During the Carolinas Campaign, which began on February 1, 1865, when Union Gen. William T. Sherman marched north from Savannah after the March to the Sea, scattered Confederate forces consolidated in North Carolina as Sherman advanced toward Virginia to join Gen. Ulysses S. Grant against Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. After Sherman defeated Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's last-ditch attack at Bentonville and was reinforced at Goldsboro late in March, Union forces reached Smithfield. Following street fighting on April 11, Confederates withdrew and burned the Neuse River bridge, and elements of the 75th Indiana Infantry were the first to occupy the town. When Sherman arrived, he established his headquarters in the courthouse. At about 5 a.m. on April 12, 1865, he received word of Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House three days earlier, and throughout the day he stood on the courthouse steps announcing the news to his marching troops, whose cheers and music filled the town. The Union army remained in Smithfield for two days before moving on to Raleigh, and a chaplain from the 58th Indiana Infantry found a town of wide streets and shaded walks but deserted houses, scattered county archives and church books, and graves of Confederate dead dating from about the time of the Bentonville fight.