Battle of New Bern: Union's Coastal Foothold

On March fourteenth, eighteen sixty-two, Union forces under Major General Ambrose Burnside overwhelmed Confederate defenders here at New Bern and captured one of North Carolina's largest towns. Burnside landed roughly eleven thousand troops south of town, supported by gunboats on the Neuse River, and drove against a Confederate line of about four thousand men under Brigadier General Lawrence Branch. When Union soldiers found and exploited a gap in the Confederate fortifications, the line collapsed and the defenders retreated north.

The Union Army occupied New Bern from that day until the end of the war, more than three years of continuous occupation that made it a major Union base in North Carolina and a refuge for thousands of enslaved people who escaped to Federal lines. Control of New Bern also gave Burnside a base for subsequent operations that secured the entire central North Carolina coastline.