The Battle of Bentonville (March 19–21, 1865) was fought in Johnston County, North Carolina, near the village of Bentonville, as the final engagement between the western field armies of William T. Sherman and Joseph E. Johnston during the American Civil War. The battle occurred as Sherman's army marched through North Carolina in the closing months of the war, with the Union force divided into two wings operating in the region.
On the first day of battle, Johnston's entrenched Confederate forces attacked Sherman's left wing under Maj. Gen. Henry W. Slocum, specifically targeting the 14th Army Corps. The Confederate assault successfully routed two divisions of the Union left wing; however, the remainder of Sherman's army maintained its defensive positions and prevented a complete breakthrough. On the second day, as Sherman concentrated reinforcements toward the battlefield and anticipated Johnston's withdrawal, only minor sporadic fighting occurred across the lines. The third day saw continued skirmishing, during which Maj. Gen. Joseph A. Mower's division discovered a path into the Confederate rear and launched an attack. The Confederates repulsed this assault, and Sherman ordered Mower to withdraw and reconnect with his main corps. Following this repulse, Johnston made the decision to withdraw his army from the battlefield that night.
The battle resulted from overwhelming Union numerical strength, which prevented Johnston from achieving a decisive victory despite initial success on the first day. The engagement marked the last major confrontation between these two commanders and their armies in the Western Theater, effectively ending Johnston's ability to mount sustained resistance to Sherman's advance through the Carolinas in the final phase of the Civil War.
The American Civil War (1861–1865) was the deadliest conflict in American history, killing an estimated 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians. The Confederate States of America, formed by eleven seceding Southern states, faced the Union in four years of warfare across 23 states and territories. Major engagements included First and Second Bull Run, Antietam (the bloodiest single day in American history, September 17, 1862), Chancellorsville, Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), Vicksburg (surrendered July 4, 1863), and Sherman's March through Georgia and the Carolinas (1864–1865). President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, transforming the war's stated purpose to include the abolition of slavery and enabling the enlistment of approximately 180,000 Black men in the United States Colored Troops. Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The war resolved the question of secession and ended American slavery, though Reconstruction would face sustained resistance in its attempt to secure civil rights for formerly enslaved people.
Combined: ~200 over the approach
Content adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Aubrey generates in-depth historical research for any location in the US, drawing on NRHP records, battlefield archives, census history and geological data to tell the full story of a place.