Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 4.djvu/54

38 second largest town on the North Carolina coast. Events soon showed this to be his intention. Hence the State sent its available forces there under Brig.-Gen. L. O’B. Branch. Six regiments of regularly organized troops, one battalion and several unattached companies of militia, hastily gathered from the adjoining counties, half-armed, undrilled, undisciplined, were thrown into the fortifications a few miles below the city. To these were joined one or two companies of heavy artillery and Brem’s and Latham’s light batteries, and some companies of the Second cavalry. Much time had been expended constructing, on the Neuse river, works to repel gunboats, but comparatively little preparation had been made to repel land attacks. There were two main lines of defense designed, however, to be held by more men than General Branch had under his command, so on the approach of General Burnside with his land and naval forces, all fortifications below Fort Thompson were abandoned. The works behind which the Confederates fought extended from Fort Thompson (13 guns) on the Neuse to a swamp on the Weathersby road, a distance of two and a half miles. From the fort to the railroad, a distance of one mile, were posted, beginning at the fort, the Twenty-seventh North Carolina, Major Gilmer; the Thirty-seventh, Colonel Lee; the Seventh, Colonel Campbell; the Thirty-fifth, Colonel Sinclair, and a battalion of militia under Colonel Clark. Across the railroad, for a mile and a half, the only forces were the Twenty-sixth North Carolina, Colonel Vance; two dismounted companies of the Second cavalry, and one unattached company of infantry, and to the right of these two pieces of Brem’s battery under Lieutenant Williams. Between the railroad and Vance’s left there was, at a brickyard, a break in the Confederate lines. This break, the finding and occupation of which won the victory for the Federals, was being protected by a redoubt when —