Edenton

On May 5, 1864, the Confederate ironclad ram CSS Albemarle under Commander James W. Cooke, with the gunboats Cotton Plant and Bombshell, steamed out of the Roanoke River into Bachelor's Bay and Albemarle Sound bound for New Bern, where U.S. Navy gunboats Ceres, Commodore Hull, and Whitehead, the transport Ida May, and the double-ended steamers Mattabesett, Sassacus, Wyalusing, and Miami awaited under Capt. Melancton Smith, who intended to sink Albemarle. After Cotton Plant was sent upriver, Albemarle and Bombshell fought the Federal vessels off Sandy Point in Chowan County in a three-hour battle in which Bombshell was heavily damaged and surrendered, while Albemarle was rammed and nearly sunk by Sassacus but fired point-blank into the steamer's boiler, disabling it, and then escaped upriver to Plymouth for repairs. Unionist sentiment was strong among eastern North Carolinians, and after the U.S. Navy established a presence in Albemarle Sound early in 1862, many loyal white men and African Americans, including slaves and freedmen familiar with the Sound and its tributaries, enlisted as gunners, powder boys, cooks, and mechanics. Chowan County natives Henry Johnson, John Paxton, and Daniel Spruel served aboard Miami, while other men from Edenton and Chowan County joined local Confederate units and many sympathizers moved farther inland. Chowan County Confederates included Col. James K. Marshall, Lt. Col. John C. Badham, Maj. Tristim L. Skinner, Capt. William Badham, Jr., Capt. John A Benbury, Capt. Edward A. Small, Lt. John M Jones, and Lt. Blake B Hoskins, and Edenton residents donated household, school, church, and courthouse bells to cast four bronze cannons for Capt. Badham's Edenton "Bell Battery," Co. B, North Carolina Light artillery Battalion.

Edenton, North Carolina · United States