Map of the principal battles and campaigns in North Carolina. Click
on map for larger image, or go to http://www.waywelivednc.com/maps/historical/civil-war.pdf
for an Adobe Acrobat version.
Map courtesy of Office of Archives and History, North Carolina Department
of Cultural Resources.
Eastern North Carolina and Union Occupation
With the fall of the Hatteras Inlet forts in late August 1861, the United States War Department moved to extend its control over the coast. On February 7, 1862, a Union force of 7,500 men led by Brigadier General Ambrose E. Burnside landed on Roanoke Island, forcing the Confederate garrison to surrender the next day. On March 14 Burnside captured the important town of New Bern in Craven County. He then moved his army thirty-five miles southeast and seized Fort Macon at Beaufort Inlet in Carteret County. With these victories, Union forces controlled the strategically important Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds. [See http://www2.cr.nps.gov/abpp/battles/nc004.htm for a summary of the battle at Fort Macon.]
May 23, 1863
At 5:00 a.m. recommenced our march toward New Berne [sic]; at Core Creek five miles off we had a little artillery duel with the enemy getting one man in the 15th North Carolina Infantry wounded in the arm by a shell. At 6:00 p.m. having arrived near Batchelder's Creek opened with all our artillery (twenty pieces) but during the shelling the enemy advanced on our left and had a brisk skirmish with the 15th North Carolina Infantry which ended in our driving the enemy back. We then fell back three miles and halted for the night. The dust was almost suffocating and two or three men fainted and Captain Jones had a slight sun stroke.Diary of William Hyslop Sumner Burgwyn, Company H, 35th Regiment from Mecklinburg County (1862-1864, State Archives, Raleigh.)
Once captured, New Bern became an operations and supply base for Union forces. It also became an important refugee center for newly freed African American slaves, and Union officials established camps to feed and house the freedmen. A refugee settlement across the Trent River became known as James City, after former Union chaplain Horace James, who served as superintendent for Negro affairs in New Bern. [For more information and a lesson plan about James City, see http://www.ncfmp.org/teachingmaterials/pdf/jamescity.pdf.]
After an unsuccessful attempt to recapture New Bern, Brigadier General Robert F. Hoke and his troops attacked the Union force at Plymouth on April 17, 1864. Two days later the CSS Albemarle, an ironclad completed in March 1864, sank or drove away Union ships. On April 20, 1864, the Union troops surrendered, returning control of an important region to the Confederacy and giving Southern morale a needed boost. [See http://www2.cr.nps.gov/abpp/battles/nc012.htm for a description of the Plymouth battle.]
With
the Union blockade of Charleston in July 1863, Wilmington became the most
important port in the Confederacy. Large quantities of food and supplies
for Lee’s army in Virginia passed through the port. The capture
of the city, protected by a series of forts, became a major goal of the
Union forces.
Fort Fisher, then the largest earthen fort in the world, was essential for the protection of Wilmington. Work on the fort, located at the mouth of the Cape Fear River, began soon after North Carolina left the Union. The first major attack on the fort in late December 1864 ended in failure and embarrassment for the Union commanders. [Go to http://www2.cr.nps.gov/abpp/battles/nc014.htm for a summary of the battle.] The second attack began on January 13, 1865, when 8,000 Union troops landed after an extensive bombardment by Federal ships. The fort surrendered two days later after failing to receive support from nearby Confederate forces. The fall of Fort Fisher left Wilmington unprotected, and Union troops occupied the city on February 22, 1865. [See www2.cr.nps.gov/abpp/battles/nc016.htm for a summary of the battle.]
The capture of Fort Fisher and Wilmington forced the shutdown of the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad. Originally built to carry commercial goods to and from Wilmington, the railroad played an essential role in shipping war materials brought into Wilmington through the Union blockade. In the last months of the war, a large portion of the supplies that reached Confederate forces in Virginia traveled over the railroad, known as the “lifeline of the Confederacy” because of its vital importance. The closing of this essential Confederate supply route hastened the end of the war.
As the war neared an end, Union cavalry commander Major General George Stoneman mounted a raid from Tennessee across the Blue Ridge Mountains into western North Carolina. Initially, Confederate officials thought that capture of the prison at Salisbury, which held captured Union soldiers, Confederate and Union deserters, and political prisoners, was the primary objective of the raid. Stoneman’s troops, however, moved back and forth across the North Carolina and Virginia borders targeting railroads, industries, and warehouses for destruction.
One unit that surrendered to Stoneman was under the command of William Holland Thomas, a successful businessman and self-taught attorney in western North Carolina. He spoke the Cherokee language and legally represented the North Carolina Cherokee on many occasions. In 1839 he was named the leader of the North Carolina Cherokee because of his ardent advocacy of the band. From the war’s beginning, Thomas supported the enlistment of Cherokee into Confederate service. In September 1862 he entered the army and organized a unit known as Thomas’s Legion, which included two companies of Cherokee. Thomas’s Legion spent much time protecting western North Carolina from Union invasion and rounding up deserters and Union sympathizers. [For more on Thomas’s Legion, see http://cherokeehistory.com/thomasle.html.]
Sherman’s Invasion of North Carolina
General William T. Sherman’s invasion of North Carolina in March 1865 caused panic throughout the state. Sherman’s troops were well known for their widespread destruction of property in Georgia and South Carolina, and North Carolinians feared the same fate. On March 19, 1865, General Joseph E. Johnston’s small Confederate force surprised part of Sherman’s army at the Battle of Bentonville in Johnston County. Initially successful, Johnston and his troops withdrew toward Raleigh after two more days of hard fighting. This battle showed that the Confederacy could still put up a fight, but that it lacked the resources to win. [See http://www.ah.dcr.state.nc.us/sections/hs/bentonvi/bentonvi.htm for a comprehensive site on the Bentonville battle, including photos and maps.]
Artist's rendition of the Battle of Bentonville
My small force is melting away like the snow before the sun.
—Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston, Greensboro, April 13, 1865.
General Joseph E. Johnston |
General Robert E. Lee’s troops surrendered on April 9, 1865, at
Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia. The news devastated most North Carolinians,
destroying all hope they had of winning the war. The defeat demoralized
the soldiers as well, and most lost their will to continue the fight.
[See http://www.nps.gov/apco/surrend.htm
for more on Lee’s surrender.]
In North Carolina, Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston faced the harsh realities of Lee’s defeat. Johnston believed that his army, exhausted, outnumbered, and shrinking from desertions, could not win the war. Although Confederate president Jefferson Davis advised him to keep fighting, Johnston surrendered on April 26, 1865, to Union general William T. Sherman at James and Nancy Bennett’s farm in Orange (now Durham) County. Johnston’s troops, scattered from Greensboro to Charlotte, were paroled and sent home the first week in May.
Because of its convenient location on the old road between Raleigh
and Hillsborough, which linked the final position of the Confederate army
under Johnston to that of the Union army led by Sherman at the close of
the Civil War, the Bennett's farm was chosen as the site at which to negotiate
the terms for Johnston's surrender. Bennett
Place is now a North Carolina Historic Site. Photo courtesy of the
North Carolina State Archives.
Thomas’s Legion fought the last skirmish in the state on May 6. The unit ran into a small Union force near Waynesville, killing one soldier and running the rest into town, although both sides knew the war was over. Joined by the remaining Confederate troops in the mountains under Brigadier General James G. Martin, Thomas’s Legion surrounded Waynesville, starting fires and using scare tactics. Despite the fact that they had the Union force in captivity, Thomas and Martin surrendered on May 9 because they knew further battle was futile.
A postwar photograph of the Cherokee who fought in Thomas's Legion
During the early days of the Civil War, the Confederacy, unprepared to confine Northern prisoners of war and deserters or Southern deserters and dissenters, housed these men in jails and abandoned buildings. In July 1861 the Confederate government appealed to the states for a prison. North Carolina, the only state to offer a prison, suggested the site of a former cotton factory in Salisbury. Its location on a rail line would facilitate prisoner movement. The main structure, a four-story brick factory, and accompanying wooden buildings would sufficiently house the anticipated two thousand inmates. On November 2, 1861, the Confederate government purchased the sixteen-acre site. Guards were hired, and repairs and modifications to the site were made. On December 9, 1861, the first 109 Union POWs arrived. By May 1862 Salisbury Prison held more than fourteen hundred inmates.
Lithograph: "Bird's Eye View of Confederate Prison Pen at
Salisbury, N.C. taken in 1864"
The inmates enjoyed good conditions initially. Food, water, and space were plentiful. Religious services took place each Sunday. The men performed in concerts and theatrical routines, and played chess and cards. Some made trinkets to pass the time. But their favorite activity was baseball; they played nearly every day the weather allowed.
In late May 1862 negotiations resulted in the parole to the Union of about fourteen hundred POWs. Salisbury Prison held few inmates until October 1864, when thousands of captives began arriving. On November 6, 1864, the prison held 8,740 inmates, the largest number at any one time and far more than the 2,500 for which it was designed. Conditions quickly deteriorated. Inmates faced overcrowding, poor sanitation, meager rations of food and water, vermin, inadequate medical care, and lack of warm clothing and heating fuel. Tents and dugouts in the ground served as makeshift shelters as buildings were converted to hospitals for the growing number of sick. Up to twenty men a day died in the fall of 1864 owing to these harsh conditions.
Prison workers, although frustrated by the conditions the POWs faced, could do little to alleviate the situation. The workers themselves, particularly the guards, were ill clothed and ill equipped because of shortages. Food, water, and other staples were in short supply throughout North Carolina and the Confederacy, and the public and Confederate government complained if precious commodities went to the prison rather than to the troops.
Many captives attempted to escape from Salisbury Prison, often by tunneling under the fence surrounding the prison site. The most ambitious escape attempt occurred on November 25, 1864, when captives rushed the prison gates, wrenched guns from the guards, and tried to run into the surrounding woods. The guards fought back, firing a cannon three times and recapturing the men, who were weak from lack of food. About 250 men, including several guards, died in the desperate escape attempt.
On February 17, 1865, the Confederate and Union governments announced a general POW exchange. Over the next three weeks, more than five thousand prisoners left Salisbury. The sick went by train to Richmond; the able marched to Greensboro, and then went by train to Wilmington, where on March 2 they were officially exchanged for Confederate prisoners. Only a few civilian prisoners and those too sick to be moved remained in Salisbury Prison.
Confederate officials debated the future function of Salisbury Prison, deciding it should be used for urgent needs. But on April 12–13, 1865, before the site could be put to use, Union general George Stoneman and his army burned the prison buildings and destroyed much of the property.
Between November 1861 and February 1865, Salisbury Prison held about fifteen thousand prisoners. Approximately four thousand men died because of poor conditions. In 1867 the site became a national cemetery honoring Union soldiers who died in the prison. The United States government in 1873, the state of Maine in 1908, and the state of Pennsylvania in 1909 erected memorials at the cemetery. Today, visitors taking the Salisbury Civil War Sites Driving Tour can see the prison site, a remaining guard building, and the national cemetery.
Civil War Battlefields in North Carolina
http://www.civilwar.org/landpreservation/l_en_NorthCarolina.htm
The Civil War Preservation Trust’s list of battlefields endangered
by development and natural forces.
CWSAC Battle Summaries: North Carolina
http://www2.cr.nps.gov/abpp/battles/NCmap.htm
A map of the battles fought in North Carolina, with links to descriptions
of the battles.
Fort Fisher Log Book
http://ncrec.dcr.state.nc.us/Cat/CatServer.asp?WCI=MainEp&WCE=CatV1&WCU=509.15
Scanned pages with transcript of a log book kept for about six months
in 1864 at Fort Fisher.
Military Reminiscences of Gen. Wm. R. Boggs, C.S.A.
http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/boggs/boggs.html
Memoirs of Confederate general William R. Boggs, with a detailed introduction
by William K. Boyd.
Salisbury Confederate Prison
http://www.salisburync.gov/prison/1.html
Photographs, illustrations, and floor plans of Salisbury Prison.
Salisbury Confederate Prison Bibliography
http://www.lib.co.rowan.nc.us/HistoryRoom/prison/salsconfprison.htm
A bibliography from Rowan Public Library.
Assignment 4: A Trip to a Civil War Battlefield
Complete one of the following assignments:
Option 1:
Develop a lesson plan that involves a field trip to a North Carolina Civil
War battle site. Include the following:
- materials that you would give to your students before the trip
- information that you would present during the visit
- post-trip assignments for your students
Option 2: (If you are seeking technology credits for
this course, choose this option.)
Create a virtual field trip to Civil War battlefields in North Carolina
(or in other states if that better fits your curriculum) by finding their
Web sites or related sites and creating assignments around them. Use either
an outline or a narrative form. Include (1) a brief description of what
the students can expect at each Web site, (2) questions the students should
answer after visiting each site, (3) assignments based upon the material,
and (4) other details you wish to include. Create your virtual field trip
in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, or HTML. (For examples of virtual field
trips and tips on creating them, go to http://teacher.scholastic.com/fieldtrp/socstu.htm;
http://www.education-world.com/a_tech/tech071.shtml;
and http://www.ncsu.edu/meridian/jan99/vfieldtrip/fieldtrips2.html
Your field trip can be very simple in format.)
Please submit your lesson plan or virtual field trip via e-mail to jessica.humphries@ncmail.net.