Just as the flanking movement began to unnerve the Rebels, the Union battery opened fire. The first shot missed, but the veteran gunners readjusted. The second shot slammed home, breaking the axle on the Confederate gun’s caisson. With their enemy now bereft of artillery cover, the dismounted cavalry troops charged their enemy. It was only a few minutes until the Rebels had been ousted from their rifle pits and the road lay open. Morganton and its supplies of corn and bacon were soon in Federal hands.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in America's Civil War magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

As Gillem continued to pound away at them, the Confederates kept trying to scrape together what they could to defend their homes. Brigadier General James G. Martin, a Petersburg veteran, was the commander of the District of Western North Carolina. When he learned that Federal cavalry was headed for Asheville, he moved his command–one brigade and one regiment–to the land around Swannanoa Gap, placing his regiment in the gap itself to defend Asheville.

Gillem reached Swannanoa Gap on April 20 and found it to be effectually blockaded by about 500 men with four pieces of artillery. Once again, Gillem used the tactic that had successfully carried the command through the Confederate homeland. He ordered Miller to remain at the gap and “deceive the enemy by feints” while he took a detachment to outflank the Rebel right. The flanking movement, due to the mountainous terrain, had to be an extremely wide one. The Federals rode hard. On April 21, Gillem reached Rutherford, 40 miles south of Swannanoa Gap. By dusk of April 22, the Federals had fought through only “slight resistance” to cross the Blue Ridge at Howard’s Gap. Gillem now lay squarely in the Confederate rear.

The veteran General Martin had not been deceived. He ordered his lone brigade to meet the Federals at Howard’s Gap and repulse them. On April 22, however, news of Johnston’s surrender to Sherman finally filtered to the Confederates. On the basis of this news, Martin’s men refused to obey his order to stand and fight. Gillem, therefore, met only slight resistance at Howard’s Gap, when he could have faced a force equal to his own. Fortune was smiling on the Federal cause.

With Swannanoa Gap in Federal hands, Gillem continued his march on Asheville. At daylight on April 23, Gillem’s advance entered Hendersonville. There he received information that some Confederate troops and artillery had been waiting for him in the town the day before, but had retired toward Asheville. Gillem detached the 11th Kentucky Cavalry, with the 11th Michigan in support, to “pursue, attack, and capture” the enemy force “at all hazards.” By noon the Union detachment had found the Confederates, seizing four artillery pieces and 70 men. The Federals had become the masters of the countryside.

Early in the afternoon, the cavalry division left Hendersonville to cover the remaining distance to Asheville. After three hours of riding, the Union troops halted their horses as a few Confederates presented Gillem a flag of truce. Martin had sent word from his headquarters in Asheville that he had received official notification of the truce. As a result, a meeting between Gillem and Martin was arranged for the morning of April 24 to discuss surrender terms.

The meeting went off quietly and in order. The Confederates agreed to cease resistance, following the terms Sherman had granted to Johnston at Durham Station. Gillem accepted and informed Martin that he would return his division to Tennessee. To prevent the Federals from foraging on their return trip, Martin agreed to give them what supplies he had. On April 25, Brown’s and Miller’s brigades began the long ride back. Gillem himself turned to other duties, leaving the column to join the Tennessee legislature, which was then assembling. The war, it seemed, had finally come to an end for the Cavalry Division of the District of East Tennessee.

Mysteriously, though, the Federals returned to Asheville on April 26 and sacked it. Martin said that he “had heard of no worse plundering anywhere.” General George Thomas, it turned out, had notified Stoneman that Abraham Lincoln had rejected the terms of surrender between Sherman and Johnston. Stoneman’s cavalry was to “do all in its power to bring Johnston to better terms.”

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to