In January 1865 on Federal Point, engineers using mostly enslaved Black laborers constructed this portion of the Sugar Loaf defenses on property owned by James Burriss, a Cape Fear River pilot, waterman, and farmer whose family lived in a two story clapboard house about 250 yards south of the earthworks. On January 19, 1865, U.S. Army troops under covering fire from Union warships on the ocean side to the east made a reconnaissance in force along the Sugar Loaf lines in an attempt to overrun them. With a tangled swamp blocking his view, Bvt. Brig. Gen. Joseph C. Abbott, leading one of the Union brigades in the advance, climbed to the top of Burriss's house and judged General Bragg's fieldworks to be strong, well manned, and probably not vulnerable to a frontal assault. Brigadier General Charles J. Paine, commanding a division of U.S. Colored Troops in the battle, likewise considered the Sugar Loaf entrenchments exceptionally strong from water to water. As January 1865 drew to a close, Union and Confederate forces at Sugar Loaf settled into a stalemate: Federals pursued intimidation, Confederate soldiers dug in deeper, Bragg appeared content to block an advance on Wilmington rather than try to recapture Fort Fisher as instructed by Richmond, front line pickets traded pot shots, and Union gunboats shelled the Sugar Loaf lines daily for weeks.