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constructed as against you, which may be double or inclosed, for our men find parapets from the road well down to Mill Creek.
Johnston hoped to overcome your wing before I could come to your relief; having failed in that I can not see why he remains, and still think he will avail himself of night to get back to Smithfield.
I would rather avoid a general battle if possible, but if he insists on it we must accommodate him. In that event, if he be in position to-morrow, I want you to make a good road around his flank into this, and to-morrow night pass your trains and dispose your troops so that we have our back toward Faison's and Goldsboro.
General Schofield was to leave Kinston for Goldsboro to-day, and General Terry has arrived with nine thousand infantry at Faison's, and I have ordered him to Cox's Bridge to be drawn up here if we need him. I can also draw on General Schofield in a few days for ten thousand men, but I think we have enough.’
At 9 P. M. of the same day the following dispatch was sent
General Terry:
‘We struck Johnston on his left rear to-day, and have been skirmishing pretty hard all day. We have opened communication with General Slocum, who had a hard fight yesterday.
We are now ready for battle, if Johnston desires it, to-morrow; but as he has failed to overcome one wing he will hardly invite battle with both.
I don't want to fight now or here, and therefore won't object to his drawing off to-night toward Smithfield, as he should.’
To
General Schofield he wrote, March 21, from
Bentonville:
Captain Twining is here, and I send by him an order that you will perceive looks to staying here some days.
‘I thought Johnston, having failed as he attempted to crush one of my wings, finding he had not succeeded, but that I was present with my whole force, would withdraw; but he has not, and I must fight him here.
He is twenty (20) miles from Smithfield, and with a bad road to his rear, but his position is in the swamps, difficult of approach, and I don't like to assail his parapets, which are of the old kind.’
In a letter to
General Grant dated March 22, quoted in the Memoirs, reviewing the affair of
Bentonville at length, the following passage occurs:
I wrote you from Fayetteville, North Carolina, on Tuesday, the 14th instant, that I was all ready to start for Goldsboro, to which point I had also ordered General Schofield from Newbern and General Terry from Wilmington.
I knew that General Jos. Johnston was in supreme command against me, and that he would have tried to concentrate a respectable army to oppose
