Averasboro, March 16, 1865: Hardee’s Rain-Soaked Stand Against Sherman’s Left Wing

The rain did not stop on the morning of March 16, 1865. It had fallen for much of the previous day, turning the sandy roads of Harnett County into ribbons of mud that swallowed wagon wheels and slowed men on foot. Along the Raleigh road, Confederate soldiers dug in behind logs and earth and waited for the Union columns to come to them.

The fighting that followed at Averasboro was small compared with the battles of the Civil War's eastern theater.

Two armies on the road north

By early March 1865, Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman had brought his army out of Georgia and into the Carolinas. He had taken Savannah in December 1864, then marched north through the Carolinas with the aim of joining Union forces at Goldsboro. Union troops occupied Fayetteville, North Carolina, on March 11, after the Confederate troops there withdrew.

Sherman split his army for the march, and the left wing, commanded by Maj. Gen. Henry W. Slocum, moved north up the Raleigh road.

Confederate leaders knew they could not stop Sherman with the forces at hand. Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, who had been restored to command in the Carolinas in late February, was trying to gather scattered units in central North Carolina, concentrating them at Smithfield. Hardee's job was to slow the Union advance long enough for those units to arrive.

A day of fighting in the rain

Hardee chose a position astride the Raleigh road a few miles from the village of Averasboro. His corps was small, built around the divisions of Brig. Gen. William B. Taliaferro and Maj. Gen. Lafayette McLaws, with Joseph Wheeler's cavalry. Slocum's men outnumbered them by a wide margin.

Hardee arranged his men in three successive lines, each a set of earthworks or rifle pits across the road, with the ground between them chosen to make a Union advance slow and costly. The Union troops came up on March 15 and pushed the Confederate skirmishers back. They found the main Confederate position strongly held, and muddy roads slowed the Union columns as they came up to press the attack.

The fighting on March 15 ended without a decisive result. On the morning of March 16, the rain continued and the Union advance resumed. Union units attacked the Confederate lines and forced them back from one position to the next. Hardee's men fell back deliberately, and each withdrawal bought time while the road and the weather worked against both sides.

Why the delay mattered

By the night of March 16, Hardee had pulled his corps back after dark toward Smithfield. Union reports put the Federal losses at 682 casualties. Confederate losses were also heavy: Hardee's own count was about 500, while later estimates run as high as 865.

The more important effect was on Johnston's plans. Johnston was trying to gather units that were spread over a wide area, and each hour Hardee held Slocum's wing was an hour he could use to bring troops into position. Those troops were the men who would meet the Union left wing again at Bentonville, March 19 to 21, in the last major battle of the campaign.

Names and the battlefield today

Sources spell the name in more than one way, as Averasboro and Averasborough. The battlefield itself is generally called Averasboro.

The fighting took place in and around Harnett and Cumberland counties. The battlefield has been preserved in part, with more than 569 acres saved by the American Battlefield Trust and its members.