intrenchments from Fort Thompson. Colonel Campbell, commanding that wing, ordered Lieutenant-Colonel Haywood to charge the front of Reno. This the Seventh did in fine form and retook Brem’s battery,[1] but was in turn driven back by the advance of the Fifth Rhode Island and Eighth Connecticut. After their center was thus cut, the Confederates saw that with their inferiority of numbers they could no longer make effective resistance, and they retired on New Bern. Their losses had been, killed, 64; wounded, 101; prisoners, 413. The Federal losses were, killed, 90; wounded, 380.[2]
The fall of New Bern opened much territory to the Federals. Shortly thereafter their troops occupied Carolina City, Morehead City, Beaufort and Newport, and detachments were sent out in all directions. On April 13th a skirmish between one of these detached parties and a portion of the Second North Carolina cavalry occurred at Gillett’s farm, in which Lieutenant-Colonel Robinson, the Confederate commander, was captured.
On the 19th of April a spirited action took place at South Mills, near the Dismal Swamp canal. Rumors of
ironclads building for a descent on the Albemarle fleet led the Federals to send a considerable force, under General Reno, to destroy the locks that connected both the Dismal Swamp canal and the Currituck canal with the rivers.[3] General Reno took with him from New Bern the Twenty-first Massachusetts, "500 picked men, and the Fifty-first Pennsylvania. On his way he
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- ↑ General Hawkins again makes an error when he says: "Lieutenant-Colonel Clark . . . came upon a light battery of sixteen pieces." Colonel Clark in his report says five pieces. There were, however, only four; the two others of Brem s 6-gun battery were on the right, as already mentioned.
- ↑ Official Reports.
- ↑ "I have organized in conjunction with Commodore Rowan against that place (Elizabeth City), and if we succeed in capturing or driving the enemy back, we shall move up to South Mills and blow up the lock of the canal, and then proceed up to the head of Currituck canal and blow in its banks, thus rendering it impossible for the gunboats, which are said to be building at Norfolk, to come into these waters. "Official Records, page 271, Series I, Vol. IX.
