On May 22, 1898, the 1st North Carolina Regiment was dispatched to Camp Cuba Libre in Jacksonville, Florida, for service in the Spanish-American War.
On February 15, 1898, Charles L. Abernathy, editor of the Beaufort Herald-Dispatch, wrote to U. S. Senator Marion Butler to point out that North Carolina’s Fort Macon was “in a dilapidated condition with a lone sentry in charge of it.”