On April 13th Stoneman left Statesville continuing west with Palmer not far behind but on the 16th their paths would diverge as shown in the map below. At Taylorsville Palmer would head south toward Lincolnton and the rest of Stoneman’s force moving west toward Lenoir.

Palmer’s ride south was complicated by the arrival of Confederate Brigadier General John Echols Southwestern Virginia cavalry into North Carolina. Echols men included Brigadier General John Duke’s brigade, Brigadier General John Vaughn’s brigade, and part of Colonel Giltner’s brigade. They had crossed into North Carolina through Fancy Gap near Mount Airy. They moved south looking for General Joseph Johnston’s army. Duke’s men were riding mules headed toward Lincolnton looking for their horses that had been sent there during the winter to forage. Palmer got there first ahead of the recalcitrant mules forcing Duke to bypass the city but he eventually did manage to find his horses.

Miller’s and Brown’s brigades reached Lenoir on the 15th and occupied Lenoir over Easter weekend, April 15-17, 1865. They used the St. James Episcopal Church to house prisoners.

The prisoners were 900 old men, boys and Confederate soldiers captured as they recuperated at their homes from wounds or illness. They filled the grounds and sanctuary of the church, which also served as a hospital. On the morning of April 17, part of Stoneman’s force rode west toward Morganton while Stoneman, the prisoners, and a guard headed northward toward Blowing Rock and back to East Tennessee. Lenoir resident Louisa Norward wrote her uncle, Walter Lenoir, that Union cavalrymen called Lenoir “the damnedest little rebel town they ever saw.”

Stoneman having heard rumors that Lee had surrendered decided that his mission was completed and headed back to East Tennessee taking with him about 900 prisoners. He directed his second in command brevet Brigadier General Alvan C. Gillem to continue the raid toward Asheville with the 2nd and 3rd brigades. Palmer would continue to move south threatening the Charlotte and South Carolina Railroad into South Carolina.

After a short march Gillem found Confederates guarding the bridge over the Catawba River just east of Morganton under Confederate Brigadier General John P. McCown on leave. He and Colonels Samuel McDowell Tate recuperating from a wound, and Thomas Walton would command about 80 members of the Home Guard. Gillem sent one battalion of the 8th Tennessee Cavalry upriver to flank the Confederates, but soon the other battalion dismounted and charged across the bridge after Federal artillery had knocked out the lone Confederate cannon, killing or capturing more than 50 guardsmen. Gillem and his men sacked the town before moving on to the house of Colonel Logan Carson in Pleasant Gardens.

Gillem and his men arrived at the Jonathan Logan Carson house on April 19th. The family, aware the Federals were coming, had buried some of its valuables in the forest and concealed others in a nearby cabin. Fearing for her husband’s life, Carson’s wife persuaded him to hide in the woods. The raiders skirmished briefly with a few Confederate home guards, who quickly fled. Some of Gillem’s men rode into the house and plundered it, but one of the officers prevented the soldiers from burning the dwelling. The cavalrymen camped here, receiving word of General Robert E. Lee’s surrender in Virginia. Soon they were riding toward Swannanoa Gap and Asheville.

The Confederates intended to defend Asheville. The commander of the District of Western North Carolina Brigadier General James Martin moved his command that included Colonel John Palmer’s brigade of North Carolinians and Colonel James Love’s regiment of Thomas’ Legion to Swannanoa Gap.

Private Charles White recalled, “Our Home Guard got busy on the mountain sides and cut big trees across the roads leading to Swannanoa and Lakey’s Gaps. We succeeded in making a barricade that no cavalry force would soon cross or clear away, but those of us (25 or 30) working on the road to Swannanoa Gap were trapped in the gorge by too early an appearance of a part of Stoneman’s men and were quickly taken prisoners.” Gillem reported Swannanoa Gap effectually blockaded and defended.

Given the topography of the gap with a very narrow floor and steep high slopes on each side, Gillem realized he could not force his way through. He left Miller behind as a ruse to carry out a series of feints and headed south to Rutherfordton, 40 miles away, with the rest of his force.

Gillem entered Rutherford County on April 20th and Rutherfordton on the 21st. On the 23rd he pressed on through the county toward Asheville with his brigade consisting of the 8th, 9th, and 13th Tennessee Cavalry. He ordered Colonel William J. Palmer and his First Brigade to move to Rutherfordton, establish a headquarters, then follow Gillem’s force. Gillem’s command consisted of “Home Yankees,” as they were called, who were natives of Tennessee and the adjoining mountain counties of North Carolina. This region was the scene of bloody conflicts between neighbors – sometimes within families – who were Unionists or secessionists. Some of Gillem’s soldiers, then, had scores to settle. Palmer’s men, who entered Rutherfordton on the morning of April 25th, were aghast at the depredations Gillem’s men had inflicted on the civilians. Palmer remained in Rutherfordton until April 26th, the day Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston surrendered near Durham, then marched about ten miles west and bivouacked. The next day he joined in the pursuit of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, who had fled south from Virginia.

The Green River Plantation marker was not present when I visited. According to the docent at the house someone accidentally backed into it with their car and severely damaged it.

Late in April 1865, Green River Plantation received uninvited guests: a detachment of U.S. cavalrymen, likely part of Colonel William J. Palmer’s brigade of Stoneman’s raiders. Hungry men and horses in need of forage filled the yard. According to family tradition, horses quartered in the house left footprints in the parlor floor.

Union General Gillem’s brigade entered Polk County, stopped at Green River Plantation, then rode through Columbus on April 22nd. Gillem and his men moved quickly through Polk County and Howard’s Gap, a few miles west of here. Martin expected Gillem to try and cross the Blue Ridge Mountains at Hickory Nut Gap and Howard’s Gap and sent a small force to guard it. The Confederates there had just learned that General Joseph E. Johnston was negotiating his army’s surrender to Union General William T. Sherman near Durham. Many soldiers at the gap concluded that the war was over and went home, reducing the ranks so that Gillem met little opposition.

On the 23rd Gillem entered Hendersonville and learned that a small Confederate force with four guns had retreated back toward Asheville. Gillem sent the 11th KY Cavalry and the 11th Michigan after them. By noon they overtook the Confederates and captured 70 men and four pieces of artillery on the Howard’s Gap Road. After three hours of riding, they encountered a group of Confederates who presented them with a flag of truce. That day Brigadier General Martin received notification of Johnston and Lee’s surrender and sent a party forward to arrange a meeting with General Gillem to discuss surrender terms. Also, on the 23rd General Palmer sent a group of seven soldiers led by Lieutenant Beck to General Gillem with two messages. General Sherman had made a truce with General Johnston and called for a cease fire and General Thomas his commanding officer had ordered Gillem and Palmer back to Tennessee. Gillem and Martin met on the 24th at a tree stump in Busbee on the Henderson Road (the Skyland area) and Martin agreed to the same surrender terms as Sherman presented Johnston with. On the 25th Gillem arrived in Asheville, he had asked Martin to provide his men with three days rations for his return trip to Tennessee. General Gillem and Martin dined that night in Asheville to go over the terms of the truce. The two brigades under General Brown and Miller headed back to Tennessee on the 26th.

On April 26th, the day Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston surrendered near Durham, Palmer’s brigade marched about ten miles west of Rutherfordton and bivouacked, then rode another sixteen miles to Hickory Nut Gorge and the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The next day, Stoneman, having learned that Confederate President Jefferson Davis had fled south from Richmond, ordered Palmer to discontinue his march to Asheville and join in the pursuit of Davis: “Follow him to the ends of the earth, if necessary, and never give him up.” Palmer, made a temporary general, turned around his disappointed men who had thought they were going home, marched down the mountain through the gorge, passed through Rutherfordton and then across Island Ford to the head of the Savannah River via Spartanburg. He continued the pursuit until May 15 when he learned that Davis had been captured in Georgia.

Colonel William J. Palmer, commanding about 1,300 cavalrymen of the 15th Pennsylvania, 12th Ohio, and 10th Michigan Regiments, made his headquarters here at Sherrill’s Inn on April 27, 1865. Palmer was brevetted (temporarily promoted) to brigadier general, probably while at Sherrill’s Inn. The promotion gave him the command of two brigades already in Asheville that had participated in pillaging there on April 26. A “Quaker warrior,” Palmer had joined the army as a way to express his abolitionist views. He was later awarded the Medal of Honor for his role in defeating a larger Confederate force at Red Hill, Alabama, on January 14, 1865, “without losing a man.”

However, the Union government, infuriated that Sherman’s terms were too lenient, rejected the Johnston-Sherman agreement. Stoneman ordered his cavalry division to do all in its power to bring Johnston to better terms. General Brown was about 15 miles west of town when the order reached him, and Brown’s and Miller’s men returned to Asheville and plundered the town and destroyed property until the afternoon of the 28th. All males were arrested and placed under guard in two mercantile shops in the center of town. At least 30 Confederate officers were arrested. When General Palmer learned of the arrests, he ordered the Confederates released.

Stoneman’s raid was over. Some like General William T. Sherman thought that raids such as Stoneman’s in North Carolina and Virginia and Wilson’s Raid in Alabama and Georgia dealt a fatal blow to the Confederacy. Grant, however, was not convinced. He felt that the war was practically over before the victories were gained and that they did not hold any troops away that otherwise would have been operating against the armies which were gradually forcing the Confederate armies to a surrender. The effects of the raid and the ill will it generated in western North Carolina would linger for decades as related in the song The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down by The Band (1969)- lyrics by Robbie Robertson, sung by Levon Helm. The song is a first-person narrative relating the economic and social distress experienced by the protagonist, a poor white Southerner, during the last year of the Civil War as a result of Stoneman’s Raid. The lyrics are shown below.

Virgil Kane is the name
And I served on the Danville train
‘Till Stoneman’s cavalry came
And tore up the tracks again

In the winter of ’65
We were hungry, just barely alive
By May the 10th, Richmond had fell
It’s a time I remember, oh so well

The night they drove old Dixie down
And the bells were ringing
The night they drove old Dixie down
And the people were singing
They went, “Na, na, la, na, na, la”

Back with my wife in Tennessee
When one day she called to me
“Virgil, quick, come see,
There goes Robert E. Lee!”

Now, I don’t mind chopping wood
And I don’t care if the money’s no good
You take what you need
And you leave the rest
But they should never
Have taken the very best

The night they drove old Dixie down
And the bells were ringing
The night they drove old Dixie down
And all the people were singing
They went, “Na, na, la, na, na, la”

Like my father before me
I will work the land
And like my brother above me
Who took a rebel stand

He was just 18, proud and brave
But a Yankee laid him in his grave
I swear by the mud below my feet
You can’t raise a Kane back up
When he’s in defeat

The night they drove old Dixie down
And the bells were ringing
The night they drove old Dixie down
And all the people were singing
They went, “Na, na, la, na, na, la”

Sources

Stoneman’s 1865 Raid in Central North Carolina by Chris J. Hartley. Blue and Gray Magazine Volume XXVI #6, 2010.

Stoneman’s Raid, 1865 by Chris J. Hartley.

The 1865 Stoneman’s Raid Begins Leave Nothing for the Rebellion to Stand Upon by Joshua Beau Blackwell.

The 1865 Stoneman’s Raid Ends Follow Him to the Ends of the Earth by Joshua Beau Blackwell.