About this map
The 20 dots and rings are the Civil War Sites Advisory Commission’s principal battlefields for North Carolina, and each outcome is the commission’s1. Congress created the commission, and in 2010 the National Park Service updated its North Carolina report on the condition of these battlefields2. Six are listed as inconclusive, and other sources score some of them differently: the state’s marker essay for South Mills calls it a Confederate victory3. It is a preservation list, not a definition of a battle, and the map never claims to show every battle. The 17 small squares mark other documented fights at identifiable places, each with its own source in its panel. They have no outcome ruling from the commission, so they carry no outcome color.
The solid line is Sherman’s march, from S.C. on Mar 8 to Raleigh, with Schofield’s and Terry’s columns dashed as they converge on Goldsboro. The dotted leg is Sherman’s trip to the surrender talks, by train to Durham’s Station and on horseback from there4; at Bennett Place on Apr 26, 1865, Johnston surrendered 89,270 soldiers in the Carolinas, Ga. and Fla., the largest troop surrender of the war5. Out west, the dash-dot line is Stoneman’s raid: from Tenn. to Boone on Mar 28, into Va. on Apr 3 and back on Apr 9. Its line ends at Asheville, where on Apr 24 Union Gen. Alvan C. Gillem met Confederate Gen. James G. Martin under a flag of truce6.