William Boynton, Sherman's Historical Raid

[209] flooded the low lands, and the direction of the march was across them all. In front was Hardee with a force which might be formidable in contending the passage of the larger rivers. On the right were the garrisons of Charleston, Georgetown, and Wilmington. There was reason to expect that a portion of Hood's army would arrive on the left and strike from the direction of Augusta. Lastly, Wade Hampton, then popular in South Carolina, had been sent down from Lee's army to rally an opposing force. And, as the result proved, before serious battle was delivered, an army estimated at thirty-seven thousand veteran Confederate troops concentrated at Bentonville, under Sherman's old antagonist Johnston. The Union force at the time was fifty-seven thousand.

In free conversation between General Schofield's officers and the prominent commanders in the Confederate forces, when they were paroled a few weeks later, all expressed great admiration for the campaign northward from Savannah and astonishment at its success. They had confidently expected, when the Union army began to push through the great swamps, that it would lose its artillery and its trains, and never emerge in an organized condition. But the roads, constructed of logs and brush, which sunk to the axles of the artillery under the march of each successive division, were rebuilt by the division which followed, and the resistless columns moved steadily and surely against natural difficulties such as no other army breasted during the war.

Sherman had left smoking South Carolina, with its ruined railroads, behind him; his four corps had converged at Fayetteville, and there crossed the Cape Fear River. Here the right and left wings again separated, but marched in the general direction of Goldsboro. All the Confederate garrisons of points below were piled up in his front, the provisions were running low in his trains, and there was need of unusual care and prudence. How great was the neglect instead, and how narrow the escape of Sherman from serious disaster, the history of the battle of Bentonville will show.