Late in 1864, as Grant held Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia immobile at Petersburg and Sherman, with 60,000 men, captured Atlanta and began the March to the Sea, two large Union armies in Virginia and Georgia were squeezing the Confederacy toward defeat. After Savannah fell by Christmas 1864, Sherman began his invasion of the Carolinas in mid-January 1865, captured Columbia on February 17th and Fayetteville on March 11th, and then tried to confuse General Joseph E. Johnston’s Confederate forces by feigning an advance on Raleigh with the left wing of his army under General H. W. Slocum. Marching from Fayetteville along the Old Stage Road, present U.S. 401, toward Averasboro, where the road branched north to Raleigh and east toward Smithfield and Goldsboro, Slocum’s wing moved while Sherman’s right wing advanced toward Goldsboro on a parallel road about 20 miles farther east. By mid-March 1865, Johnston faced a difficult military situation in North Carolina, with his small army scattered too widely to be quickly organized into an effective force, and the only corps in position to hinder the Union advance was the 6,500-man command of General W.J. Hardee, which was ordered to resist Slocum’s advance and so began the Battle of Averasboro.