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 to crush Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. As scattered Confederate forces consolidated in North Carolina, the Confederacy’s logistical lifeline, Sherman defeated Gen. Joseph E. Johnston’s last-ditch attack at Bentonville. After Sherman was reinforced at Goldsboro late March, Johnston saw the futility of further resistance. On April 17, 1865, Johnston and Sherman met under a flag of truce midway between their lines on Hillsborough Road, seven miles west of Durham Station, and Johnston proposed using the nearby farmhouse of James and Nancy Bennett for privacy while discussing surrender terms. Inside the house, Sherman informed Johnston of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. Uncertain of the consequences, the generals began negotiations, with Sherman offering terms similar to those Grant had given Lee at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on April 9, while Johnston countered with a plan for “a permanent peace” that included political terms. At their second meeting on April 18, Sherman submitted a “basis for agreement” that called for disbanding remaining Confederate armies, recognizing existing state governments, establishing federal courts, restoring political and civil right to former Confederates, and granting general amnesty. Confederate President Jefferson Davis approved the agreement, but U.S. Secretary of War Edwin C. Stanton rejected it, and Grant ordered Sherman to meet Johnston again and offer the Appomattox terms. On April 26, Sherman and Johnston met there for the last time, and Johnston accepted the terms, surrendering the armies under his command, including those in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida, some 89,270 Confederates, the largest surrender of troops in the war, and essentially ending the Civil War.