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During the Carolinas Campaign, Union Gen. William T. Sherman’s army moved slowly through this area on March 9, 1865, as low land and heavy rains forced troops to build corduroy roads from saplings, trees, and fence posts to carry 60,000 Federal soldiers, foragers known as “bummers,” supply wagons, and artillery along the route from Laurel Hill to Fayetteville. The Temperance Hall here, built in 1860, was allegedly damaged by passing troops who shot off its upturned chalice and Bible, though a nearby mill house was left undisturbed. Near this place, Confederate cavalrymen began reconnoitering the Federal advance before the Battle of Monroe’s Crossroads, and a small skirmish took place as that reconnaissance intensified. Sherman’s XV Corps crossed the Lumber River on the Gilchrist Bridge at the site of the present-day U.S. Route 401 span, while supply trains struggled in the Big Raft Swamp and troops were kept at work making roads as the army pushed north through North Carolina toward the campaign’s final operations.

North Carolina · United States