![]() ![]() Pickett accompanied the division of Brig. The loss of any of its ports hurt the Confederacy, and Pickett hoped to recapture the town by a three-pronged attack of about 13,000 men.īrigadier General Seth Barton’s column of artillery, cavalry and infantry was to move on New Berne from the southwest, while Colonel James Dearing, with a smaller number of cavalrymen, infantrymen and guns, drove on the city from the northeast. ![]() Burnside had captured New Berne as part of his operations along the North Carolina coast. The Federals had held the town since March 1862, when Maj. Seven more would follow in a few days, but this was the largest group to be dispatched at one time.Īll of the hanged Union soldiers and those still to climb the gallows steps had been captured by the Rebels during an abortive Confederate operation against New Berne, 32 miles to the southeast. Pickett, the flamboyant Virginian who led the climactic charge against Cemetery Ridge on the third day at Gettysburg. Two Federal soldiers had already been hanged at the same location by troops under Confederate Maj. Such grim military rituals had almost become a routine part of their existence. Many of the townspeople of Kinston, N.C., had left their usual activities that day, February 15, 1864, to observe the proceedings. A captain of the 8th Georgia Cavalry remembered that it ‘was an awful cold, bad day and the sight was an awful one to behold.’ The hooded victims dangled, jerked and died, their lifeless bodies suspended in midair. The flooring of the gallows collapsed, simultaneously dropping the entire long row of faceless figures. After that attempt to justify the impending doom of the condemned, a signal was given. A young lieutenant produced the execution order and read it as loudly as he could to the brigades of Confederate infantrymen formed in a huge square around the gallows. Thirteen men in sullied Union Army uniforms lined up on a scaffold, rough corn sacks over their heads, a noose around each one’s neck. ![]() America's Civil War: Union Soldiers Hanged in North Carolina | Historynet Close ![]()
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