Throughout the Civil War, North Carolina furnished much of the material the Confederate armies needed to sustain field operations. In Kenansville, the Confederate States Army produced military supplies ranging from swords to knapsacks, while blockade runners smuggled contraband goods that were funneled to Virginia via the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad and the Petersburg Railroad. Disrupting the rail line became a major Union objective. On July 4, 1863, U.S. cavalry struck the Confederate States Armory there. Lieutenant Colonel George W. Lewis, leading 640 men of the 3rd New York Cavalry to destroy Wilmington and Weldon Railroad track, sent a battalion to Kenansville under Major Ferris Jacobs, Jr. After dark, Jacobs surprised and completely dispersed a company of cavalry commanded by Captain William K. Lane of Company F, 7th North Carolina Cavalry, taking their transportation, nearly all their horses, equipment, arms, and four or five prisoners. Lewis and the rest of the regiment then joined Jacobs, and together they burned the armory along with sabers, saber bayonets, knives, a boiler, tools, saddles, stock, a storehouse, a knapsack manufactory, and commissary storehouses. The New Yorkers bivouacked there and continued their raid the next day. Despite the destruction, owner Louis Froelich, known as a sword maker for the Confederacy, rebuilt the armory and soon returned it to operation.