The Civil War Battle of Plymouth, N.C., April 17-20, 1864, was a culmination of many factors. Confederate forces wanted to end the United States' occupation of eastern North Carolina. United States authorities occupied strategic intercoastal river ports in northeastern North Carolina and southeastern Virginia beginning with the capture of Hatteras Inlet in August 1861. From Norfolk, Va. to Elizabeth City, Edenton, Plymouth, Washington, and New Bern, United States soldiers and sailors occupied the region and began recruiting local men, White and Black (free and enslaved), for United States service.
U.S. policy on recruiting African Americans into the Army changed throughout the war. In North Carolina, wherever Union forces went or were stationed, enslaved people flocked to that location. Many of the able-bodied men joined either the army or the navy. The actions of these men in 1861 and 1862 forced the United States to adopt regulations and policies for their recruitment and service. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation made the enlistment of African American men a set policy of the Army. (The Navy had been accepting African American recruits from the start of the war.) When General Benjamin F. Butler took charge of the U.S. Department of Virginia and North Carolina in November of 1863 he declared that recruitment of African Americans was the settled policy of the Department. Recruiters came to Plymouth looking to fill quotas for service in other state units. The 10th United States Colored Troops had recruiters present, including 2nd Lt. Daniel Parmenter
These policy shifts brought reactive legislation from the Confederacy. The Confederate legislature passed a law stating that White officers of Black troops would be prosecuted for inciting Negro uprisings if captured. The Confederacy refused to recognize African Americans as soldiers. Any African American men captured under arms would be re-enslaved or worse.
From May 1862 on, Confederate forces launched attacks against the U.S. North Carolina outposts trying to dislodge the occupiers and break up the recruitment of local men into the United States army and navy. Confederate attacks forced the U.S. to abandon Edenton (Wingfield plantation) in February 1863 and Elizabeth City in April 1863 but Confederate attacks on the other outposts failed to relieve those locations.
The animosity suggested in the Confederate legislation manifested itself on the battlefield. A failed attempt to capture New Bern in February of 1864 did result in the capture of Company F, 2nd Regiment of White North Carolina United States Soldiers. Twenty-two of these men were hanged as traitors at Kinston in March 1863. Notorious episodes of giving no quarter to United States Colored troops include the February 20, 1864 Battle of Olustee (Florida) where the 35th United States Colored Troops, recruited in North Carolina, fought. On March 9, 1864, Confederate troops commanded by Brig. Gen. Matt W. Ransom fought in the Battle of Suffolk (Virginia). Some of Ransom’s men captured a camp containing a contingent of Black cavalrymen. The cavalrymen, encircled by the Confederates, sought refuge in a dwelling. The Southerners set fire to the structure and bayoneted and bludgeoned Black soldiers as they exited the building trying to escape the blaze. A few Blacks chose to remain in the house and suffered their unescapable fate in the inferno. “We did not take any prisoners,” a member of the brigade wrote. “Officers and men were perfectly enthusiastic in killing the ‘d----d rascals’ as I heard many call them… Ransom’s brigade never takes any negro prisoners. Our soldiers would not even bury the negroes --- they were buried by negroes.” An officer under Ransom’s command, Maj. John W. Graham of the Fifty-sixth North Carolina wrote his father on March 13 that women in Suffolk had begged his men to kill the negroes. “Our brigade did not need this to make them give ‘no quarter’ as it is understood amongst us that we take no negro prisoners.” Another member of Ransom’s brigade, Pvt. Gabriel P. Sherrill of the Forty-ninth North Carolina wrote on March 17 that “…wee have no quarters for a negroe.”
In April 1864, Confederate leaders sent a formidable force under the command of Brig. Gen. Robert F. Hoke to recapture Plymouth and reopen the waterway to Southern traffic and break up the recruitment center. Brig. Gen. Matt W. Ransom commanded three infantry brigades at Plymouth – his brigade and two others. As Hoke’s forces gathered west of Plymouth, refugees fled that region for the protection of Plymouth. An unknown number of these refugees joined the garrison to defend the town. Some women and children were sent by boat to a nearby United States outpost at Roanoke Island. An estimated 7,000 Confederate troops arrived at Plymouth during the afternoon of April 17 and immediately confronted and besieged the estimated 3,000 men in the Union garrison. On April 18 and 19, Confederates mounted heavy shelling and the ironclad ram, CSS Albemarle, arrived on the scene and joined the battle, quickly sinking one United States gunboat, the Southfield, and forcing the remaining vessels of the fleet to withdraw to Albemarle Sound. On April 20, Brig. Gen. Henry W. Wessells surrendered the Plymouth garrison.
Accounts of a Black massacre on April 20 began shortly after Wessells surrendered. In the final moments of the Confederate attack a group of defenders, including white and Black men, Black women, and children, dashed a nearby swamp, trying to avoid being captured. Many contemporary accounts indicate that Confederate forces pursued these fleeing people and proceeded to shoot them down “on sight.” Private Charles C. Mosher, of the 85th New York Infantry, recorded in his diary that “it was a massacre.” Other after-action accounts report African American men being lined up near the docks and shot. At least one African American man was caught as Hoke’s forces approached the town at the start of the battle and was killed – he had a uniform on beneath the civilian attire he was wearing. Many of the African American men aboard the sunken Southfield were reported missing and never found, possible victims of the atrocities of April 20th. The actual number of people killed in the aftermath of the surrender is unknown. The refugee influx and men yet mustered into regiments, make an accurate accounting near impossible.
After becoming prisoners, White recruiting officers of USCT regiments were treated differently from other white officers. 2nd Lt. Daniel Parmenter, detained and transported with the other officers to Weldon (the major railroad hub), was held separately from the other officers. The Confederate policy was to treat such recruiting officers as provoking an insurrection. Parmenter was shot by a prison guard at Weldon, N.C. on or about April 24, 1864, while “attempting to send a letter home.” However, given Confederate policy, the fact that neither commanding General Wessells, nor any of the other captured officers, nor anyone in the 10th United States Colored Troops knew Parmenter’s fate, suggests a darker cast to his death. One that falls into line with the Confederate atrocities against African Americans and White North Carolinians under arms
Less than a week before the Plymouth attack Confederate forces under General Nathan Bedford Forrest gave no quarter to the men defending Fort Pillow in Tennessee. Newspaper accounts of the atrocity at Fort Pillow spread like wildfire and created many problems for the Confederate government and cast them in an unfavorable public light. Fearing more bad press, on April 21, 1864, Lt. Gen. Braxton Bragg wrote North Carolina Governor Zebulon Vance asking him to keep the disposition of Black prisoners out of newspapers or any other publicity. African Americans who were captured and not killed were returned to their enslavers or removed to slave markets to be sold.
Historian Richard M. Reid summed up the effect of the Plymouth massacre on morale: “It may never be known whether most black soldiers captured at Plymouth were returned to slavery, shot, or held prisoner, … what actually happened to the black prisoners mattered less to the regiment (37th USCT) than what the soldiers believed had happened. The enlisted men quickly became aware of the rumors and … suspected the worst… Certainly, the fate of the captured soldiers at Plymouth was the subject of emotional speculation in the other black North Carolina regiments.” The hangings at Kinston coupled with the murders at Plymouth made white recruits fear future retaliatory acts as well.
The loss of Plymouth and the massacre of Black and white North Carolina men during and immediately after the fight influenced the recruiting and placement of African American troops in North Carolina. African American forces moved mainly to Virginia and fought as part of the Army of the James or were garrisoned at Fort Macon, in relative safety. Not until the United States attacks on Fort Fisher in December 1864 and January 1865 would African American troops be involved again in the fighting in North Carolina.