Fort Point: New Bern's Revolutionary Earthwork

Half a mile east of this marker, at the point where the Neuse River narrows near New Bern, Whig patriots raised an earthen fort in seventeen seventy-five and seventeen seventy-six to guard the river approach to North Carolina's colonial capital. They named it Fort Caswell in honor of Richard Caswell, the governor who would lead the state through the Revolution.

The fort mounted several guns and served alongside other small river batteries as New Bern's first line of defense. It never faced a real test during the Revolution. The fort sat forgotten for decades. Then the Civil War gave it a second act: Confederate forces reused the old position to defend the river approaches once more, until Union troops under General Ambrose Burnside captured New Bern in March of eighteen sixty-two, and the earthwork changed hands for the last time. Burnside landed about eleven thousand soldiers at Slocum's Creek, and the fight came on March fourteenth against roughly four thousand Confederates under Brigadier General Lawrence Branch. Fort Thompson anchored the Confederate line with thirteen guns. When that line broke, the Confederates retreated more than thirty miles to Kinston, and New Bern stayed in Union hands for the rest of the war.