Atlantic Coast

Sherman's Carolinas Campaign

Columbia to the largest surrender

Open the interactive map →

Drive

Columbia → Durham

Distance

~280 miles

Time

2–3 days

Highways

US 1 · US 301 · NC 82

Avoids

I-95 / I-40

Region

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 drive, segment by segment

The Burning Capital

Columbia → Cheraw · ~95 mi

The shell-starred State House and the disputed fire, then the sand hills to Cheraw's spared green.

• ⚔️SC State House stars — Columbia

  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.

• 🎸Cheraw & Dizzy's corner — Cheraw

  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.

Fayetteville & the Arsenal

Cheraw → Bentonville · ~85 mi

The arsenal Sherman erased, then east to the fields of the war's last great Confederate attack.

• ⚔️Museum of the Cape Fear & Arsenal — Fayetteville

  The US arsenal seized in 1861 and methodically wrecked by Sherman in 1865; the ghost-frame steel outline stands over the foundations.

• ⚔️Bentonville Battlefield — Four Oaks

  North Carolina's largest battle, March 1865, Johnston's last full-scale counterpunch; the Harper House interprets the field hospital in unsparing detail.

Surrender Roads

Bentonville → Durham · ~100 mi

Through Smithfield and Raleigh's intact capitol to the Bennett farmhouse where the numbers ended.

• 🏛️NC State Capitol — Raleigh

  The 1840 Greek Revival capitol surrendered intact, spared the Columbia treatment; the old chambers survive upstairs.

• ⚔️Bennett Place — Durham

  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.

Worth a detour

• Averasboro Battlefield — The delaying action two days before Bentonville, told through the Smith family plantations it swept across.
• Camden Revolutionary War Site — The earlier war's southern disaster and restored 1780s town, a reminder these roads have been fought over twice.