GENERAL:  I wrote you from Fayetteville, North Carolina, on Tuesday, the 14th instant, that I was all ready to start for Goldsboro’, to which point I had also ordered General Schofield, from Newborn, and General Terry, from Wilmington.  I knew that General Jos.  Johnston was supreme in command against me, and that he would have time to concentrate a respectable army to oppose the last stage of this march.  Accordingly, General Slocum was ordered to send his main supply-train, under escort of two divisions, straight for Bentonsville, while he, with his other four divisions, disencumbered of all unnecessary wagons, should march toward Raleigh, by way of threat, as far as Averysboro’.  General Howard, in like manner, sent his trains with the Seventeenth Corps, well to the right, and, with the four divisions of the Fifteenth Corps, took roads which would enable him to come promptly to the exposed left flank.  We started on the 16th, but again the rains set in, and the roads, already bad enough, became horrible.

On Tuesday, the 16th, General Slocum found Hardee’s army, from Charleston, which had retreated before us from Cheraw, in position across the narrow, swampy neck between Cape Fear and North Rivers, where the road branches off to Goldsboro’.  There a pretty severe fight occurred, in which General Slocum’s troops carried handsomely the advanced line, held by a South Carolina brigade, commanded by a Colonel Butler.  Its Commander, Colonel Rhett, of Fort Sumter notoriety, with one of his staff, had the night before been captured, by Kilpatrick’s scouts, from his very skirmish-line.  The next morning Hardee was found gone, and was pursued through and beyond Averysboro’.  General Slocum buried one hundred and eight dead rebels, and captured and destroyed three guns.  Some eighty wounded rebels were left in our hands, and, after dressing their wounds, we left them in a house, attended by a Confederate officer and four privates, detailed out of our prisoners and paroled for the purpose.

We resumed the march toward Goldsboro’.  I was with the left wing until I supposed all danger had passed; but, when General Slocum’s head of column was within four miles of Bentonsville, after skirmishing as usual with cavalry, he became aware that there was infantry in his front.  He deployed a couple of brigades, which, on advancing, sustained a partial repulse, but soon rallied, when he formed a line of the two leading divisions (Morgan’s and Carlin’s) of Jeff.  C. Davis’s corps.  The enemy attacked these with violence, but was repulsed.  This was in the forenoon of Sunday, the 19th.  General Slocum brought forward the two divisions of the Twentieth Corps, hastily disposed of them for defense, and General Kilpatrick massed his cavalry on the left.