The Carolinas campaign was one of the closing campaigns of the American Civil War, during which Union general William T. Sherman advanced north from Savannah, Georgia through South Carolina and North Carolina, ending the war at Bennett Place, where Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston surrendered the Army of the South.
Background[]
Sherman's march through Georgia had badly damaged Confederate morale. Union leaders now sought to reap the benefits. Earlier in the war, the Deep Southern states had escaped much of the fighting, which was concentrated in border areas to the north and west. That situation changed dramatically with Sherman's invasion of Georgia and the evaporation of large-scale armed resistance after the fall of Atlanta. The question now was how best to press home the advantage.
With General Sherman in Savannah, Federal strategists saw a chance at last to implement fully the Anaconda Plan, originally proposed by General Winfield Scott in 1861. The project involved enveloping and finally suffocating the remaining Confederate command centers in Virginia.
History[]
Initially, General Grant - fearing the hazardous state of South Carolina's roads in the winter - wanted to ship General William T. Sherman's victorious troops from Savannah to support his own forcers in Virginia. Sherman, however, insisted that his men were up to the task of overcoming any difficulties confronting them. Given that it would have taken two months to arrange the shipping option, Grant let himself be persuaded.
Although Sherman was to encounter formidable obstacles in his path, the opposition forces were the least of his worries. General P.G.T. Beauregard, commanding Confederate troops in South Carolina, had only about 17,500 men scattered across the state to combat Sherman's 60,000 battle-hardened veterans. In addition, morale in the Union ranks was extremely high. Most of the men were champing at the bit at the prospect of carrying the war to the state where the fighting had started. In the minds of many Northerners, South Carolina was more responsible than any other state for the suffering the nation had endured for nearly four years.
Natural obstacles[]
The logistical problems of marching an army through the swamps and rain-swollen rivers that lay between Savannah, Georgia and South Carolina's state capital, Columbia, presented a greater challenge than did the Confederate troops. In many places the roads were impassable, and Sherman's men had to create causeways by the slow process of "corduroying." This entailed cutting down trees, stripping off the bark, and flattening them on one side, then laying them crosswise, interspersed with saplings, to form a usable surface for the men and the supply wagons. In spite of the difficulties, Sherman's bummers made extraordinarily fast progress, covering almost 10 miles a day. By 17 February, barely a month after leaving Savannah, they reached Columbia. That night, the city burned. By the following morning, two-thirds of it lay in ashes.
The fate of Columbia was only part of the trail of destruction Sherman's forces blazed across the state. In their path they looted farms and torched villages to the ground. The Confederate forces opposing them felt the pinch because they were forced to live off the land as best they could.
On 23 February, at Robert E. Lee's insistence, Joseph E. Johnston took command of all Southern forces in the Carolinas. Under the circumstances, the best that he could manage was a holding action designed to delay Sherman's progress. From Columbia, the Union commander headed north toward Goldsboro, North Carolina, where he expected to rendezvous with 20,000 additional Federal troops under General John M. Schofield, marching from the Confederate port of Wilmington, recently captured after the Second Battle of Fort Fisher.
Confederate strategy[]
General Sherman had split his troops into two columns, and Johnston's only realistic hope lay in attacking the splintered Union forces. The Confederates attempted to delay one of the two columns outside the village of Averasboro before launching a fully fledged attack on the Federal left wing at Bentonville, barely a day's march south of Goldsboro.
The initial Confederate successes were soon countered by the arrival of Union reinforcements, and Sherman was able to rendezvous successfully with Schofield on 23 March. Confronted with the Union's overwhelming superiority in numbers, Johnston retreated westward to the North Carolina state capitol, Raleigh.
Meeting with Davis[]
Johnston was preparing to abandon Raleigh to Sherman's advancing Union forces when word came of events at Appomattox. While still digesting the news, Johnston was summoned to a meeting with Confederate President Jefferson Davis at Greensboro, about 80 miles away. When the two men met on 12 April, Davis - without even requesting Johnston's opinion of the military situation - talked ramblingly of gathering up deserters to fight on. Once Johnston was eventually given a chance to speak, he was blunt: "My views are, sir, that our people are tired of war, feel themselves whipped, and will not fight." Shocked into silence, Davis unwillingly gave Johnston permission to put out peace feelers to Sherman.
In the meeting that followed - held on 17 April, in a log cabin near Durham Station - Sherman initially went beyond his remit from Washington. He held out to Johnston the prospect of the readmission of Southern states to the Union on terms of full citizenship with no threat of persecution for treason or war crimes. In doing so, he strayed into political rather than purely military territory. He was subsequently reprimanded by the authorities in Washington and General Ulysses S. Grant was sent to take over the negotiations. Grant made it clear that while the military terms offered at Appomattox still stood and applied to Johnston's army as well as Lee's, there could be no bargaining on the larger postwar settlement.
Johnston surrenders[]
When Davis was informed of Grant's conditions, he was eager to fight on. Johnston's reply was scathing. "We have to save the people, spare the blood of the army, and save the high civic functionaries," he told the Confederate president. He added that "your plan, I think, can do only the last." The next day, 26 April, Johnston agreed to surrender the forces under his command, including Confederate troops in Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas, a total of almost 90,000 men.