Twenty-two men hung from gallows in Kinston that February, and only two of them had ever really worn a Confederate uniform. The other twenty had been conscripted against North Carolina law, had walked away from an army that had no constitutional right to take them, and had joined the Union side instead. They were captured at New Bern. George Pickett ordered them executed for desertion. That is the part of the Battle of New Bern that does not appear on most monuments - and the part that should be remembered first.
On the night of January 30, 1864, Major General George E. Pickett moved south from Kinston with roughly 13,000 Confederates and a small naval contingent under Commander John Taylor Wood, intent on retaking the coastal town that Ambrose Burnside had captured for the Union nearly two years earlier. New Bern controlled the railhead at the head of the Neuse River estuary, and reclaiming it would have reopened a corridor for North Carolina supplies. Pickett split his force into three columns. Robert F. Hoke's brigade would strike along Bachelor's Creek from the northwest. Seth Barton would swing south of the Trent River and hit the town from below. James Dearing would move against Fort Anderson on the far side of the Neuse. Wood's sailors and Marines would slip down the river in small boats to seize Union gunboats.
Hoke opened the fight on February 1 along Bachelor's Creek, driving in Colonel Peter Claassen's 132nd New York Infantry and capturing a trainload of reinforcements who blundered into the fog. Then he stopped, waiting on word from Barton and Dearing. Both stalled. Barton crossed the Trent toward the 17th Massachusetts, found Union artillery from the 3rd New York Light replying with confidence, decided he was outnumbered, and pulled back. Dearing came in sight of Fort Anderson, reached the same conclusion, and did the same. Brigadier General Innis Palmer's Union garrison, never large, never well-coordinated, held by the simple expedient of not flinching. On February 2 the naval party did surprise the USS Underwriter and boarded her at anchor in the Neuse - but Fort Stevenson's guns opened on the captured ship before they could get up steam, set her ablaze, and forced the boarders to abandon their prize. Pickett retreated on February 4.
Among the prisoners Pickett's force carried back were twenty-two men from Company F of the 2nd North Carolina Union Volunteer Infantry Regiment. Pickett ordered them court-martialed and hanged as deserters from the Confederate army. Only two had ever actually served in Confederate ranks. The other twenty were North Carolina militiamen who had been forcibly conscripted into Confederate service - a practice that the North Carolina Supreme Court had already ruled unconstitutional. They had left before any active duty and crossed Union lines. They were citizens making a choice the law itself said they had the right to make. They were taken from holding cells in Kinston in groups of five and hanged from a scaffold near the railroad while local crowds watched. A Confederate chaplain ministered to some; the families of others were not even notified. Other prisoners from the 2nd North Carolina Volunteers were shipped south to Andersonville, where all but three of them died of disease and starvation.
When the war ended, the United States Bureau of Military Justice indicted Pickett for war crimes over the Kinston hangings. Ulysses S. Grant intervened to spare him from prosecution, citing the politics of reconciliation. Robert F. Hoke, the one Confederate commander who had handled his part of the operation with energy, would go on to win at Plymouth, North Carolina, weeks later. The 2nd North Carolina Union Volunteers continued to fight for the Union; their dead are buried in the New Bern National Cemetery alongside the men who died defending the town. The cemetery sits a short walk from where Pickett's columns turned back, and from where a Union artilleryman's well-placed shells decided the question for him.
The battle ranged across the rivers and creeks around New Bern at 35.04 N, 77.01 W. From altitude, Bachelor's Creek, the Neuse River, and the Trent River form a recognizable Y just upstream of the city. Coastal Carolina Regional Airport (KEWN) sits on the south bank of the Trent; Fort Anderson stood across the Neuse from town. Best viewed from 2,000 to 4,000 feet AGL. Alternates: KMRH (30 nm SE), KISO (30 nm W). The New Bern National Cemetery is visible northwest of the historic district as a tight grid of white headstones.