The final days of the Confederacy saw a kaleidoscope of action in the
Eastern Theater, with most Civil War historians focusing on the imminent
demise of the Army of Northern Virginia. However, to both Robert E. Lee
and Ulysses S. Grant, it was the inexorable advance of the Union armies
up through the Carolinas in the spring of 1865 that dictated their final
moves.
William Tecumseh Sherman's Carolinas campaign has long been overshadowed
by the events in Virginia, even as the Confederates recognized it as the
crucial, war-winning blow, and pitted a luminous array of their best
generals--Johnston, Hardee, Hampton, A. P. Stewart, D. H. Hill, and
others--against it. In this work, career military officers Mark A. Smith
and Wade Sokolosky rectify the oversight with "No Such Army Since the
Days of Julius Caesar," a careful and impartial examination of
Sherman's advance up the seaboard now in paperback.
After his largely unopposed "March to the Sea," in March 1865 Sherman
struck off again north, aiming to unite with Grant and crush Lee between
them. The Confederacy in the Carolinas, however, was not yet finished.
While Sherman rampaged through South Carolina, Confederate authorities
gathered forces to resist him in its northern neighboring state.
In North Carolina, the Rebels conceded their vast arsenal at
Fayetteville, which the Federals destroyed, but under General Hardee
prepared to receive Sherman's host in the narrow corridor between the
Black and Cape Fear rivers at Averasboro. With a number of untried units
(former coastal battalions) plus a scattering of veterans in Lafayette
McLaws' division and Joe Wheeler's cavalry, Hardee created a
defense-in-depth reminiscent of four-score years earlier at the battle
of Cowpens.
At Averasboro, described here in intimate detail, Hardee arrayed his
disparate forces into three lines that nearly fought Sherman's veterans
to a standstill until a flank attack won the day for the Union.
Strategically, along with Braxton Bragg's command fighting off a Union
thrust from the coast, the battle of Averasboro provided time for Joe
Johnston to assemble his forces and contest Sherman's advance at
Bentonville. Without Averasboro, there would have been no Bentonville.
Meticulously researched and gracefully written, "No Such Army"
explores a long-overlooked clash that had consequences beyond the
gallant sacrifices of the men, who by then on both sides knew that the
war was approaching its culmination.
