Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 3.

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The National army rested three days at Fayetteville, during which time the United States Arsenal there,¹ with all the costly machinery which the Confederates brought to that place from Harper's Ferry, in the Spring of 1861,² was utterly destroyed by the First Michigan Engineers, under the direction of Colonel Poe.

Sherman was satisfied that, thereafter, on his march toward Goldsboroa, he would have heavy and somewhat perilous work to do, for before him was now an army of about forty thousand veteran soldiers, under the able General Joseph E. Johnston. It was composed of the combined forces of Hardee, from Charleston; Beauregard, from Columbia; Cheatham, with Hood's men, and the garrison at Augusta; Hoke, with the forces which had been defending the seaboard of North Carolina, and the cavalry of Wheeler and Hampton. These, Sherman said, “made up an army superior to me in cavalry, and formidable enough in artillery and infantry to justify me in extreme caution in making the last step necessary to complete the march I had undertaken.” He made disposition of his army accordingly, and on the 15th of March crossed the Cape Fear on pontoon bridges, and pressed forward.

In accordance with his usual plan of distracting the attention of his antagonist, General Sherman sent Slocum, with four divisions of the left wing, preceded by the cavalry, toward Averasboroa, on the main road to Raleigh, feigning an advance upon the capital of the State, while the two remaining divisions of that wing, and the train, took the direct road to Goldsboroa. General Howard moved on roads to the right, holding four divisions light, ready to march to the assistance of the left wing, and sending his trains toward Faison's Station, on the Wilmington and Goldsboroa railway. Sher-man was with Slocum, on the left. Incessant rains had made quagmires of the roads, and the army was compelled to corduroy them continually.

Near Taylor's Hole Creek, a little beyond Kyle's Landing, to which Slocum had advanced, Kilpatrick skirmished heavily with Hardee's rear-guard, that evening, and captured some of them.³ On the following morning,

March 16, 1865.

Slocum advanced his infantry, and in the vicinity of Averasboroa near the road that ran eastwardly toward Bentonsville, he found Hardee intrenched, with a force, of all arms, estimated at twenty thousand men, on a narrow, swampy neck of land between the Cape Fear and South rivers. Hardee's object was to hold Sherman there, while Johnston should concentrate his forces at Raleigh, Smithfield or Goldsboroa. It was necessary to dislodge him to prevent that consummation, and also to keep up the feint on Raleigh as long as possible, and hold possession of the road to Goldsboroa, through Bentonsville. Slocum was, therefore, ordered to advance and carry the position.

The ground was so soft that horses sunk deep at every step, and men traveled over the pine-barren only with difficulty. But obstacles were not to be thought of. General Williams, with the Twentieth Corps, took the lead. Ward's division was deployed in the advance, and very soon his skirmishers developed Rhett's brigade of heavy artillery, armed as infantry, holding a slightly intrenched line across the road, on the brow of a hill, skirted by a