This Month's Events

• 5 February. Samuel Cooper of the Adjutant General's Office in Richmond reports on troops. "There have been received from the State of North Carolina (37) Thirty Seven Regiments, one of which has been mustered out of Service, leaving (36) Thirty Six Regiments now in Service and 2 Battalions. Of these (11) Eleven are for the War, the balance for twelve months; enlisted at various times since the connection of North Carolina with the Confederate States."


• 7-8 February. A Union force commanded by General Ambrose Burnside captures Roanoke Island, North Carolina, gaining control of the channel to North Carolina's ports (except Wilmington), and thus making it more difficult for supplies to reach the Confederacy.
  In response to this Union threat to the interior, David Clark of the North Carolina militia is ordered to block the Roanoke River which he succeeds in doing by cutting trees and actually sinking 4 vessels at a narrow spot.
  As the Federal forces advance from the North Carolina coast, the CSS Appomattox, a small gunboat, retreats up the rivers, but when she reaches the entrance to the Big Dismal Canal, she is 2 inches too big to get through so the Confederates burn her to prevent her capture. In August 2007 a team of divers finds her remains; they are identifed by a silver-plated spoon inscribed with "J Skerritt", the name of a crew member.


• This month a Freedmen's Colony is established on Roanoke Island for escaped slaves.


• 11 February. The U. S. War Department establishes the U. S. Military Railroad which will become the largest railroad system in the world under one organization and contributes much to Union military objectives.


• 16 February. General Ulysses Simpson Grant lays down terms for the Confederates beseiged at Fort Donelson, Tennessee. "No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works." The Confederates do surrender and he becomes known as "Unconditional Surrender" Grant.


• 18 February. The Confederate Congress meets in Richmond. North Carolina has 4 senators and 10 representatives including Representative William Lander of Lincoln County.


• 19 February. As the Confederacy rushes to build an ironclad ship, the CSS Virginia (formerly the Merrimack), there is a shortage of sailors to man her. So they pull soldiers from the army including Alfred (or Alford) Stroup of Co. D, 14th N. C. Infantry, a former iron worker in Gaston County and now a sailor.


• 20 February. Winton, North Carolina (county seat of Hertford County) is burned by Federal troops in retaliation for an ambush there. Winton is the first town in the state burned in the war.


• 22 February. Jefferson Davis is inaugerated as President of the Confederate States.


• 23 February. Christian Lewis Rights, Moravian minister, writes in his diary. "Considerable excitement prevails in the neighborhood on account of a report that there is to be a draft of the militia in Davidson and Forsyth owing to our loss on Roanoke Island of 23 hundred men taken prisoners. Also in the loss of Fort Donelson in Tennessee. ... the strange part about it [the draft] is that the very men that were the strongest in favor of the war 12 months ago are the very ones that don't want to go now when their country needs their service."


• 25 February. Confederate forces leave Nashville, Tennessee, making the city the first Confederate capital to be occupied by the Union.

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