Wilson's Store Clash

During the Carolinas Campaign, as Union Gen. William T. Sherman's army marched north from Columbia, South Carolina, on February 19, 1865, Confederate authorities in North Carolina assumed that Charlotte was his objective because of its railroads and navy yard. Confederate Gen. Joseph Wheeler and his cavalry command, which had been shadowing Sherman's Left Wing and his cavalry under Gen. H. Judson Kilpatrick through engagements in Georgia and South Carolina, occupied Wilson's Store on February 26 and entrenched along Cane Creek. On March 1, Sherman ordered Kilpatrick to move in force from Lancaster, South Carolina, toward Charlotte as a feint while the army's Left and Right Wings turned northeast toward Fayetteville. Wheeler posted artillery on the rise to command the road approaches, and when Kilpatrick led his division into North Carolina that day, he encountered Confederate earthworks on Cane Creek. In the clash that followed, one Union cavalryman was killed and two others were wounded and captured before Kilpatrick retired south to continue screening Sherman's army. The next day Wheeler moved east to press Kilpatrick, having fired some of the first shots in North Carolina against Sherman's advance.

North Carolina · United States