Arriving at Smithfield 16 March, we remained two days and there
witnessed one of the saddest spectacles of the war--a military
execution. The regiment constituted a part of the military pageant
which attended the shooting to death of G. W. Ore, a private of
Company B, Twenty-seventh Georgia Regiment, who had been tried and
condemned for mutiny by a court-martial. The poor fellow was first
marched around, to the solemn music of the Dead March, in front
of the regiments which were drawn up in an open square, facing
inwards, he was then made to kneel, and was tied to a stake on the
open side of the hollow square. A detail of twelve men drawn up
at ten paces from him performed the painful duty of carrying out
the sentence of the court. At this late stage of the war, when the
struggle was perfectly desperate and all hope of success had fled,
the execution seemed to us to be little less than murder.
[Illustration: BENTONVILLE]
[Illustration: AVERASBORO, N.C.,
fought March 16^{th}, 1865.]
On 18 March we marched again, not to the West, but to the South.
We knew that Sherman was approaching from that direction, and we
surmised that there was serious work before us. General Joseph E.
Johnston, who rode for a short distance on that day at the head of
the Third Junior Reserves, said as much to its commander. Sherman
was moving from Fayetteville in the direction of Goldsboro in two
parallel columns, about a day’s march apart. General Johnston had
determined to take advantage of the fact that Sherman’s left wing
was thus separated from the right, and to strike a bold blow on the
exposed flank at Bentonville in Johnston County.