Fort Totten: Holding New Bern for the Union

After Union forces captured New Bern in March of eighteen sixty-two, they had no intention of giving it back. Federal engineers immediately began ringing the town with a series of earthen forts, and the largest of them all went up on its western edge right here. They named it Fort Totten in honor of Brigadier General Joseph Totten, the Army's chief engineer, whose knowledge of fortifications was legendary. The Battle of New Bern was fought on March fourteenth, eighteen sixty-two, when General Ambrose Burnside's Coast Division, backed by Navy gunboats, broke a Confederate line under General Lawrence Branch. The Confederate center, held by inexperienced militia, collapsed, and Branch's men retreated to Kinston, more than thirty miles away. The Union lost about ninety killed and three hundred eighty wounded, while the Confederates lost sixty-four killed and one hundred one wounded, with another four hundred thirteen men missing or captured, along with nine cannons.

Totten's men extended entrenchments on either side of the fort all the way to the Neuse and Trent Rivers, creating a nearly unbroken defensive line that locked the Confederates out of their former city for the rest of the war. Confederate forces attempted to retake New Bern in eighteen sixty-four, but the ring of forts held. Today Fort Totten survives as a public park, its earthworks long smoothed by time, though the site still bears the name of the engineer who never let the town fall.

The victory also opened up ground around the town for camps, housing, and work for refugees. Altogether the Confederates made three unsuccessful attempts to retake New Bern.