BATTLE OF SOUTH MILLS, NC
April 19, 1862, dawned sultry-hot with thunderstorms growling in the distance as 3,000 Union and 1,000 Confederate soldiers converged on a nearby cornfield in Camden County.
Marching from the South in their own sandy dust were Union forces that had disembarked from federal troopships where the Pasquotank River gently embraces Albemarle Sound. Rolling along with the Yankees were three wagonloads - 4,000 pounds - of gunpowder that was to be used to blow up the Culpepper Locks on the Dismal Swamp Canal near South Mills. The canal was a major Confederate supply line to battlefronts in the north.
At the same time, about 1,000 Rebel troops sent to halt the Yankees were double-timing down from the Suffolk, Va., area to throw up defenses in the Camden cornfield.
There were far bigger Civil War fights in 1862, including Shiloh in Tennessee, where peach trees bloomed red with soldiers' blood, and Antietam in Maryland, where a little white church stood amid a ghastly congregation of Blue and Gray corpses.
But the Battle of South Mills was one of the first fights to create the Confederate mystique that still stirs the hearts of Yank and Reb descendants.
The outnumbered Confederates got to South Mills first and had time to create breastworks along a ditch at the north end of the cornfield. The ditch is still there, and not much else has changed.
About 300 yards in front of Confederate Col. Ambrose Wright's dug-in Georgians was another ditch, and before the battle started the Confederates filled it with fence rails and set them on fire. The blazing, mile-long trench was known as "The Roasted Ditch" in official reports from both sides.
What little wind there was that day was from the northwest, and smoke and flames from the ditch blew into the faces of advancing Union soldiers and smoke-screened the Confederate defense.
Wright's second in command at South Mills was Col. Dennis D. Ferebee, a farmer-lawyer from a clan of Ferebees still settled around Camden and Currituck Counties. When violent rain squalls ended the day at South Mills, the outnumbered Confederate soldiers had fought so furiously that the Yankees broke off the battle and left the field.
Union officers called it a tactical withdrawal. The Confederates still held their lines, but they, too, began falling back to stronger positions in the evening after their artillery commander was killed.
Altogether, six Confederates and 13 Union soldiers died at South Mills, almost a funereal joke by Civil War standards. But both sides - then and now - insist on calling it a victory.
Union Brig. Gen. Jesse Reno, a West Point graduate, had brought the Federals up to South Mills from New Bern, which, with Roanoke Island, had earlier been captured by larger Union forces under Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside. Burnside's whiskers - sideburns - are probably better known today than the hairy warrior who fought all over the map for the United States Army.
Reno was a veteran of the Mexican War, but at 39 this was his first divisional command. His battle plan was to embark his Union troops at Roanoke Island and New Bern, sail to Camden County, and march 10 miles north to the Culpepper Locks above South Mills.
The locks were a short distance above the present South Mills locks, and only a month before the Confederate ironclad Virginia and the USS Monitor had dueled in Hampton Roads waters near Norfolk. Union commanders felt the destruction of the Culpepper Locks would block the Dismal Swamp Canal and prevent the Confederacy from moving ironclads down to Albemarle Sound.
Reno's second in command was Col. Rush Hawkins, a hot-headed 32-year-old commander of the 9th New York Regiment. Also under his command were elements of other Union forces from New York, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts.
Hawkins "often had difficulty with senior officers," according to Col. Jerry V. Witt, a retired regular Army officer who in 1992 wrote one of the few detailed accounts of the South Mills battle.
Hawkins' troopships arrived first at the Camden County landing area, and by the dawn of April 19, his brigades had successfully waded ashore and started marching north. The road they took generally followed the path of modern-day N.C. Highway -343.
A war correspondent for a New York City newspaper wrote:
"It was a lovely morning; birds were skipping from one green bough to another as if attracted to our beautiful colors . . ."
But April in Camden County can be more summery than springlike. "The sun rose over the trees like a great red ball of flame, or angry spirit mercilessly threatening a scorching day. . . ," the correspondent continued.
"All went struggling and gasping along, weighted down . . . wondering at what men could endure and survive. . . . Many sank . . . overcome by heat and left to recover as best they could. . . ."
Reno and Hawkins, after many misadventures, arrived at the cornfield and were soon brought under Confederate artillery fire. Reno began edging his forces to the right to work around the Confederate left flank.
By then "The Roasted Ditch" was sending up clouds of smoke in front of the Confederate lines.
What happened next has puzzled military historians ever since.
After Reno sent two couriers with personal orders to Hawkins to close ranks with Reno's forces up ahead, Hawkins, suddenly ordered his 9th New York regiment to charge through the smoke and attack the Confederate position beyond.
The Rebels were ready.
"It was then as if some superhuman hand, capable of holding bushels of bullets and grapeshot in the palm, was hurling them upon us," Pvt. Charles Johnson, of the 9th New York, wrote after the battle.
"Every inch of the air seemed thick with messengers of death. The roar of cannon, the rattle of musketry, yells of combatants, shrieks of the dying, groans of the wounded, all commingling into one horrible din! Fearful! Terrible! Indescribable!"
At about that moment, a musket ball pierced Johnson's wrist.
He said he thought: "Well if this is the only one I'm going to get, I'm lucky."
Johnson lived to tell more terrible tales. In the midst of the fight, Julius Langbien, a 15-year old German-born drummer boy with the 9th New York, saw one of his officers, Lt. Tom Bartholemew, fall with a bullet in his head. Langbien ran to help the fallen officer and later received the Congressional Medal of Honor for his bravery.
The private fight between Reno and Hawkins after South Mills lasted longer than the fighting. Hawkins went over Reno's head and filed his own report of the battle to Burnside, the Union commander.
Hawkins claimed the whole Union expedition had been a disaster that failed to accomplish the mission of blowing up the Culpepper Locks.
Confederates "ran like quarter horses toward Norfolk," Hawkins wrote, but so had the Federals, "as fast as our weary legs would carry us."
Johnson, he of the wounded wrist, later described what he saw in a farmhouse that had been turned into a Union battle dressing station:
"Men mutilated in every way were lying about, those who could, standing, others stretched out on blankets patiently waiting for the doctor, who was busy dressing the worst cases . . .
"There, among a motley lot of suffering men lay Adjutant (Charles A.) Gadsden, of the 9th New York, with as serene a countenance as if he were lying in his own tent.
"I spoke to him: Adjutant, this is rather hard, and your first, too.' "Yes,' he answered, `It is my first and it is hard.'
"I have often asked myself if he knew then that he was going to die within the half-hour . . ."
Then, finally, the rains came in torrents and the battle sputtered to an end with surprisingly few casualties. Nineteen soldiers died in both armies, 120 were wounded and 16 were listed as "missing."
By 10 p.m., Reno had his weary Union soldiers marching back down the road toward the troopships at the south end of Camden County. When the Confederates discovered the Union troops had left the field, they also fell back to stronger emplacements to marvel at how they had saved the day - and the Culpepper Locks - with so few casualties.
In the end, Burnside declared the battle of South Mills "a complete victory" for the Federals and commended Reno for his "strict observance of orders when the temptation to follow the retreating enemy was so great."