Page:Annual report of the superintendent of Negro Affairs in North Carolina, 1864.djvu/58



Early in the year 1865, active preparations began to be made to change the base of supplies of Sherman's army from Savannah to Eastern North Carolina. To this end Morehead City was occupied by the Quartermasters and Commissaries of that army; and Mansfield Hospital was broken up. The Construction Corps were landed there, who commenced to build storehouses, relay the railroad, enlarge the piers, and otherwise prepare to land and transport from this point supplies sufficient for a hundred thousand men. The bay and roadstead about Morehead and Beaufort were soon filled with loaded transports, and the harbor swarmed with troops and munitions of war. This new activity swept into its current, for the time, every other interest. For a few weeks labor was in pressing demand, and large gangs worked through the day, only to be relieved by others, which worked through the night. All the able-bodied negroes in the Department were offered employment at the best wages, and whoever hesitated was persuaded to work by the solicitation of the bayonet. Not half enough could be found within our lines to perform the needed services, and large details of soldiers were made for fatigue duty, in addition to the thousands taken up by the Quartermasters upon the rolls of labor.

At this time matters were rapidly culminating in the Confederacy. Fort Fisher had fallen. The capital of South Carolina had been occupied. Charleston was evacuated, and Wilmington could hold out but a little longer. As soon as this famous headquarters of blockade-running had also succumbed to the Union forces, and Gen. Sherman had sent thither thousands of refugees from Fayetteville, some hundreds of these were brought to Morehead, quartered in the buildings lately used for hospital purposes, and employed in the government service. About the same time with these important army movements, Gen. Butler was relieved of the command of the Department of Virginia and North Carolina, and the last named State was annexed to the Department of the South. This brought North Carolina under the jurisdiction of its former commander, Gen. J.G. Foster. This arrangement, however, was suddenly terminated by the erection of North Carolina into a separate department, as it had been formerly under Burnside, in 1862. Major Gen. Schofield was placed in command,