The Battle of Bentonville, fought from March 19 to March 21, 1865, was the last significant confrontation between two major armies in the CiviL War. Confederate forces under Gen. Joseph E. Johnston attacked Union forces under Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman near the small town of Bentonville, North Carolina, about 20 miles west of Goldsboro. The Union XIV and XX Corps, commanded by Maj. Gen. Henry W. Slocum, were in the advance column, and Johnston wanted to attack before Sherman and the rest of his troops could arrive. The Union army was marching northeast on the Goldsboro Road, while the Confederate army was positioned on both sides of the road, south of Bentonville.
In the morning on the first day of the battle, March 19, the Confederates under Lt. Gens. Alexander P. Stewart and William J. Hardee and Maj. Gens. Robert F. Hoke and D. H. Hill broke the Union left wing and drove it back about a mile south of the Goldsboro Road. The Confederates then attacked the exposed Union right, but Brig. Gen. William Cogswell of the XX Corps reinforced the beleaguered Union forces under Brigadier General James D. Morgan’s division of the XIV Corps. This movement upon the Union right is considered the turning point of the battle, with the Union offensive gaining the advantage. Succeeding Confederate demonstrations against the Union left flank failed, and the fighting came to a stalemate.
On the morning of the second day, March 20, Johnston strengthened his line north of the Goldsboro Road to protect Mill Creek Bridge, the only escape route for the Confederate army. After the arrival of Sherman and the rest of the Union army, the blue troops outnumbered the gray by about 60,000 to 21,000. Sherman deployed the newly arrived troops on his right flank, though the only activity that day was some heavy skirmishing.
On the third day, March 21, Union major general Joseph a. Mower initiated an attack on the Confederate left. While Hardee’s troops managed to stall this offensive, Johnston and his army nonetheless withdrew on the night of the 21st across Mill Creek Bridge and toward Smithfield. Sherman’s forces pursued Johnston on the 22nd, with little effect.
Further reading: Mark L. Bradley, Last Stand in the Carolinas: The Battle of Bentonville (New York: Da Capo Press, 2000); Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes Jr., Bentonville: The Final Battle of Sherman and Johnston (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).
—Stacey Graham
Bickerdyke, Mary Ann (Mother) (1817-1901) Civil War nurse, philanthropist
Mary Ann “Mother” Bickerdyke was a beloved nurse and fundraiser during the CiviL War. She grew up in Ohio as
Mary Ann Ball, moving between a number of relatives after her mother died. Married in 1847 to Robert Bickerdyke, Mary Ann migrated with her husband to Illinois a decade later. Widowed in 1859, Bickerdyke supported herself and her three children by nursing.
During a church service in 1861, Bickerdyke learned about the harsh conditions of young volunteer soldiers suffering from typhoid and dysentery. Church members proceeded to organize a relief fund, and Bickerdyke volunteered to deliver it. This mission convinced Bickerdyke to commit herself to caring for Union soldiers for the rest of the war. She threw herself into relief work on her own initiative, doing whatever needed to be done. Ignoring protocol and defying male authority, she cleaned, nursed, and fed thousands of sick and wounded men, both at hospital camps and at the front lines of battle.
Bickerdyke acquired her name of “Mother Bickerdyke” from the wounded soldiers at the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862. She soon became an agent of the United States Sanitary Commission, and she gained a measure of fame when the country learned of her extraordinary dedication to the wounded at many battlefields and hospitals.
Along with her nursing duties on the front lines with Grant’s and Sherman’s armies, Bickerdyke also embarked on speaking tours in the Midwest to raise money and obtain food. Bickerdyke was with Sherman’s army in North Carolina when the war was finally won, and she joined in the North’s victory parade in 1865 in Washington, D. C.
After the war, Bickerdyke worked on various benevolent causes. She died in 1901 in Kansas after spending her final years on her son’s farm.
See also disease and epidemics.
Further reading: Nina Brown Baker, Cyclone in Calico: The Story of Mary Ann Bickerdyke (Boston: Little, Brown, 1952).
—Jaclyn Greenberg
World History
