Main Confederate Line at Bentonville

The earthworks near this marker are Confederate field fortifications from the closing weeks of the war. On March nineteenth, eighteen sixty-five, General Johnston's main line curved sharply here into a hook-shaped position, designed to catch Sherman's advancing columns in a killing crossfire. The next day, with the Confederate left wing under pressure, Johnston pulled it back to anchor here, straightening his defensive front across this road.

The Battle of Bentonville was Johnston's final attempt to stop Sherman's march through the Carolinas before the Confederacy collapsed entirely. The original earthworks still survive in places. If you walk the Bentonville Battlefield State Historic Site, you can stand on soil that soldiers piled with their own hands in the last desperate weeks of the Civil War.