The Battle of South Mills
The Union Army attempts to destroy
The Culpepper Locks in the
Great Dismal Swamp of
Camden County, NC
The Virginian-Pilot
LOCAL, page B1
30 Mar 1997
By: Mason Peters, Staff Writer
© 1997 Landmark Communications Inc.
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 corn field 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
battle fronts 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 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 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, 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
farm house 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."
Last Revised: 02 Jan 2015