Willie Hardee

[White Flint Bill]

Recently I visited Hillsborough, North Carolina and located the marker on Willie Hardee's grave.

It's a modest marker in the St. Matthews Episcopal Church cemetery. It marks the grave of William Joseph Hardee Jr., the only son of Lt. General William J. Hardee. It is a reminder of a sad story from the closing days of the war.

The scene is the Battle of Bentonville, March 21, 1865. General Hardee has just turned back an attack by Federal General Joseph Mower. Shelby Foote tells the story:

Hardee had stopped him with reinforcements brought over from the right, including the 8th Texas Cavalry, which sixteen-year-old Willie Hardee, the general's only son, had joined that morning after finally overcoming his father's objections that he was too young for army duty. "Swear him into service in your company, as nothing else will suffice," Old Reliable told the captain who reported to headquarters with him. Then he kissed the boy and sent him on his way for what turned out to be a share in the critical job of checking Mower's penetration. Elated by the retirement of the bluecoats — which he did not know had been ordered by Sherman — Hardee grinned and said to Hampton, as they rode back from directing the counteraction: "General, that was nip and tuck, and for a while I thought Tuck had it." Laughing, they continued across the field, only to encounter a pair of litter bearers bringing Willie from the front, badly wounded in his first charge. It was also his last; he would die three days later, with his father at his side, and be buried in a Hillsborough churchyard after the military funeral he would have wanted. For the present, Hardee could only dismount and spend a moment with him before rejoining Hampton for deployment of their troops in case the Yankees tried for another breakthrough, somewhere else along the line.​

Commanding the wing of the federal army that Willie and his comrades fought against that day was General Oliver O. Howard. General Howard was a close personal friend of the Hardee family and had been young Willie's tutor while his father had been the Commandant of Cadets at West Point from 1856-1860.

A month after Willie died, in what would be the last major action of the campaign, General Johnson surrendered the Confederate army and the war was over.