State

Running the Blockade An (iccouiil of some of Ihe lrc*iii«*n«lous dif¬ ficulties which \or(h Carolina had to over¬ come in getting vital supplies to its ports during tin* period of the Civil War. THE OUTBREAK of the Civil War found the state ill pre¬ pared to enter upon that struggle. Carolina was essentially on agricultural state and such few mills as she possessed were cotton or woolen mills. As the war dragged on and the machinery of these few mills wore out or broke down, we did not possess the material for either replacement or repairs. The state especially needed the munitions of warfare — rifles, pistols, sabres, bayonets, powder and shot. This need was supplied in part by the capture of the United States arsenal at Fayette¬ ville. which was subsequently burned by General Sherman. But even then the state did not possess the skilled and trained artisans to operate its intricate machinery. Moreover, although 37.000 mus¬ kets were among the captured spoils, many of these were ancient flintlocks, running back to the revolutionary era. These had to be changed, and the calibres of the different arms varied so that nothing practical could be done until they were standardized. On this account, one of the regiments sent to defend the key position of Roanoke Island was armed with squirrel rifles. Infantry companies were sent to Virginia without muskets to wait until these could be captured from the enemy or otherwise supplied. Artillery companies went to war with small guns mounted on ordi¬ nary farm wagons, and with im¬ perfect ammunition. Making Our Own Supplies Agents from Carolina scoured every Southern market to pur¬ chase needed supplies, but little came from this source as the other Southern states were in the same, or even worse, plight than North Carolina. The state was therefore forced to fend for itself. It estab¬ lished a powder mill at Raleigh; it manufactured rifles at Jamestown in Guilford County; sabres were manufactured at Raleigh and at Wilmington; bayonets were fash¬ ioned at Kenansville; shells at Bv К. C. LAWRENCE Raleigh. Charlotte and other points; pistols were made at New Bern. But these plants were small, imperfect, largely in the hands of unskilled workmen, and the pro¬ duct was unequal to the demand. Moreover there were certain es¬ sential supplies which could not be produced at home — drugs of all kinds, including surgical supplies for the numerous general hospi¬ tals; iron in all forms; coffee and sugar; hand cards which could be used in connection with the ancient spinning wheels, and hand looms which could be made to produce the cloth so necessary that Carolina troops be clothed. The Confederate government, as such, had money for it levied simply staggering taxes, including a sales tax of ten per cent. Then there was the tax payable in kind. Every farmer had to deliver ten Kr cent of his corn, cotton, wheat. con etc., to the Confederate commissaries for the use of the army. The State taxes were over, above and in addition to these, and were in themselves onerous, as was made necessary by the cruel de¬ mands of warfare. Look at the map of eastern Carolina. The southeastern bound¬ ary of the United States extends for hundreds of miles, and at first the Federal blockade existed only on paper. Bermuda, which was only 570 miles away, belonged to Great Britain and her ports swarmed with ships and with men eager and anxious to exchange the cotton and naval stores of the South for drugs, coffee, shot and shell. Nassau was only 100 miles further away and it too swarmed with those willing to take large risks for the sake of large profits, and soon the very bacon eaten by Carolina soldiers was called "old Nassau" for that was whence it came. The state exchanged mil¬ lions of its cotton, naval stores and tobacco for the sorely-needed supplies, for it found men anxious to engage in a venture in which the profits from one voage were sufficient to pay for both ship and cargo. Federal Activities But the Fedorals were not idle and in January 1862 they captured the key position of Roanoke Island and followed this up in March 1862 by the capture of New- Bern. From Roanoke Island it was easy to guard the inlets — Ocracoke, Oregon and New — from the block¬ ade runners both from the inside and from the outside; and soon Federal fleets swarmed the Caro¬ lina sounds and along the Carolina coast. Vance said that the blockade made the Confederacy “a nation in prison.” A mere glance at a Carolina map will show why this was. Every great river of eastern Carolina, with one exception, flows into Albemarle or Pamlico sound — the Pasquotank, the Chowan, the Roanoke, the Pamlico, the Neuse. all go into these sounds. Beaufort harbor was directly on the coast and inadequately protected, but if supplies had been landed there, they could not have been trans¬ ported to Lee’s army, as the only railway to the North ran through New Bern which was in the pos¬ session of Federal troops. There remained only one practi¬ cal open port for the Confederacy -Wilmington. It lay 28 miles inland and was connected with Richmond by a railroad compara¬ tively safe from Federal attack. Moreover, the Cape Fear entered the ocean through two inlets. The southern of these, where South- port now stands, was protected by forts Caswell and Campbell; the Northern entrance was protected by Fort Fisher “Gibraltar of the South.” The two entrances were only six miles apart, but those six miles embraced the dangerous “Frying Pan Shoals" the tip end whereof constitutes Cape Fear. Therefore the blockading fleet had to cover an arc of some fifty miles of very dangerous coast. Vance determined that the state should go into blockade running on its own account. The legislature < Continued on page 24) io THE STATE, march II. 1950