March 14, 1862

March 14, 1862:  BATTLE OF NEW BERN, North Carolina - Gen. Burnside, with 11,000 men in three brigades, having landed the evening before, faces Gen. Lawrence O’Bryan Branch, with 5,000 men.  The Confederate earthworks, including Ft. Thompson, are elaborate but unfinished.  Burnside deploys Foster’s brigade on the right, along the river, and Reno on the left, with Parke’s brigade bringing up the rear in reserve. 

Branch’s line is anchored on Ft. Thompson on the river, along high ground with swamp in front.  Foster attacks first, but the heavy guns in the fort force him to pull his brigade back.  Reno moves his men forward and strikes at the center of the Rebel line, and breaks through, but the Confederate right flank pours fire into his line.  The Federals capture a Rebel battery, but a counterattack with fresh Southern reinforcements re-capture it.  Reno/s troops are caught in a crossfire.  At this point, Gen. Parke hurries his brigade forward and plunges into the Confederate center, followed by Foster’s brigade storming Ft. Thompson.  The Southern left and center break and withdraw toward the rear, and formerly their right collapses, with many being capture by the Union troops.  As the Rebel troops withdraw into the town, Commander Rowan’s Union gunboats fire on their flank.  Branch sees that they cannot hold the town, and so orders his troops to burn the town.  Union Victory.

 

                        Killed         Wounded       Captured           Total

U.S.                  90               390                     1                   481

C.S.                  64               101                 413                   578

The Storming of Ft. Thompson

---Gen. Halleck sends a letter to Gen. U.S. Grant, who is reinstated to command over the Army of the Tennessee.

---Gen. John Pope’s troops occupy the river port of New Madrid.

---The Richmond Daily Dispatch publishes a letter written by the Rev. O. R. Blue, of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, which he wrote to relatives, about his determination to give us his ministry and join the army:

I have done all . . . to help the country ever since the war began, but now that the cloud grows dark, and the perils increase, I feel that I must give myself to the holy cause. Had we continued to gain ground and met with no reverses, I could have gone on in the usual course and given encouragement, money, and prayers, as heretofore; but now I feel that personal sacrifices and peril must be added. I am not acting under a hasty impulse, but calmly and in the fear of God, and I trust life and all in His hands, who has never ceased to be gracious to me. A calm survey of all my connections in this revolution brings up nothing of regret, nothing that I would not do again; and I determined from the first that it should cost me something, and, if needs be, everything; and that resolve I mean to keep I find, too, every day since it has been known here that I am going, that others are influenced to go with me.

     I have a first-rate Sharpe’s rifle, one hundred ball cartridges, and the same number of rifle- shell, none of which, I hope, shall be wasted I shall take a good supply of testaments, also, and hope never to forget my ministerial calling, though not going as a chaplain. How long I shall be gone I am not able now to say, but I hope until our land is free from the trend of the invader, and our eternal separation from the infamous Yankee nation a fixed fact. And if in the providence of God I shall not come back, I trust I shall not die in vain.