FRATERNAL BONDS: Union Cpl. Gershom H. Swayze and the Confederate Battle Flag of the 40th North Carolina Regiment
By Mark A. Moore
Author of The Old North State at War: The North Carolina Civil War Atlas
The author’s guidebook ‘The Battle of Bentonville,’ originally published in 1997, is currently being revised and expanded for release in 2019.
In the late winter of 1865, the armies of the Union hammered the final nails into the coffin of the Confederacy. After the fall of Fort Fisher and the port of Wilmington, Gen. William T. Sherman’s 60,000-man Union army blazed through North Carolina, leading to the culmination of the Carolinas Campaign at the Battle of Bentonville, fought March 19-21. Virtually unopposed, the Union juggernaut had covered more than 400 miles on foot between Savannah, Georgia, and Bentonville. Gen. Joseph E. Johnston struggled to assemble a hodgepodge Confederate army from far-flung units, but managed to concentrate a partial force to resist Sherman’s advance between the Cape Fear and Neuse Rivers. Their final clash occurred just 20 miles short of Sherman’s ultimate destination of Goldsboro, North Carolina.
