Eight regiments of North Carolinians served in the Union Army during the Civil War: four white and four colored regiments. The four white regiments were the First and Second N.C. Union Volunteer Infantries in the coastal plains, and the Second and Third N.C. Union Mounted Infantries in the western mountain region.

The First North Carolina Union Volunteer Regiment was authorized in May, 1862, by the order of General Ambrose Burnside, whose army had just completed the conquest of the coastal plains of North Carolina from the Virginia border southward to Beaufort, NC. The unit’s history, however, dates to the original invasion of the Outer Banks in August, 1861, by forces under General Benjamin Butler. Small groups of North Carolina Unionists appeared before Federal army and navy commanders requesting protection and proclaiming a willingness to serve in the United States army. Burnside accepted one such offer made in the town of Washington in April, 1862. Enlistment posters, dated May 1, 1862, invited eastern North Carolinians to enlist in the regiment with the promise that they would act primarily as home guards who would not be ordered to leave their county of enlistment except for emergencies or battalion drill. The earliest recruits appear to have been poor and largely illiterate men who resented the negative effect of slavery on white working men and hoped the Union army would abolish the system they detested. Recruitment posts were established in Washington, New Bern, Beaufort and Plymouth, while other still-contested counties of the northeast were scoured for recruits by North Carolinians acting in company-sized groups and others who entered the area under the protection of Union gunboats.

The primary function of the First North Carolina was defensive duty in and around the occupied towns. They acted as pickets, guards, gun crews in block houses, and were particularly useful to Union forces as scouts. Offensive military duty was related to small scale expeditions into the countryside, generally in the company of Northern units. One exception was Company L, designated as cavalry, and under the command of Captain George W. Graham, who had transferred from a New York Regiment. This unit gained the respect of Federal commanders as well as widespread publicity in the Northern press.

There was a conscious effort to keep the North Carolinians from situations in which they would be subject to capture and punishment as traitors by Confederate forces. Despite this, neither of the two Union regiments in the East could avoid the dangers of combat. Confederates attacked Washington in the early morning darkness of September 6, 1862, and inflicted a small number of casualties in intensive hand-to-hand fighting. Companies stationed in Plymouth suffered similar casualties in a Confederate attack on that town the following month. And in late March and early April, 1863, Confederates under General D. H. Hill laid siege to Washington. On the first day Company B of the First North Carolina was ordered to hold Rodman’s Point across the Pamlico River from oncoming Southern forces. The North Carolina Unionists conducted themselves creditably here as they had in the previous attack on the town.

The Second North Carolina came into being during the latter months of 1863 under the leadership of Captain Charles H. Foster, a Maine native who had edited a newspaper in Murfreesboro prior to the war. This unit suffered from poor organization and bad luck, and its misfortunes resulted in a general lack of respect for North Carolina regiments by Federal commanders. The make-up of the second regiment differed markedly from that of the first. Rather than enlisting Unionists with a cause (i.e., a patriotic motive), it also enlisted war-weary Confederate deserters and poor men who enlisted for economic security, which included a three hundred dollar bonus and care for their families. Within two months, and entire company was captured by Confederates commanded by General George Pickett during an attack on New Bern on February 2, 1864. Twenty-two of it’s men were found to be deserters from the Confederate army, and these were court-martialed and hanged. An equal number died in Southern prisoners in Andersonville, Georgia and Richmond, Virginia. The following month, regimental commander Foster was dismissed from the service by General Butler, and on April 20, 1864, two more companies were taken prisoner in the Battle of Plymouth. The rapid sequence of negative events instilled fear in many of the North Carolina Unionists. With three of its five companies captured, the Second North Carolina failed to attract sufficient recruits to maintain its existence, and plans were made to merge it with the First North Carolina. This was accomplished on February 27, 1865.

With one exception, North Carolina Union soldiers spent the remainder of the war on garrison duty in New Bern, Morehead City, Beaufort, Fort Macon, and the Outer Banks. Graham’s cavalry company was called on to join the Union push inland in March, 1865 to join with the forces of General Sherman coming up from South Carolina. This unit participated in the Battle of Wise’s Fork and other skirmishes without the loss of a man. The First North Carolina Union Volunteers were mustered out of service in June, 1865.

Sources:
Barrett, John G. The Civil War in North Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1963.
Current, Richard Nelson. Lincoln’s Loyalists: Union Soldiers from the Confederacy. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992.

 

 

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