Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 4.djvu/39

Rh broad waters of these sounds, with their navigable rivers extending far into the interior, would control more than one -third of the State and threaten the main line of railroad between Richmond and the seacoast portion of the Confederacy. . . . These sounds of North Carolina were no less important to that State than Hampton Roads was to Virginia."

The long sandbank outside of these sounds and separating them from the ocean, reached from near Cape Henry to Bogue inlet, two-thirds of the entire coast line. Here and there this bulwark of sand is broken by inlets, a few of which allow safe passage from the Atlantic, always dangerous off this coast, to the smooth waters of the sound. The necessity of seizing and holding these inlets, controlling as they did such extensive and important territory, was at once seen by the State authorities. So, immediately after the ordinance of secession was passed, Governor Ellis ordered the seizure of Fort Caswell, near Smithville, and of Fort Macon, near Morehead City. These were strengthened as far as the condition of the State’s embryonic armories allowed. Defenses were begun at Ocracoke inlet, at Hatteras inlet, and on Roanoke island. Though these works were dignified by the name of forts, they were pitifully inadequate to the tasks assigned them. The one at Ocracoke was called Fort Morgan, and the two at Hatteras respectively Fort Hatteras and Fort Clark. When the State became a member of the Confederacy, these works, along with the &quot;mosquito fleet, consisting of the Winslow, the Ellis, the Raleigh and the Beaufort, each carrying one gun, were turned over to the new government. Even a cursory reading of the official correspondence of the successive officers detailed, as they could be spared from the Virginia field, to take charge of these coast defenses, awakens sympathy for them in their fruitless appeals to the government for —