The Carolinas Campaign began on February 1, 1865, when Union Gen. William T. Sherman led his army north from Savannah, Georgia, after the March to the Sea, seeking to join Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in Virginia against Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Confederate forces scattered and then consolidated in North Carolina, the Confederacy's logistical lifeline, where Sherman defeated Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's attack at Bentonville; after Sherman was reinforced at Goldsboro late in March, Johnston surrendered on April 26, essentially ending the Civil War. On April 17, 1865, Sherman arrived by train at Durham's Station at the close of the campaign to discuss peace terms at Johnston's request, while Johnston was headquartered in nearby Hillsborough. Carrying a telegram announcing President Abraham Lincoln's assassination, Sherman spoke near there with his cavalry commander, Gen. H. Judson Kilpatrick, at the Durham home of Dr. Richard Blacknall, then rode three miles west to James and Nancy Bennett's farmhouse to begin negotiations for the Confederate surrender. The community had received various names from the U.S. Post Office Department since the 1820s, and it was officially named Durham in 1853 after Dr. Bartlett Durham donated four acres for a North Carolina Railroad station and the Durham's Station post office was established. About 100 people lived in the hamlet in 1865, and it grew rapidly around the station; after the Civil War, Durham developed quickly as a tobacco and textile manufacturing center. Durham County was established in 1881, and by 1900 its population exceeded 26,000, while a century later the metropolitan area totaled more than 450,000. Durham residents also served in Confederate units: the Flat River Guards, Company B of the 6th North Carolina Infantry, fought heavily at the First Battle of Manassas in July 1861, and the Durham Light Infantry, Company C, took part in Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg on July 3, 1863.