This morning the
armies are menacing each other face to face, each remaining behind their works.
The design of Sherman is to hold him there until Schofield and Terry can
advance from Kingston, North Carolina. Skirmishing has been going on all day.
In the evening the Seventh is ordered forward on the skirmish line, and moving
forward under the command of Major Johnson, into a creek bottom, we provoked a
fierce fire from the enemy stationed on the opposite side. In this encounter
Privates Jacob Groch and Gotleib Burkhardt, of Company H, were wounded. Other
noble men were also wounded, but we have been unable to obtain their names.
It is now raining
and night has let her curtains fall. We are ordered to dig rifle-pits and
remain on the line all night. It is a dark night, a cold March rain is falling
upon the tired soldiers. The chilling winds make mournful music through the
branches of the tall pines. The rebels are entrenched close to our lines and
until three o'clock in the morning there is a continual firing. The Seventh
pumped the death dealing elements from their sixteen-shooters with such a vim
that it made the enemy think that the whole army was on the line of battle.
Three o'clock in the morning the firing ceased, and at the first gray dawn of
morning light the enemy is discovered to be gone and on the retreat. Thus ends
our battle near Bentonville, North Carolina, which proves to be our last
encounter with the rebel army in the war for the Union.
After the battles
around and in the vicinity of Bentonville, we move towards Goldsboro, where we
arrive March 20th. As we move into Goldsboro we are reviewed by General
Sherman, thus ending our campaign in the Carolinas,—a campaign that will
furnish history with many startling events—events that will tell of privations
endured, and of a fortitude developed in Sherman's seventy thousand that had
never been developed before by the world in all its martial history.
This evening some of
the soldiers who were wounded at Allatoona, join the regiment, having been at
Goldsboro waiting our arrival for some days. We are glad to see our genial
friend and boon companion, the gallant Captain Hackney, lately commissioned for
his bravery at Allatoona. We notice that he has a beautiful mark on his
beautiful face, the compliment of a rebel's whizzing minie. But as Grace
Greenwood says, this will be his patent of nobility. While here three companies
lately recruited for the Seventh join the regiment from Illinois, which are
lettered and officered as follows: Company B, Captain Hugh J. Cosgrove, First
Lieutenant George H. Martin, Second Lieutenant M. D. F. Wilder; Company D,
Captain William A. Hubbard, First Lieutenant John H. Gay, Second Lieutenant
William M. Athey; Company G, Captain S. W. Hoyt, First Lieutenant Andrew J.
Moore, Second Lieutenant W. J. Hamlin.
To make room for
these new companies orders are issued to consolidate old Company B with Company
A, Captain Sweeny commanding; old Company D with Company C, Captain Roberts
commanding; old Company G, with Company I, Captain Norton commanding.
SOURCE: abstracted
from Daniel Leib Ambrose, History of the Seventh Regiment Illinois
Volunteer Infantry, p. 300-2
