Averasboro, North Carolina – 1865

The Road to Averasboro

Our ancestor Julius Bell was a Corporal and “Chief of Caisson” in the Beaufort Volunteer Artillery (BVA) during the U.S. Civil War. He and his men underwent hardships and privations, conducted numerous raids, and fought in a handful of battles from November 1861-January 1865 along the South Carolina coast. Over a period of four weeks in February and March of 1865 the BVA marched sixty miles from their camp in Pocotaligo to Charleston, where they joined with the command of Gen. William J. Hardee; then trudged seventy miles north to Kingstree, where they boarded flatcars to Cheraw. Crossing the PeeDee River just ahead of William T. Sherman‘s federal troops, Hardee’s Corps marched eighty miles through North Carolina by way of Rockingham to Fayetteville in a race to unite with a larger force under Gen. Joseph E. Johnston.

Evacuation of Fayetteville

After less than two days in town, Fayetteville too was evacuated in the early morning March 11, and the bridge over the Cape Fear River burned. The BVA was assigned to Col. Alfred M. Rhett‘s brigade, Gen. William Taliaferro‘s division. Hardee’s men encamped off the Raleigh Plank Road near the town of Averasboro, and there waited to ascertain the intentions of Sherman’s left wing. As the Union troops lingered in Fayetteville, the BVA and their mates were afforded a few days to rest after nearly a month of constant movement. “We seized the opportunity to have our soiled clothes boiled and washed,” wrote BVA Pvt. C.W. Hutson during their hiatus. “We are now about 20 miles from Fayetteville & 40 from Raleigh, but do not know whether we are to go to Raleigh or Goldsboro.”¹

Sherman accompanied the Union left wing under the command of Gen. Henry Slocum when they crossed the Cape Fear River on pontoons, and as they slogged up the muddy Raleigh Plank Road late in the afternoon of March 15. “It rained all [that] evening and we got soaking wet,” Hutson wrote. With morale low, Hardee must have felt he needed to do more than ascertain Sherman’s intentions. He instead chose to block the Plank Road below the point where it split for the two suspected destinations, and thus oblige Slocum’s troops to attack him on grounds of his choosing: astride the road on the massive Smith plantation, with the Cape Fear and Black Rivers and adjacent swamps and ravines protecting their flanks.

Gathering to Give Battle

Slocum then had about 20,000 troops under his command, while Hardee’s had dwindled to about 6,500 – most of the latter being untested garrison troops from Charleston or, like the men of the BVA, coastal artillerymen. Sherman knew and respected Johnston,³ and expected a battle once the disparate Confederate troops, perhaps 25-30,000 men approaching from the west (under Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard), east (Gen. Braxton Bragg), and south (Gen. Hardee) – plus Gen. Wade Hampton‘s cavalry – were gathered into one fighting force to face Sherman’s roughly 60,000 Union troops. All knew this was still a few days away.

On the Front Line

Gen. Hardee literally wrote the book on infantry tactics,² and deployed his troops in three separate lines within support distance of each other. Rhett’s brigade, all South Carolinians, was to be the first line of defense about 400 yards north of the John Smith house (“Oak Grove”). For artillery support, they were assigned two 12-pounder Howitzers from LeGuardeur’s Battery and one 12-pounder Napoleon from the BVA (aka H.M. Stuart‘s Battery). The gun selected was under the charge of our ancestor Julius Bell. His men spent the miserable and wet night of March 15 behind the earthworks they had spent the day building, while a few hundred yards to their rear former BVA commander Gen. Stephen Elliott‘s brigade and Gen. Lafayette McLaws‘ division of more experienced infantrymen did the same on the second and third lines respectively.

Hampton’s cavalry skirmished with and was slowly pushed back by Union cavalry along the Raleigh Plank Road from Fayetteville, as Slocum’s infantry followed well behind. When the Union cavalry came up against stiffer than expected resistance near the Smith Plantation late in the afternoon of March 15, infantry corps were rushed up the miry road. March 16 dawned gray with heavy clouds. Skirmishing ensued sporadically along the front of the first line, with the Napoleon and Howitzers raking across the open fields ahead at the mostly exposed Union troops. The artillery shells, “whizzed and burst dangerously… close at hand,” remembered a Wisconsin infantryman.⁴ The John Smith house was a tempting perch for Union snipers, but artillery damage evident in the upper floors attest to the accuracy of the Confederate cannon, while “bullet holes still dot the exterior of Oak Grove.” ⁴

Opposing Artillery, and a Devastating Flanking Maneuver

Late in the morning, Union artillery arrived and unlimbered a few hundred yards in front of the Confederate first line. “The three batteries blasted the right and center of Rhett’s line with a deadly combination of solid shot, spherical case, and fused shells. A federal projectile… disabled one of [the] two howitzers, while another slammed into [a] limber chest. The resulting explosion killed or wounded several nearby artillerymen and draft horses. The federal batteries’ devastating fire soon silenced the outnumbered Confederate artillery.”⁴ The South Carolinians fought bravely as brigades of infantry and now numerous artillery batteries arrived to challenge their line. Having delayed the Union advance for a number of hours, the time was right for Julius and his mates to withdraw to the second line, but the constant cannon and rifle fire made it impractical to do so. Meanwhile, three companies of Union infantry under Col. Henry Case deployed through the woods and marsh and crept up the ravine along the right flank of the Confederate line, while the rest of the brigade pressed from the front. Col. Case wrote that his men “sprang forward with alacrity, with a deafening yell, and the moment they emerged from the thicket in sight of the enemy they joined in a destructive fire upon their ranks.” The South Carolinians, “taken completely by surprise, fled precipitously in the utmost confusion.”⁶ An Illinois private wrote,“the Johnnies showed their heels as fast as God would let them.”⁵

The men cheered as they overran the earthworks, but “When the Federals saw the carnage behind those works the cheering abruptly ceased.“⁵ Six white horses lay “dead and horribly mangled” in the mud, along with wounded and dead gunners and drivers. One howitzer was captured, along with the BVA Napoleon, which was promptly turned around to use on the second Confederate line.⁷ BVA Pvt. C.W. Hutson, not assigned to the first line, wrote later that day

“Our 3d gun was engaged this morning, the horses shot down, & the cannoneers retired under orders from Taliaferro. The gun was lost, but fought to the end most gallantly. No one was killed, but Julius Bell was hit in the ankle & Wilson Hall had his foot shot off & was left on the field.”¹

The Journey “Home”

Taliaferro’s second line was overrun within a matter of hours, but the third line held until darkness fell, at which time Hardee wisely withdrew his troops to join up with Johnston 20 miles to the east near the town of Bentonville, where the final battle of the Carolinas Campaign was fought three days later. The war was over for Julius, however. He appears on a hospital roster in Raleigh on March 18, then in Salisbury NC two days afterward. Within three weeks, the war was over for everyone. On May 2, 1865, Julius received his parole at Salisbury, and he began his journey “home.” With his parents both dead, their family home and plantation long ago confiscated for “failure to pay taxes,” and a debilitating foot injury, the key questions for thirty year-old Julius were, just where is home, and how was he to get there?

Adapted from A String of Bells: Stories of a Southern Family © 2020 by Nick J. Guevara, Jr.

¹Charles Woodward Hutson Papers, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

² Hardee’s Rifle and Light Infantry Tactics, 1861

³The two became friends after the war. Johnston was in his 80s when he stood hatless in the cold and wet at Sherman’s gravesite during the latter’s February 1891 funeral. Upon being urged to put on his hat, Johnston replied, “If I were in his place and he were standing here in mine, he would not put on his hat.” Johnston did indeed take ill after the funeral, and died the following month.

⁴ Mark L. Bradley, “Old Reliable’s Finest Hour: The Battle of Averasboro, North Carolina, March 15-16, 1865” © 2002 Blue & Gray Enterprises

⁵ Bradley, Mark L., Last Stand in the Carolinas: The Battle of Bentonville, © 1996, Savas-Woodbury, Campbell, CA. p 126

⁶ Davis, Daniel T. and Greenwalt. P.S., Calamity in Carolina: The Battles of Averasboro and Bentonville, March 1865 © 2015, Savas-Beatie, Eldorado Hills, CA pg 32

⁷An unfired 12 pound artillery shell with paper time fuse is presently on display in the small Averasboro Battlefield museum. “Found on Confederate first line near abandoned brick house in the middle of a field. Believed to be from Stuart’s Battery.”