The Carolinas Campaign began on February 1, 1865, when Union Gen. William T. Sherman marched north from Savannah after the March to the Sea, seeking to join Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in Virginia against Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. In North Carolina, scattered Confederate forces consolidated in the Confederacy's logistical lifeline, and as Sherman moved north from Fayetteville, Gen. Joseph E. Johnston placed his army near Smithfield, unsure whether Sherman was heading for Raleigh or Goldsboro. On March 15, 1865, the head of Sherman's Left Wing struck Confederate Gen. William J. Hardee's skirmishers south of Averasboro, and Hardee counterattacked, beginning the battle. By the afternoon of March 16, Hardee's men had fallen back from their first and second defensive positions to a third line. Col. Henry Case's late-morning flanking attack pushed Col. Alfred M. Rhett's South Carolina brigade 200 yards north from the first line to the second, held by the brigade of Gen. Stephen Elliott, Jr. Early that afternoon, Elliott's line collapsed under Federal attacks, and the Confederates withdrew 600 yards north to the third line. Heavy rain worsened already muddy ground, and Confederate Gen. Joseph Wheeler stopped an attack on the right flank near the Cape Fear River before darkness ended the fighting. That night, while Federal forces prepared to renew the attack at dawn, Hardee withdrew his artillery and then his infantry, leaving campfires burning to conceal the movement. Of about 12,000 Union troops engaged, 682 were reported killed, wounded, or missing, while approximately 7,000 Confederates lost about 500. Hardee delayed the Union advance for a day, giving Johnston time to unite his scattered forces for a stronger effort to stop Sherman before the Battle of Bentonville. Jane "Janie" Smith, the 18-year-old daughter of Farquhard Smith, recalled the infirmary nearby, the mangled men returning from combat, the sounds of commands and the groans and shrieks of the wounded, and a late afternoon Federal charge that knocked down fences "like so many mad cattle."