Qualla: Battle of New Bern (1864)

Battle of New Bern (1864): Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

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.

Battle of New Bern (1864): Pickett's Three Prongs

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

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 t...

Battle of New Bern (1864): Three Days of Hesitation

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

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 t...

Battle of New Bern (1864): The Hangings at Kinston

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

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 Confederat...

Battle of New Bern (1864): The Reckoning That Almost Was

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

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 hand...