States: South Carolina · North Carolina
Start near: Columbia, SC (starts here) · Raleigh (about 40 min to Durham)
Columbia to the largest surrender
Sherman's Carolinas Campaign is a ~280-mile back-roads route from Columbia to Durham on US 1, US 301 and NC 82, driven in 2–3 days, that stays off I-95 / I-40 through the Atlantic Coast.
Sherman called the march through the Carolinas harder than Georgia, and his veterans agreed: winter swamps, burning Columbia, and the war's true final act. This route follows the army north: the six bronze stars where shells hit the South Carolina State House, Cheraw's spared streets (and Dizzy Gillespie's corner), the leveled Fayetteville arsenal, Bentonville's last great counterattack, and Bennett Place, where the largest surrender of the war, nearly 90,000 men, ended it seventeen days after Appomattox.
📍 Carolinas Campaign Civil War Trails signs pace the route; Bentonville's driving loop is the standout.
The shell-starred State House and the disputed fire, then the sand hills to Cheraw's spared green.
Six bronze stars mark where Sherman's shells struck the granite in February 1865; the burning of the city that night remains the war's most argued fire.
A town Sherman's officers admired enough to spare, per the local telling, and the hometown of Dizzy Gillespie, whose bent-trumpet statue holds the green.
The arsenal Sherman erased, then east to the fields of the war's last great Confederate attack.
The US arsenal seized in 1861 and methodically wrecked by Sherman in 1865; the ghost-frame steel outline stands over the foundations.
North Carolina's largest battle, March 1865, Johnston's last full-scale counterpunch; the Harper House interprets the field hospital in unsparing detail.
Through Smithfield and Raleigh's intact capitol to the Bennett farmhouse where the numbers ended.
The 1840 Greek Revival capitol surrendered intact, spared the Columbia treatment; the old chambers survive upstairs.
In this farmhouse Johnston surrendered nearly 90,000 men to Sherman, the largest surrender of the war, seventeen days after Appomattox. The quiet is the exhibit.
Sherman's Carolinas Campaign is about 280 miles and takes 2–3 days at a back-roads pace.
It runs from Columbia to Durham.
It follows US 1, US 301 and NC 82.
It avoids I-95 / I-40, using US 1, US 301 and NC 82 instead.
6 stops are mapped, including SC State House stars, Cheraw & Dizzy's corner, Museum of the Cape Fear & Arsenal, Bentonville Battlefield and NC State Capitol.
The atlas’s seasonal note for this route: “Run March to the Sea first and this second; the two routes are one campaign with a state line in it.”
Connects with: Gold, Clay & Longleaf · US 301: The Ghost Road · The Old Ninety Six District
More in the Atlantic Coast: Kings Highway & the Lowcountry · Golden Isles & the First Coast · Outer Banks & the Sound Country · US 301: The Ghost Road · The Inner Banks · The Northern Neck · VA 5 & the Colonial Parkway · US 13: The Eastern Shore