Re: Civil War Site Gets TLC

Date: February 22, 2004

"Volunteers help clear historic site

Sue Book  Freedom ENC

NEW BERN - Mark Mangum is a banker and 26th Regiment North Carolina Civil War re-enactor who says he's better at hands-on work than barking orders.

But Saturday at the Battle of New Bern Civil War battlefield site near Taberna - those originally from North and South with a common interest in the battlefield's history - Mangum led the charge.

Armed with axes, chain saws, trimmers and brush tools, more than 30 volunteers chopped and heaved to clear a 50-foot access easement adjoining 2.63 acres purchased to put a visitor's center in front of the 22-acre battlefield.

The plan for a park and visitor's center with marked trails received approval from the New Bern Historical Society at a meeting last week.

February weather cooperated for the Civil War Park Day, and the volunteers re-cleared the path to the 26-foot high redans built by Confederate soldiers deep in the woods off the railroad tracks.

The youngest volunteer was nine and the oldest nearing 80, each with a special area Civil War story luring them to look for another.

Ten-year-old Joey Overby of Greenville came with his grandfather and recalled hearing that New Bern residents watched some of the war with picnics from the front porch.

Mangum, the historical society's Civil War adjunct, directed workers, and Civil War Historian Richard Lore directed tours down the pathway over the redans both say give the battlefield something unique for military history buffs and students.

The man-made embankments overlooking a swamp, swollen to about 40 inches in depth by felling trees, were built in just days to help soldiers hold off the Union's amphibious attack.

That attack, Mangum said, was the first of its kind and came from between 11,000 and 14,000 Union troops led by Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside landing at Slocum Creek.

The battlefield extended across what is now U.S. 70 to Fort Thompson on the Neuse but the area near the railroad track was the weak point in the Confederacy's lines, Mangum and Lore said. The Confederates attempted to shore up the lines with the redans, which offered a high vantage point.

It was not enough for the troops led by Col. Zebulon Vance, later a North Carolina Governor, and his 21-year-old, Virginia Military Institute-trained Lt. Col. Henry Burgwyn, who was later killed at Gettysburg.

Union forces conducted a simultaneous land and sea assault, Mangum said, and shelled them from their gunboats on the river. The Union vastly outnumbered the about 4,000 Confederate soldiers, many of whom fled to Kinston.

About 160 to 165 soldiers from both sides were killed and about 900 were killed, wounded or missing in action, Lore said.

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© 2004 by Freedom ENC Communications"