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. As scattered Confederate forces consolidated in North Carolina, the Confederacy’s logistical lifeline, Sherman defeated Gen. Joseph E. Johnston’s last-ditch attack at Bentonville. After Sherman was reinforced at Goldsboro late in March, Johnston judged further resistance futile and surrendered at Bennett Place near Durham on April 26, ending the Civil War in the East. On April 15, 1865, the northern column of Johnston’s Army of Tennessee divided here as it maneuvered west away from Sherman’s army: Gen. A.P. Stewart’s corps marched to Gibsonville along present day U.S. Route 70, while Gen. Stephen D. Lee’s corps, accompanied by Johnston, marched through Elon on today’s N.C. Route 100, and another Confederate column moved west through southern Alamance County as Johnston and Sherman began negotiating the inevitable Confederate surrender. Johnston’s army moved west back up its supply lines, meeting trains bringing food and equipment from Salisbury under the direction of Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard, in sharp contrast to Lee’s situation after he evacuated Richmond and Petersburg on April 2–3 and marched west away from his supply sources, hoping to turn south and join Johnston, only to lose valuable time at Jetersville waiting for supplies that never arrived while Federal cavalry blocked his way south. Soldiers in the Army of Tennessee revered Johnston for taking care that his men were well fed and supplied, and although critics considered him overly cautious, most soldiers believed he was unwilling to risk their lives unnecessarily; Johnston himself feared he had been returned to command to serve as a scapegoat for failure, a concern later proved well founded. Johnston also had a unique connection to Alamance County: his father, Peter Johnston, and his father’s close friend, Joseph Eggleston, had fought there under Lt. Col. Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee during the Revolutionary War at an engagement known locally as Pyle’s Hacking Match, and Johnston was named for Eggleston and carried his sword, refusing to leave the Seven Pines battlefield without it after he was wounded.