what one startled witness called “hurrying to and fro and mounting in hot haste.” Once a courier was on the way with a note advising Slocum to fight a purely defensive action until the rest of the army joined him, Sherman told Logan, whose corps was in the lead today, to march for Bentonville on the road from Cox’s Bridge, and sent word for Blair to follow by the same route; which hopefully would put them in the rebel rear, provided Slocum could hold his position until they got there. Whether this last was possible, however, in the light of subsequent dispatches from the field, was highly doubtful. “I deem it of the greatest importance that the Right Wing come up during the night,” Slocum urged in a message written an hour after dark.

  That could scarcely be; Bentonville was a good ten miles by road from Falling Creek. Moreover, by way of indicating the fury of the conflict up to now, he requested “all the ammunition and empty ambulances and wagons that can be spared,” and added that he had positive information that “the corps and commands of Hardee, Stewart, Lee, Cheatham, Hill, and Hoke are here.”

  Which Lee? Which Hill? Sherman might have wondered as he stood amid the ashes, convinced as he had been till now that Old Joe would not risk fighting with the Neuse at his back. Still, as a roster — a Confederate order of battle — the list was not only accurate but complete: although it had not been the latter until past midday, when Hardee at last came up. Otherwise Slocum might not have survived the ambush Johnston had devised for his piecemeal destruction.

  Bragg and the Tennesseans had reached Bentonville the night before, as ordered, and were deployed for combat by midmorning, two miles south of town. Hoke’s 5500 were posted athwart the road on which Slocum was advancing, slowed by Hampton’s skirmishing troopers, while the 4000 western veterans were disposed behind a dense screen of scrub oaks, north of the road and parallel to it, facing south. Johnston’s plan was for Hoke to bring the bluecoats to a jumbled halt with a sudden blast of fire from dead ahead, at which point they would be struck in flank by the Tennesseans and Hardee, charging unexpectedly out of the brush. The trouble was that Old Reliable’s 7500 — more than a third of the gray total, mounted and afoot — were not yet there to extend and give weight to the strike force stretching westward along the north side of the road. Misled by Johnston, who had himself been misled by a faulty map, Hardee had found yesterday’s march twice its reckoned length; with the result that he had had to go into camp, long after dark, some six miles short of Bentonville. He notified his chief of this, but said that he hoped to make up for it by setting out again at 3 a.m. Even so, he did not reach the town until around 9 o’clock, and then found the single road leading south through the blackjack thickets badly clogged by rearward elements of the units already in position. It was well past noon before he approached the field, and by that time the trap had been sprung by pressure on Hampton, whose vedettes were driven back through the line of works Hoke’s men had thrown across the road to block the Federal advance.

  The trap snapped, but lacking Hardee it lacked power in the jaw that was intended to bite deeply into the flank of the startled Union column. Brigadier General William Carlin’s division of Davis’s corps had the lead today, and when the woods exploded in his f
ront — a crash of rifles, with the roar of guns mixed in — he recoiled, then rallied and came on again, having called for help from Brigadier General James D. Morgan, whose other XIV Corps division was close behind. While Carlin pressed forward, as if to storm Hoke’s light intrenchments, Morgan came up in time to help resist the rebel effort against the flank. They made a good team: Carlin, a thirty-five-year-old Illinois West Pointer, and Morgan, twenty years his senior, an Illinoisian too, but born and raised in Massachusetts, a workhorse type who had risen by hard fighting. Holding in front, the Federals fell back south of the road and took up a new position facing north, where the graybacks were regrouping in the thickets for a follow-up assault. These were the three corps, so called, of the Army of Tennessee, though all three combined amounted to little more, numerically, than a single full division in the old days, and not one of the three was led today by its regular commander; Harvey Hill had replaced S. D. Lee, still out with his wound, while Bate had charge of his own and the remnant of Cleburne’s division, Cheatham not having arrived with the third, and Loring had taken over from Stewart, whose rank gave him command of the whole. They lacked the strength for an overwhelming strike at the bluecoats intrenching rapidly in the woods, and not even Hardee’s arrival from Bentonville at this critical juncture was of much help, as it turned out. From the left, dug in athwart the road, Bragg sent word that Hoke was on the verge of being overrun; whereupon Johnston — “most injudiciously,” he later said — responded by ordering Hardee to send McLaws to his assistance. That left only Taliaferro’s division to reinforce the effort on the right, and it was not enough.

  It was especially not enough in light of the fact that Williams by now had his two available XX Corps divisions hurrying forward to close the gap between him and Davis, and the other two divisions, one from each corps, were presently summoned to move up from escort duty with the train. Methodical as always, Hardee extended Stewart’s line with Taliaferro’s Carolinians, hoping to overlap the enemy left, and then at last, soon after 3 o’clock, resumed the attack on the Federals intrenched by then in the woods to the south of the road. He suffered heavy losses in coming to grips with Morgan’s men, and though he was successful in driving a good part of them from their hastily improvised works, taking three guns in the process — “We however showed to the Rebs as well as to our side some of the best running ever did,” a Wolverine lieutenant would write home — it was only for a few hundred yards before they stiffened, and he had to call a halt again to realign his strike force in the tangled underbrush. While he did so, Williams’ lead division came up and the Union right held firm against a belated attempt by Bragg to add to the confusion. Both commanders then had about 15,000 infantry on the field, and now that surprise was no longer a factor there was scant hope of an advantage for either side in any fighting that might ensue: barring, of course, the arrival of substantial reinforcements. In regard to this last, Slocum already had the other half of his two-corps wing moving up, and what was more he had hopes that Sherman, in response to repeated crosscountry pleas, would land Howard’s wing in the Confederate rear tonight, or early tomorrow morning at the latest. But for Johnston there was no such hope and no such reassurance. He could expect no additional troops even in his own rear, let alone the enemy’s; he could only try to make better use of those he had — including the solid fourth of his infantry under McLaws, whose division, after groping blind around unmapped ponds and impenetrable thickets, finally reached the left to find that it was not only unneeded for the defense of Hoke’s position, but was also too late for a share in the follow-up demonstration against Carlin. As a result of Hardee’s miscalculated approach march and McLaws’ futile detachment, Seven Pines now had a rival for the distinction of being at once the best-planned and worst-conducted battle of the war.

  Still Hardee pressed on, as thorough as he was methodical. Cheered by the western veterans he had last commanded back in Georgia, he was also saddened by the thinness of their ranks. For example, the 1st, 13th, and 19th Tennessee, each of which had contained an average of 1250 effectives at the outset of the war, now had 65, 50, and 64 respectively present for duty; nor were these by any means the worst-off units in this gaunted aggregation, the ghost of the one-time Army of Tennessee, fighting southward now and farther from home than it had been even at Perryville, the northernmost of its lost victories. “It was a painful sight,” one of Hoke’s men wrote after watching these transplanted remnants of a departed host surge forward in their first charge since Franklin, “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.” Blown as they were, their third attack — launched shortly after 5 o’clock, within an hour of sunset — was less successful than their second, two hours before; Morgan’s men, stoutly dug in and reinforced by Williams’ lead division, yielded nothing. The graybacks rebounded, then came on again, and the wierd halloo of the rebel yell rang out in the dusky Carolina woods, given with a fervor that seemed to signify a knowledge by the tattered Deep South veterans that this would be their last. “The assaults were repeated over and over again until a late hour,” Slocum reported, “each assault finding us better prepared for resistance.”

  Convinced by now, if not sooner, that all had been done that could be done once his plan for exploiting the initial shock had gone awry, Johnston instructed Hardee to pull Stewart’s and Taliaferro’s men back in the darkness to their original position north of the road, confronting with Bragg the reunited half of Sherman’s army under Slocum, while Wheeler’s troopers, just arrived from their decoy work in front of Raleigh, proceeded east toward Cox’s Bridge to delay the advance of the other half under Howard, who was no doubt hard on the way from that direction in response to the eight-hour boom and growl of guns near Bentonville today. (In point of fact, Old Joe would have had to do this, or something like it, in any case — preferably an outright skedaddle — since, even if he had succeeded in abolishing Slocum’s wing entirely, despite its three-to-two preponderance in numbers, Sherman could then have brought Schofield across the Neuse to combine with Howard for a counterattack with the odds extended to three-to-one or worse.) Hardee managed the withdrawal before dawn, and when Wheeler sent word that he was in contact with Howard’s advance, some half-dozen miles in rear of Hoke’s division, Johnston had Bragg pull Hoke back, too, and place him in a newly intrenched position from which he would confront the blue right wing when it came up. Formerly concave, the gray line was now convex, a spraddled V, one arm opposing Slocum, the other Howard, whose first corps arrived by noon, followed shortly by the second. Before the day was over — March 20: the vernal equinox — Sherman thus had close to 60,000 soldiers on or near the field, while Johnston, bled down by his losses in yesterday’s failed assault, had fewer than 20,000.

  Here then for the red-haired Ohioan was a rare chance, not only to score the Cannae every general prayed for, but also to refute the charge leveled by scorners that he lacked the moral courage to commit his whole army in a single all-out effort. It was true he had never done so, yet it was also true he had never before had such an opportunity as this. Discouraged by their failure to snap shut the trap Old Joe had laid for Slocum, frazzled by hard fighting well into the previous night, confronted left and right today by three times their number, the Confederates clung to the spraddled V whose apex was three miles from the lone bridge over Mill Creek in their rear, and though their purpose was to afford the medical details time to evacuate the wounded, they knew well enough that in remaining within this snare of their own making they were also giving Sherman time to accomplish their destruction — provided, of course, he was willing to attempt it; which he was not. “I would rather avoid a general battle,” he cautioned Slocum when the New Yorker concluded his report, “but if [Johnston] insists, we must accommodate him.”

  He stayed his hand, not so much from lack of moral courage as from mistrust of his own impulsive nature, which he only gave free rein
in times of relaxation, while writing letters, say, or dealing with civilians, and almost never when men’s lives were at stake. There was that deterrent, plus the fact that he knew little of Johnston’s position, except that it was skillfully intrenched, or of his strength, except that it seemed great indeed, to judge by the number of units yielding prisoners from the Army of Tennessee; Sherman, unaware that most of its regiments had dwindled to company size, could assume that the whole army was in his front, as formidable in North Carolina as it had been in Georgia. Besides, his Bentonville casualties, though unreported yet, were clearly heavy; in fact, they would come to 1646 in all, and of these 1168 were wounded. Combined with the 533 from Averasboro, that gave him 1700 sufferers to find room for in his train. Any more such — and who knew how many more there would be if he pressed the issue here? — would overflow the ambulances and crowd the aid stations far beyond the capacity of his surgeons to give them even minimal attention. At Goldsboro, on the other hand, he would be in touch by rail with mountains of supplies, medical and otherwise, unloaded from ships at New Bern and Wilmington, and that was where he wanted to go, as soon as possible, for a combination with Schofield in the open country beyond the Neuse, where he could deal with Johnston at his leisure, fully rested and with half again more men than he had now. Ten days ago, he had promised Schofield to meet him there today, and though Averasboro and Bentonville had thrown him a couple of days off schedule, he hoped to arrive without further delay. If Johnston would only pull back, he himself would be free to go his way, and he was somewhat puzzled by his opponent’s apparent reluctance to cooperate by retiring — as he plainly ought to do. “I cannot see why he remains,” Sherman complained, but added: “[I] still think he will avail himself of night to get back to Smithfield.”