On March 19, 1865, at Bentonville, a Confederate army led by Gen. Joseph Johnston attacked the left wing of Union Gen. William Sherman’s army. General Robert E. Lee directed the Confederates to make a stand in North Carolina to prevent Sherman from joining General Ulysses S. Grant in front of Lee’s army at Petersburg, Virginia.
Topics Related to Civil War
On March 12, 1865, Union troops under the command of Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman set fire to the Fayetteville Arsenal complex as they marched through North Carolina. The United States Arsenal at Fayetteville was built in 1838. During the Civil War it produced rifles, ammunition and gun carriages for the Confederacy and was vital to the Confederate war effort.
On March 8, 1865, the Battle of Wyse Fork began near Kinston.
On February 14, 1891, the North Carolina Confederate Soldiers’ Home was established by an act of the General Assembly. Attempts to establish the North Carolina Confederate Home Association began in 1884 when veterans, led by Senator Zebulon B. Vance, met in Charlotte.
On February 12, 1828, Confederate General Robert Ransom Jr. was born in Warren County.
Ransom was appointed to West Point where he graduated in 1850. The young officer was assigned to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Ransom returned to West Point as a cavalry instructor in 1854, and again was posted to the Kansas frontier in 1856.
On February 7, 1862, Federal ships bombarded Fort Bartow, part of the Confederate defenses on Roanoke Island. One of three Confederate earthen forts on the west side of the island, Fort Bartow mounted nine guns. The other two garrisons were Fort Huger and Fort Blanchard.
The three forts were designed to protect the mainland from Federal invasion and to complement obstructions placed in the channel. Of the three forts, Bartow was the only one actively engaged in what would become known as the Battle of Roanoke Island.
On January 18, 1863, a Civil War tragedy that has come to be known as the Shelton Laurel Massacre took place.
On January 17, 1865, Fort Caswell was abandoned as Confederates retreating from Fort Fisher detonated the fort’s powder magazines. The explosion destroyed the entire southeast face of the fort and damaged the western face.
A soldier quoted in The Daily North Carolinian stated:
We were aroused from our slumbers at 2 o’clock yesterday morning by an explosion, which shook our office to its foundation. We have ascertained since that it was Fort Caswell, blown up by our troops after its evacuation.
On January 15, 1865, Fort Fisher, nicknamed “Gibraltar of the South,” fell to Union troops.
Built on a peninsula known as Federal Point at the mouth of the Cape Fear River, 18 miles south of Wilmington, Fort Fisher was the largest earthen fortification in the Confederacy. It guarded the port of Wilmington, and, in that capacity, was the most powerful seacoast fort in the South.
On January 1, 1864, Parker Robbins of Bertie County, a free person of color of mixed African and Native American descent, enlisted in the 2nd United States Colored Cavalry Regiment at Fort Monroe, Va. Federal military authorities in eastern North Carolina began actively recruiting and enlisting African Americans for the United States Colored Troops in 1863, eventually establishing one artillery and three infantry regiments. Those wishing to join a mounted unit had to travel to Virginia to join. Robbins and his younger brother both did just that.