Meanwhile, Hood’s strategy in Tennessee backfired tragically. At Franklin, Tenn., on November 30, Hood hurled his army against a part of Thomas’s force under Gen. John M. Schofield. Hood’s assaults cost 6,000 Confederates, including 5 generals and 53 regimental colonels. Two weeks later, Thomas’s troops all but destroyed Hood’s army when the Confederates made repeated assaults at Nashville. Sherman’s strategy had cut the Confederacy in two. Although Grant was then no closer to Richmond than McClellan had been two years earlier, all that remained of the Confederacy were Virginia, the Carolinas, and isolated areas of the Trans-Mississippi. [Illustration: Fort Darling, a Confederate defense overlooking the James River at Drewry’s Bluff. In the left foreground can be seen one of the bombproof shelters used by defenders.] 1865 After a month’s rest at Savannah, Sherman on February 1 started northward to strike through the Carolinas and join Grant in Virginia for the final blow against Lee. Sherman’s major opposition was the remnant of the Army of Tennessee, which had been placed again under the command of Gen. Joseph Johnston. Johnston could offer but feeble resistance to Sherman. Federal troops occupied Charleston and were in Columbia when the latter was gutted by fire. On March 10 Sherman’s forces seized Fayetteville in central North Carolina, brushed back part of Johnston’s army six days later at Averysboro, and successfully withstood a Confederate attack at Bentonville (March 19-21). Meanwhile, Grant had been mustering his forces for a grand drive against Lee’s weak defenses. Throughout the long siege of Petersburg Grant had slowly extended his lines farther to the south and west. Lee had no choice but to stretch his own meager defenses accordingly. Soon the Southern defenses were dangerously overextended. This was the situation which Grant had sought. On April 1 he attacked Lee at Five Forks, sixteen miles southwest of Petersburg. The Confederate line bent and then broke. That night the Army of Northern Virginia abandoned the Richmond-Petersburg trenches and slowly moved westward in retreat. At the same time President Davis transferred the Confederate capital to Danville near the North Carolina border, Lee’s major hope was to rendezvous at Danville with Johnston’s army, then falling back in the face of Sherman’s advance. Together, Lee speculated, he and Johnston might be able to defeat first Sherman and then Grant. [Illustration: This April, 1865, photograph shows the gutted business district of Richmond. The prominent building in the center was the Confederate capitol.]