Union Line — March Twenty-One, Bentonville

On March twenty-first, eighteen sixty-five, Union General Joseph Mower launched an unauthorized assault toward Mill Creek Bridge, aiming to cut off Johnston's Confederate army entirely. Sherman ordered him back, not yet ready for a decisive engagement. As Mower's division withdrew, his troops reformed along this line and threw up earthworks, forming the extreme right flank of the Union position.

The earthworks they dug on that afternoon can still be traced in the ground here today, among the best-preserved Civil War fieldworks in North Carolina. It was a moment of extraordinary military tension. Had Sherman allowed Mower to press the attack, Johnston's army might have been trapped and destroyed.

Instead, Johnston withdrew northward that night. The two armies would not fight again. Johnston surrendered to Sherman on April twenty-sixth at the Bennett Place.