A Thousand Aspirations

On November 17, 1861, a lone black man named Ben sailed a leaky “cooner” from a Confederate fort on Roanoke Island, North Carolina, across a stormy sea to a Union encampment on Hatteras Island. His skillful escape from slavery through the middle of a war zone astonished the soldiers who greeted him, but they had yet to see the true extent of the newcomer’s courage and ability.

Less than three months later, on the eve of the Battle of Roanoke, Ben was “comfortably closeted” with General Ambrose Burnside making plans for the next day’s attack. The ex-slave and the Union commander discussed the greycoats’ numbers, fortifications, and morale. Most importantly, Ben identified the battery “defending the only pass to the enemy’s rear, which he had helped build.” The next morning Ben led troops under General Foster to the battery and was among the first to attack it, distinguishing himself in battle more than a year before the United States officially recruited black soldiers.

Another escaped slave, a young boy named Thomas Robinson, also played an important role in the Battle of Roanoke. Unlike Ben, Robinson was a native of Roanoke and had an expert knowledge of the dangerous shoal waters surrounding the island. In the thick of a naval battle, he led 10 soldiers including a topographical engineer ashore in a small boat.

The young guide identified Ashby’s Harbor, three miles south of the Confederate forts, as the best place for landing Union troops on the island. His scouting party surveyed enemy defenses there and returned under fire to Burnside’s ship. By midnight 7,500 bluecoats had come ashore at Ashby’s Harbor, setting up a horrible surprise for outmanned Confederate troops who had counted on the Yankees’ inferior knowledge of local terrain to defend the island.

In the next four years, hundreds of thousands of slaves all across the South would follow Thomas Robinson and Ben to freedom. Even before the Emancipation Proclamation, they joined the Union army wherever it had established beachheads on Southern soil — in Tidewater Virginia and the Sea Islands of South Carolina late in 1861, on the North Carolina coast and large parts of the Mississippi Valley early in 1862, and in Louisiana later that year. (See chart.)

The story of how black Southerners struggled for freedom in North Carolina highlights an important and usually neglected part of Civil War history — the contribution that slaves across the region made to their own liberation. “Often,” wrote Colonel Rush Hawkins of the 9th New York Regiment stationed at Hatteras, the slaves brought “news of important military activity.” But the newly freed Southerners contributed much more to the Yankees — and took much more from the Rebels — than military intelligence. They brought experienced labor, skills ranging from carpentry to espionage, a willingness to fight, and a knowledge of the local environment that proved invaluable to the Union occupation on the Carolina coast and to their own struggle for freedom.

 

The Dismal Swamp

After the victory at Roanoke Island, federal troops commanded by Burnside quickly captured the coastal towns on the interior of the Outer Banks. The campaign opened a strategic “back door” to the Confederate capital in Richmond, eliminated a base for privateers, and blockaded Southern shipping along the state’s entire coast except for Wilmington for the duration of the war.

Many slaves fled to the thin stretch of coast occupied by the Union army, especially to the vicinity of New Bern and Roanoke Island. Mary Barbour’s parents carried her 200miles from McDowell County to New Bern when she was a small child. “We traveled all night and hid in the woods all day,” she recalled years later. A slave woman named Juno escaped with her children by rowing a canoe down the Neuse River at night, and a group of Onslow County slaves swam the White Oak River into Jones County and walked to New Bern.

A crowd of slaves “patched until their patches themselves were rags” sailed 75 miles from the town of Plymouth past rebel forts to Roanoke Island. “How they succeeded,” wrote a Union soldier, “is a wonder to us all.” Another dinghy crowded with fleeing “contrabands” sailed down the Chowan River while a frustrated owner took potshots at the boat from shore. And on a single night, almost 100 Hertford County slaves stole across the Roanoke River into Bertie County en route to federal camps. Others fled to the North Carolina coast from as far away as South Carolina and Alabama.

Some slaves emerged literally out of the swamps. The Dismal, Great Alligator, Angola, and other coastal swamps had provided escaped slaves with important refuges prior to the Civil War. William Kinnegay, a tall man with a “meditative air” who ran away from a Jones County plantation after his owner sold him apart from his wife and children, hid in swamps south of New Bern for six years before crossing into Union lines in 1862. Another man, a black preacher, arrived in New Bern from a clandestine ministry in the Dismal Swamp.

By mid-1862, more than 10,000 contrabands had converged on the North Carolina coast. The population of New Bern swelled from roughly 5,400 to 7,500. By the end of the war, almost 16,000 freed slaves would live in the vicinity of New Bern.

 

“Their Own Efforts”

None of the slaves could know how long their moment of freedom would last. Yet old women sang hymns of praise and jubilation late into the nights. Families separated by the auction block celebrated joyful reunions. Gradually, the former slaves built their own communities out of slavery’s shadow. New Bern, recorded a soldier, was growing into “a Mecca of a

thousand aspirations.”

The ex-slaves cleared land, laid out streets, planted gardens, and built homes. At Roanoke Island, “wives and children . . . united with the men in performing the work of the carpenter, mason, and the gardener.” Blacksmiths, coopers, millwrights, tailors, and other artisans established shops.

Freed slaves in New Bern formed political organizations and relief societies, elected elders and founded churches, including the first A.M.E. Zion church in the South. They also began to educate themselves. Under the supervision of the Superintendent for Negro Affairs, 800 children and adults attended evening schools in two “African churches.” They were eager to learn; a union corporal observed sawmill workers who “speedily whipped out and zealously studied” their spelling books “at every break.” By 1865, there were 19 day schools and eight evening schools in the district — the first public schools for blacks in North Carolina.

Thousands of freedmen were hired by the federal forces. Laborers, carpenters, and engineers built docks, a new railroad bridge over the Trent River, and fortifications that were a “chief reliance against the rebels.” Other workers dug canals, loaded and unloaded ships, and served as teamsters and personal servants. Many women worked as cooks, nurses, and laundresses for the army.

Though a common enemy united blacks and Yankees and undoubtedly smoothed over many potential problems, mistreatment of black workers and instances of brutality by Union soldiers were not uncommon during the federal occupation. In addition, some officers were widely known to swindle black workers and soldiers out of wages and bonuses. These abuses strained relations to the point where many black laborers in New Bern refused to work for the Union Army by the end of the war.

The corruption and brutality forced the freedmen to rely more on their own resources. In the New Bern area in 1864, as many as 1,200 chose to work on cotton farms and turpentine lands leased from the Treasury Department rather than for the occupation forces. “Their hope rested in their own efforts,” concluded a northern missionary, “mainly for freedom and justice.”

 

Spies and Scouts

The “best and most courageous” blacks in New Bern served as guides, scouts, and spies for the Union army, which was employing more than 50 of these volunteers by the summer of 1862. The former slaves infiltrated greycoat lines and visited enemy camps as far south as Swansboro, north to the Roanoke River, and west to Goldsboro.

A young black man named Charley, for example, made three journeys to Kinston in 1862 and brought back key information on troop movements and the location of the enemy camp there. Another time, General Foster sent two scouts back to their homeland in Onslow County to investigate rumors of an impending Confederate attack coming from the south. The two men almost died from exposure during a four-day reconnaissance in stormy weather, but they proved that the rumors were unfounded.

William Kinnegay, the swamp refugee, traveled 35 miles through enemy territory to spy on rebel headquarters in Kinston. On his way back to New Bern, he detoured south to rescue his wife and children from his former plantation in Jones County. Other scouts led forays for supplies and food and located railroads, bridges, munitions factories, and other military targets that became objects for Union raids.

The freedmen sometimes contributed to Union military strategy. In 1862, for example, another black man named Charlie proposed a raid to retrieve a large stash of cotton that he had encountered during his escape to New Bern. He convinced Union officers of the merits of his plan and successfully led 20 blacks and 100 white soldiers to retrieve the valuable prize.

Sam Williams, a refugee from Jones County, proposed a more daring plan to the army. Williams outlined a surprise attack on a rebel encampment near Trenton. He explained the location of the enemy, the lay of the land, and pointed out a little-known route through a swamp that would surround the greycoats. With Williams riding ahead with a part of the 3rd New York Cavalry, three regiments attempted the raid. The expedition was unsuccessful, but not because of faulty advice from Williams, whose horse was shot from under him in a skirmish.

Spying and scouting were especially dangerous occupations for escaped slaves, who risked re-enslavement — or worse — if captured. According to a Confederate soldier captured in the raid devised by Williams, the greycoats “would have roasted him alive” if they had caught the former slave.

On his last foray into Kinston, young Charley and another scout encountered Confederate guerrillas five miles south of the town and had to retreat quickly to New Bern with bloodhounds on their heels. On an expedition to Tarboro, another black scout had to soak his party’s feet in turpentine to confuse the bloodhounds trailing them. At least two scouts were captured on other occasions. One scout was killed in Kinston when his former owner caught him trying to bring his wife to New Bern. A boy scout was ambushed by Rebel Rangers while piloting a squad of federal cavalry in Chowan County.

In New Bern, black refugees from the town of Plymouth (60 miles north) told somber stories about the treatment of captured black soldiers and “colored employees of the government” after Confederate troops retook the town in April 1864. Many had been summarily executed; those not killed were enslaved.

 

Gods of the Sea

Many blacks living near the coast also possessed piloting, navigation, and other watercraft skills that were invaluable to the federal occupation. The Yankees held only a few ports securely. Control over the rivers and immense sounds within the Outer Banks was thus essential for maintaining transport, supply lines, the blockade, and most military raids. However frequent storms, narrow inlets, and a shallow, shifting sand bottom made the North Carolina coast, the legendary “Graveyard of the Atlantic,” among the most hazardous in North America.

Union soldiers quickly recognized that many blacks were adept fishermen, pilots, sailors, and ferrymen with an excellent practical knowledge of boating and the coastal environment. “The negroes at Roanoke are fond of boats,” reported the Reverend Horace James, “and know how to manage them.” In Beaufort, he observed that the local blacks “take to the water almost as readily as the sea fowl that abound in this vicinity.”

The Union quartermaster at Hatteras Inlet employed blacks “to man the boats” that enforced the blockade. Other maritime freedmen crewed approximately 20 steam transports operating out of New Bern. And “not less than one hundred” freedmen ferried troops and supplies to the federal camps and lookouts in coastal Carteret County — “this business,” noted Reverend James, “being wholly in the hands of the negroes.”

The advantage of employing local pilots was incalculable. Prior to the battle of Roanoke, Union pilots had grounded many ships and sank at least five. A bluecoat infantryman quickly saw the difference, though, when a local pilot took over the helm on a transport entering Beaufort Inlet “Before we went carefully and slowly along,” he wrote home in November 1862, “and now we went full speed winding, turning, straight — right — left and so on, till we entered Morehead City.”

Confederate patriots were galled that their advantage of fighting a war in familiar territory was undercut by the knowledge and experience that black watermen supplied Union troops. “The negroes . . . in that region are mere nomads,” complained a Roanoke River diarist, “owing allegiance to Neptune and Boreas only” — the gods of the sea and wind.

 

To the Trenches

Many freedmen on the North Carolina coast also fought in the Civil War. When Congress permitted Lincoln to enlist black soldiers in July 1862, New Bern was “flooded with recruitment agents,” and many blacks joined the army. “The able-bodied men mostly enlist,” wrote Horace James in his annual report as Superintendent of Negro Affairs. By January 1865, his office was feeding 1,351 members of “colored soldiers families” in New Bern alone.

Blacks such as Furney Bryant, who had been a slave in 1862, joined the 1st N.C. Colored Regiment the following year. (See illustration.) His and three other regiments in the 2,000-man “African Brigade” left New Bern for duty in Charleston in the summer of 1863, sporting a “beautiful banner of the Republic” given the soldiers by the local Colored Ladies Union Relief Association.

After arduous duty in South Carolina, two regiments from the “African Brigade” raided northeastern North Carolina in the fall of 1863. They freed more than 2,500 slaves, destroyed four guerrilla camps, and captured large amounts of supplies. A Northern reporter on the expedition observed the black troops excelled in “scouting, skirmishing, picket duty, guard duty, every service incident to the occupation of hostile towns, and best of all, fighting.”

Confederate troops tried twice to recapture New Bern — and black residents played an important role in defending their new community. The most serious threat was in February 1864, after many troops had been diverted to the Army of the Potomac. As many as 1,200 blacks “took to the trenches” under Brigadier General I.N. Palmer to repel the attack. The town ’s defenders stood fast, though many black civilians living outside the town were killed before they reached New Bern’s fortifications. Furney Bryant, promoted to first sergeant for his “gallantry and intelligence,” was among the town ’s defenders.

 

James City

When the war ended in 1865, blacks who had built new homes, churches, and schools moved quickly to secure the fruits of their freedom. They had helped fight a war of liberation and preserve the Union, and they had won. A gathering of freed slaves in New Bern demanded full political rights and organized a statewide freedmen’s convention — the first such meeting in the South.

With the common enemy defeated, however, Union leaders had other ideas. Federal troops disbanded freedmen’s communities throughout coastal North Carolina and returned the land to its previous owners. The federal Freedmen’s Bureau also urged blacks to return to their former plantations and work for wages.

Relations between the new citizens and the occupying forces deteriorated quickly. Residents of James City, a bustling town of approximately 2,000 freedmen located across the Trent River from New Bern, protested the eviction and refused to vacate their new homes. Insisting that their “promised land” was just payment for their contribution to the war effort, they waged a battle of rent strikes, legal suits, and confrontations with local and state militias. As late as 1895, they were still fighting.

It was a battle fought by black communities across the South. Blacks had come through the Civil War, the bloodiest and most painful conflict in the country’s history. Millions had escaped from slavery, fought to save the country, and forged their own communities. Now they expected the promise of freedom to be fulfilled.