Aot - 1865

[larry_cockerham]

March 10, 1865

The 10th TN Cavalry (US) was at Natchez, Mississippi. Well fatigued from their efforts in the pursuit of the AOT into Alabama in late December, the 10th was about to let themselves be dismounted in an effort to build Wilson's 4th Cavalry Corps for the pending invasion of Alabama.


From the History of the 33rd Mississippi:

The 33rd Mississippi had withdrawn from Kinston on 10 March and transferred to Smithfield, North Carolina.

 

[larry_cockerham]

March 11, 1865 Sherman's army spent the night at Fayetteville, NC

March 11, 1865 Lieut. Gen. Richard Taylor abolished the District of North Alabama. All of the State of Alabama, except that portion in the District of the Gulf, becomes the District of Alabama, Brig. Gen. D.W. Adams, commanding. This same day Mar 11, Cheatham's Corps in Charlotte, North Carolina by rail.

 

[larry_cockerham]

March 14, 1865 near Smithfield (written to Joseph E. Johnston)


I encamp at Smithfield tonight. Tennessee troops are all up. My own will be here tomorrow. The enemy had not advanced on Kinston last night. – Braxton Bragg, Gen.

Smithfield, North Carolina

I left Ashe County, North Carolina in 1965 and attended school at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. I remained in Raleigh after school except for a couple of years in Charlotte 73-74. I returned to Raleigh until 1978 when I moved to Nashville. During that time I became acquainted with the towns surrounding Raleigh, one of which is Smithfield. This city of about 10,000 is located on the Neuse River just a fifteen minute drive down US 70 from east Raleigh. A sleepy southern town of three story buildings it retained many of the vestiges of the old south. The remnants of segregation were still evident in the 1970s. The sister city of Selma was predominately black; Smithfield was predominately white. As you approached downtown, the bridge over the Neuse was guarded by a large billboard depicting a hooded Klansman mounted with sword drawn sporting the caption: "Welcome to Smithfield, Home of the KKK, United Klans of America." Smithfield is in Johnston County named for Gabriel Johnston, Governor of North Carolina, 1734-1752. General Joe is far better known! ldc-2004

Today, I'm betting, and sincerely hoping, that billboard is long gone.

 

[TerryB]

I'm betting he somehow was happy the war was over, nonetheless.

Whether he knew it or not, he was one lucky man to have survived five wounds, three of which got him sent home. I'd say his number was up. Some of his close escapes are right out of a Hollywood script.

 

[Nathanb1]

The 10th TN Cavalry (US) was at Natchez, Mississippi. Well fatigued from their efforts in the pursuit of the AOT into Alabama in late December, the 10th was about to let themselves be dismounted in an effort to build Wilson's 4th Cavalry Corps for the pending invasion of Alabama.


From the History of the 33rd Mississippi:

The 33rd Mississippi had withdrawn from Kinston on 10 March and transferred to Smithfield, North Carolina.

Thanks for posting that...that's why my relative had the opportunity to walk home from North Carolina. Yippee.

 

[Nathanb1]

He may have before he "fell off." I sometimes wonder if Ed really jumped, but I'll never know. BTW, that's such a good movie that I'm gonna have to try to find a copy in DVD.

Got mine in the $5 bin at Wally World--a 2-DVD set with Chaplin's "The Kid". Good hunting!

 

[larry_cockerham]

March 15, 1865

The left wing of Sherman's army met Hardee's Corps in battle at Averasboro, NC

General Joseph Johnston appointed Lt. Gen. A.P. Steward to assume command of the Army of Tennessee.

Palmer's Brigade did not take part in the hard fought battle of Averasboro, North Carolina on March 16, 1865. Other events were awaiting them, and the battle-worn soldiers of the brigade were no doubt glad they were not called into action. (as per Jeff Weaver in his history of the 58th North Carolina). Whit Parker may have sat the next few week out, or he more likely stayed close to his comrades in the 63rd Virginia. The is much family tradition about his arriving home via railroad after the war. I suspect he hung around until all the papers were signed a month later. His pension application states "served until end of war". I suspect that's what happened.

 

[richard]

Larry I am just wondering how close to US31 did the AOT follow. I just finished driving that road yesterday all way to Pulaski and will be checking out Linnville and Thompson Station before heading north again.

 

[larry_cockerham]

Larry I am just wondering how close to US31 did the AOT follow. I just finished driving that road yesterday all way to Pulaski and will be checking out Linnville and Thompson Station before heading north again.

As you have seen that's a mighty fine old highway layed out by some engineer about 1945 -50 perhaps. In 1864 the railroad would have been the key element. Since the railroad had grade limitations they generally followed some sort of stream bed when the hills became steeper. I think that was the case here. Pulaski was pretty well developed, as you know, being Schofield's headquarters for a while. Hence the road to Columbia would have been reasonalby well maintained. I've read that what is now Waco was Lynnville in 1864. What gets interesting to me is the route south from Pulaski and the specific route these armies took to Sugar Creek. Really challenging terrain with no railroad for help. The mules deserved a medal of honor for that stretch.

 

[larry_cockerham]

March 18, 1865

From the History of the 33rd Mississippi:

On 18 March 1865 the regiment headed southeast to the town of Bentonville. They were heading into their last fight as an organized regiment.

 

[larry_cockerham]

March 19, 1865 Sherman's army in battle at Bentonville, NC

From the History of the 33rd Mississippi:

Bentonville

"On 19 March 1865 the pitifully small Army of Tennessee numbered about 4,000 men. They were deployed to the right of the Goldsboro Road and began to probe south through the woods. They then took a defensive position in the woods and awaited the Federals. The federal XIVth Corps moved to the attack and were repulsed by Stewart s men. They held their positions until mid-afternoon when the 33rd Mississippi and the remainder of the Army of Tennessee moved out to attack. One officer witnessed the charge and related, "It was a painful sight 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."

Despite their small numbers the men of Featherston's Brigade who were there were the toughest of the tough. They slammed into Gen. Henry Slocum's XIVth Corps and pushed them back for over a mile. The Federals rallied in a pine thicket which was supported by trenches, a swamp, and the arriving XXth Corps. Here the two sides fought it out as isolated groups rather than organized regiments. The fighting continued into the night until the Confederates accepted the fact that the Yankees were not going to retreat any further. The Southerners then returned to their original positions. On the 20th, fresh Federal forces arrived at the battlefield. There were no new forces for the Confederacy. The two sides spent the day shooting at each other from behind trees. This continued on the 21st while the Confederate wounded were sent to the rear."

 

[larry_cockerham]

The battle for Bentonville and pride before going home

Let's pause here for a look at the Battle of Bentonville, North Carolina, the final major battle of the Civil War. This material has been extracted from the Houghton Mifflin Co. publisher's website:

Sherman's Carolina Campaign: February-March 1865 :

Bentonville, North Carolina (NC020) , Johnston County, March 19-21, 1865

John G. Barrett

"On March 18 just before dawn the Confederate chief of cavalry, CS Lieutenant General Wade Hampton, notified CS General Joseph E. Johnston that the Union army was marching on Goldsboro, not Raleigh, and that US Major General William Tecumseh Sherman's Right Wing was approximately half a day's march in advance of the Left Wing. Johnston saw an opportunity to crush one of the Union columns while it was separated from the other. Johnston ordered his troops at Smithfield and Elevation to Bentonville, a village approximately twenty miles west of Goldsboro. CS General Braxton Bragg was at Smithfield with CS Major General Robert F. Hoke's Division of North Carolinians, as well as remnants of the once-proud Army of Tennessee, the survivors of Franklin and Nashville, now under the command of CS Lieutenant General Alexander P. Stewart. CS Lieutenant General William J. Hardee was encamped at Elevation with the divisions of CS Major General Lafayette McLaws and CS Brigadier General W. B. Taliaferro. When Bragg and Stewart reached Bentonville on the eighteenth, Hardee was still six miles away.

 

[larry_cockerham]

Johnston's combat strength was about 21,000, considerably fewer than the 45,000 Sherman thought opposed him. This paucity in manpower was offset, at least in part, by the large number of able Confederate commanders present. Besides Johnston and Bragg, who were full generals, three officers—Hampton, Hardee, and Stewart—carried the rank of lieutenant general. Also on the field were many seasoned officers of lesser rank, including Major Generals Daniel Harvey Hill, Joseph Wheeler, Robert F. Hoke, Lafayette McLaws, and William W. Loring. Bentonville was singular among Civil War battles for having so few men led in combat by so many veteran officers of high rank.

During the evening of the eighteenth, Hampton informed Johnston that Union troops—US Major General Henry W. Slocum's column, with the XIV Corps in the lead, US Major General Jefferson C. Davis commanding—were moving down the Goldsboro Road. He recommended a surprise attack at the eastern end of the Cole plantation, about two miles south of Bentonville near the Goldsboro Road. The land there was marshy and covered with dense thickets of blackjack pine.

 

[larry_cockerham]

Sunday morning, March 19, dawned clear and beautiful, and the unsuspecting Union soldiers expected a day of peace and quiet. They thought little of the fact that the Confederate cavalry was giving ground grudgingly and even revived an expression of the Atlanta campaign, "They don't drive worth a ****." Slocum, who had no idea that Johnston's entire army was gathering only a few miles down the road, sent a dispatch to Sherman, who was with US Major General Oliver O. Howard, that only Confederate horsemen and a few pieces of artillery were in his front. Sherman did not anticipate an attack because he could not imagine that Johnston would risk a fight with the Neuse River in his rear.

The deployment of the Confederate troops was slow because only one road led through the dense woods and thickets between Bentonville and the battlefield. First, Hoke's Division was placed on the Confederate left with its line crossing the Goldsboro Road almost at right angles. Stewart's Army of Tennessee was to the right of Hoke, with its right strongly thrown forward to conform to the edge of an open field. The center of Johnston's position was at a corner of the Cole plantation approximately a mile north of the Goldsboro Road. The two wings went forward from the center, the left blocking the advance of US Brigadier General W. P. Carlin's division of the XIV Corps. The right was partially hidden in a thicket, ready to stop any flanking movements by the enemy. However, Hardee, who was to hold the ground between Hoke and Stewart, had not reached the field when the two commands went into position, so Johnston had to change the deposition of his troops. Hardee did not arrive until around 2:45 p.m., long after Hoke's artillery had opened fire on Carlin's advance troops, the brigades of US Brigadier Generals Harrison C. Hobart and George P. Buell, as they approached the Cole house.

 

[larry_cockerham]

As the morning advanced, Slocum, still convinced that he faced only cavalry, sent word to Sherman that help was not needed. At the same time he ordered a general advance. The Confederate right responded fiercely to the assault, and in the words of a Union officer, "I tell you it was a tight place ... [we] stood as long as man could stand ... [then] we run like the duce." Carlin's men fell back to the vicinity of the Cole house, where they deployed carelessly into a weak defensive line. Soon they were joined by US Brigadier General James S. Robinson's brigade of the XX Corps. By this time US Brigadier General James D. Morgan's division of the XIV Corps and US Lieutenant Colonel David Miles's brigade of Carlin's division had moved into position south of the Goldsboro Road opposite Hoke and on Carlin's right. Log breastworks, thrown up in great haste by Morgan's brigade commanders, US Brigadier Generals John G. Mitchell and William Vandever, and US Colonel Benjamin D. Fearing, contributed to the Union success late in the day when the Confederates went on the offensive. One Federal officer said that those logs "saved Sherman's reputation." Slocum realized that he was in trouble at 1:30 p.m., called for reinforcements, and went on the defensive.

 

[larry_cockerham]

At about 3:00 p.m. Johnston ordered his right wing under Hardee to take the offensive. Hardee, Stewart, and Hill led the charge on horseback "across an open field ... with colors flying and line of battle in ... perfect order.... It was gallantly done but for those watching from Hoke's trenches it was ... painful to see how close their battle flags were together, regiments being scarcely larger than companies and the division not much larger than a regiment should be." The Union left was crushed by this stirring, well-executed move and driven back in confusion upon the XX Corps under US Brigadier General Alpheus S. Williams, a mile to the rear.

The rout of Carlin's troops had exposed the Union right, enabling Hill to break through and strike Morgan's division in the rear while Hoke attacked from the front. The result was the bitterest fighting of the day, the crucial period of the battle. Veterans of the Army of Northern Virginia thought "it was the hottest infantry fight they had been in except Cold Harbor." Only the timely arrival of US Brigadier General William Cogswell's brigade of the XX Corps saved Morgan from defeat. This was the turning point of the battle of Bentonville.

 

[larry_cockerham]

Later that afternoon, between 5:00 p.m. and sundown, McLaws's Division and the exhausted troops of Taliaferro and CS Major General William B. Bate tried five times without success to carry the formidable Union left. As dusk faded into darkness, the weary combatants gradually ceased their firing. After burying their dead, the Confederate soldiers withdrew to the position they had occupied earlier in the day. The Union wounded were taken to the home of John and Amy Harper, which had been converted into a field hospital.

The next morning Johnston, anticipating the arrival of Sherman's Right Wing, bent his left back to form a bridgehead, with the only bridge across Mill Creek to his rear. This put the Confederate line, in the shape of a large irregular V, entirely north of the Goldsboro Road.

 

[larry_cockerham]

March 20, 1865

On the late afternoon of March 20, Sherman's army of 60,000 was again united. Howard's troops, the last to arrive on the battlefield, dug in on the right. The Union left was held by the XIV and XX Corps. There was heavy skirmishing throughout the second day, which occasionally erupted into violent combat, some of it involving the three regiments of North Carolina Junior Reserves in Hoke's command.

 

[larry_cockerham]

March 21, 1865

On the twenty-first the only important action occurred on the Union right when US Major General Joseph A. Mower, without consulting his superiors, pushed two brigades around the Confederate left flank to within a mile of the Mill Creek bridge. Among the Confederate units helping to blunt this offensive was the skeletal 8th Texas Cavalry under Hardee's immediate command. In a gallant charge by the cavalrymen against the Union left, Hardee's sixteen-year-old son, Willie, was mortally wounded. A few hours earlier the father had reluctantly given his teenage son permission to join the Texans.

That night Johnston crossed Mill Creek and moved on Smithfield, beginning a withdrawal that could have "but one end." Sherman, after burying the dead and removing the wounded, put his troops in motion for Goldsboro rather than in pursuit of his long-time antagonist.

 

[larry_cockerham]

The legacy of Joseph B. Palmer and others...

From Jeff Weaver's history of the 58th North Carolina Infantry Regiment:

On March 19, 1865, Lee's Corps was given to Major General Daniel Harvey Hill. Hill's March 31, 1865 report shows Stevenson's division, with Palmer's Brigade, had an effective strength of 1,181, and was the strongest division in the corps. The division had about the same strength of a full regiment in 1861. The effect strength of the three divisions composing the corps' effective strength was 2,687. General Palmer's report dated March 29, 865, claims a loss of 13 killed, 113 wounded and 55 prisoners at Bentonville. Palmer commended Lieutenant Colonel A. F. Boggess of the 26th Tennessee who, "fell in the gallant discharge of his duties, a noble specimen of the man, officer, and soldier." Palmer also commented on Colonel R. M. Saffell, 26th Tennessee, writing, "being a supernumerary officer, volunteered with Colonel Ashby's calvary, to resist the enemy attempting to turn our left flank on the 21st, and was killed while gallantly leading a charge and repulsing them".

General Palmer's report also noted that Captain George W. F. Harper commanding the 58th North Carolina, Captain Eli Spangler commanding the 54th Virginia and Lieutenant Colonel Connally H. Lynch, commanding the 63rd Virginia and 60th North Carolina, "each handled their commands with ability and bore themselves handsomely through the day, as did Colonel Searcy and the officers under him, commanding the Tennessee consolidation.'"