Robert E. Lee gave Joseph E. Johnston an impossible task.
Federal armies under Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman had rampaged
through Georgia on their "March to the Sea" and now were cutting a swath
of destruction as they marched north from Savannah through the
Carolinas. Locked in a desperate defense of Richmond and Petersburg,
there was little Lee could do to stem Sherman's tide--so he turned to
Johnston.
The one-time hero of Manassas had squabbled for years with Confederate
President Jefferson Davis, eventually leading to his removal during the
Atlanta Campaign. The disgraced Johnston had fallen far.
Yet Lee saw his old friend and professional rival as the only man who
could stop Sherman--the only man who could achieve the impossible. "J.E.
Johnston is the only officer whom I know who has the confidence of the
army," Lee told Davis.
Back in command, Johnston would have to assemble a makeshift
force--including the shattered remnants of the once-vaunted Army of
Tennessee--then somehow stop the Federal juggernaut. He would thus set
out to achieve something that had ever eluded Lee: deal a devastating
blow to an isolated Union force. Success could potentially prolong the
most tragic chapter in American history, adding thousands more to a list
of casualties that was already unbearable to read.
Historians Daniel T. Davis and Phillip S. Greenwalt, co-authors of
Bloody Autumn: The Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1864 and Hurricane from
the Heavens: The Battle of Cold Harbor, now turn their considered gaze
toward the long-forgotten battles of Averasboro and Bentonville. Written
in the accessible style that has become the hallmark of the Emerging
Civil War Series, Calamity in Carolina: The Battles of Averasboro and
Bentonville includes more than a hundred illustrations, new maps, and
thought-provoking analysis to tell the story of the last great battles
of the war in the West.
