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. Scattered Confederate forces consolidated in North Carolina, the Confederacy’s logistical lifeline, and after Sherman defeated Gen. Joseph E. Johnston’s last-ditch attack at Bentonville and was reinforced at Goldsboro late in March, Johnston saw the futility of further resistance and surrendered at Bennett Place near Durham on April 26, ending the Civil War in the East. On the rainy morning of April 15, 1865, the southern column of Johnston’s Army of Tennessee approached this crossroads as it marched west away from Sherman’s army. Under Gen. William J. Hardee, the column had bivouacked in Chapel Hill on the campus of the University of North Carolina. It was supposed to move out at 4:30 A.M. toward Greensboro but did not depart until after 6:00, and its destination was changed to Swepsonville and the Haw River ford there, along present-day N.C. Route 119. Hardee’s column included the 3rd North Carolina Junior Reserves, also known as the 72nd North Carolina State Troops, under Col. John W. Hinsdale; Company C was made up of sixteen- and seventeen-year-old boys from Alamance and Forsyth Counties. Hinsdale later wrote that their line of march followed the Salisbury and Hillsboro road, a historic route once used by Catawba Indians traveling to visit the Tuscaroras in the East and later by Governor William Tryon and Lord Cornwallis as they led troops over the same red hills. From here the column left that path and headed to Ruffin Mills. The winter of 1864-65 had been very wet, and early in April a flood destroyed all of the bridges across the Haw River except the railroad bridge at Granite Mills, making the choice of crossing potentially fatal because of high water.