Topics Related to Civil War

A detachment of United States troops burned Winton on February 20, 1862. The first town in N.C. to be burned during the Civil War.

Erected in June 2001, the large marker replaced four older markers, all of which were scrapped when construction commenced on the new US 17 bridge across the Chowan River.

Confederates, on Apr. 19, 1862, repelled Union army here, prevented demolition of Dismal Swamp Canal locks three miles N.W.

On December 26, 1919, Civil War soldier, planter and politician William Ruffin Cox died in Richmond, Virginia.Born in Scotland Neck in 1832, Cox was raised and educated in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1857, he returned to North Carolina, where he owned a large plantation in Edgecombe County and established a law practice in Raleigh.

On December 15, 1862, federal and Confederate forces clashed at what’s today known as Seven Springs, but was then called Whitehall.Part of Union General John G. Foster’s raid from New Bern to Goldsboro in late 1862, Foster’s contingent of three companies of cavalry and several pieces of artillery entered Whitehall hoping to capture or destroy the railroad bridge.

On December 15, 1836, Confederate spy Emeline Jamison Pigott was born in Carteret County. Living on a farm on Calico Creek, near what is now Morehead City, she witnessed many of the hardships the Civil War brought on, when Confederate, and later, Union soldiers were encamped nearby.

On December 14, 1862, Union forces under the command of Gen. John G. Foster launched their second attack on Confederate Gen. Nathan G. “Shanks” Evans at the First Battle of Kinston.

On December 9, 1861, the Confederate prison at Salisbury took in its first Yankee prisoners.Early in the war, the Confederacy purchased an old cotton mill in southeast Salisbury for $15,000 and converted the structure into a place of confinement. Many of the incarcerated spent their time writing, whittling or playing baseball. These constituted some of the first baseball games played in the South. One prisoner noted that early life within the prison was “more endurable than any other part of Rebeldom.”

On November 27, 1864, General Braxton Bragg was given command of the Department of North Carolina of the Confederate States Army. Braxton Bragg (1817-1876), Governor Thomas Bragg (1810-1872) and Congressman John Bragg (1806-1878), brothers, were among the six sons of Thomas and Margaret Bragg. They grew up in Warrenton and attended the Warrenton Male Academy.

On November 17, 1862, 19-year-old James Wells Champney drafted a collection of small images titled “First impressions of North Carolina, sketched in cars on the [way] to newbern.”The son of a painter-illustrator, Champney apprenticed in Boston to become a master wood engraver, but the outbreak of war interrupted his artistic training. He volunteered for the 45th Massachusetts and deployed to North Carolina in November 1862 as part of reinforcements for the Union occupational forces then at New Bern.