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The Hated on Kickstarter. It’s set in 1872 in a US that lost the Civil War. The PDF is $4, the campaign currently has 28 hours left.
March 14, FridayThe Confederate forces at New Bern, North Carolina, have girded themselves for the expected attack, working around the clock to bolster the city’s defenses. It wasn’t hard for them to realize that after Roanoke Island they would be next, in Federal hands New Berne would be a marshaling point for drives up and down the coast and inland along the Atlantic & North Carolina Railroad toward the vital junction of Goldsboro—there the line from New Bern intersects with the Wilmington & Weldon Railroad, which carries vital supplies to Richmond and points north. So by now a line of log-and-earth breastworks have been established downriver from the town. From Fort Thompson, on the west bank of the Neuse, the line extends westward for about two and a half miles to a two-gun battery on the edge of a swamp along Brice Creek. Manning the defense line are approximately 4,500 green North Carolina troops.
Now at daybreak, in a thick mist, Burnside gives the order to advance against those fortifications. The same three generals that led their men to victory at Roanoke Island lead their men forward, while the Federal fleet moves up the Neuse to bombard Fort Thompson in support of the ground forces. The first contact is on the Confederate left flank but the five Federal regiments there are brought to a standstill, hit not only by enemy fire but also by shells from the Federal fleet. (Commander Rowan will later try to justify his indiscriminate shelling: “I know the persuasive effect of a 9-inch shell, and thought it better to kill a Union man or two than to lose the effect of my moral suasion.”) With the Union brigade on the Confederate left pinned down, the action shifts to the right. There a Massachusetts regiment manages to push the Confederate militia out of the brickyard at the railroad tracks and hit the right flank of the militia in the adjacent entrenchments. But their success is short lived, with the other Confederate regiments holding firm and returning fire. Two other Union regiments manage to hold the ground the 21st Massachusetts has taken, but cannot advance further and call for additional support from the vanguard of the center brigade. The 4th Rhode Island and the 8th Connecticut respond in a charge that sweeps through the brickyard, threatening the Confederate line. Outflanked and short of ammunition, the entire Confederate line begins the disintegrate and their commander, General Branch, orders a retreat over the Trent River Bridge to New Bern. The retreat quickly turns into a rout. Many of the troops that make it to New Bern head straight to the railroad depot and scramble aboard a westbound train, which luck would have it is just pulling out. General Branch makes no further attempt to defend the town, ordering his regiments west to Kinston where he hopes to regroup and oppose the next Federal advance.
Casualties are 471 for the Federals, including 90 killed. Casualties are lighter for the Confederates, 64 killed and 101 wounded. But 413 are missing; according to Branch, about 200 of them were “prisoners and the remainder at home.” As at Winton, when Rowan’s gunboats tie up at the docks they find a city empty of virtually all but the Blacks and poorest Whites. Another serviceable base has been established for Federal inland expeditions and a new vantage point gained for cultivating the considerable pro-Union elements of North Carolina.
On the Mississippi after severe Union cannonading on the thirteenth, it is found that the Confederates have evacuated the works at New Madrid, Missouri, fleeing to Island No. 10 or across the river. General John Pope has not yet conquered this bastion on the Mississippi, but he has made a good start. Federals now occupy the New Madrid earthworks, have secured considerable supplies and guns, and begun to concentrate on the island itself and the fortifications east of the river in Tennessee.
In the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, one of General Banks’ divisions under Brigadier General John Sedwick has marched east.
Elsewhere in Tennessee there is fighting at Big Creek Gap and Jacksborough; on the Tennessee River W.T. Sherman, who had taken his command toward Eastport, Mississippi, returns toward Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee, south of Savannah; at Pittsburg Landing some explorations or reconnaissances are being carried out.
In a change of boundaries of departments, Major General John C. Pemberton is assigned to the Confederate Department of South Carolina and Georgia.
President Davis declares martial law in threatened areas of southeastern Virginia.
In Washington President Lincoln tries to explain that compensated emancipation of the slaves “would not be half as onerous, as would be an equal sum, raised now, for the indefinite prossecution [sic] of the war.”
Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.
—Edmund Burke