On October 17, 1863, Union Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside reported from Knoxville, Tennessee, that a regiment of North Carolina troops being organized there had captured Warm Springs, North Carolina, the previous day and held Paint Rock Gap. This regiment, the 2nd North Carolina Mounted Infantry, included Confederate army deserters and more than 70 men recruited at Shelton Laurel, where Confederate troops had executed prisoners the previous January who were suspected of Unionism and of raiding the town of Marshall. The 2nd North Carolina was the first of two Union regiments raised nearby in the mountains of western North Carolina and East Tennessee. After overrunning a detachment of the 25th North Carolina Infantry on October 16, the regiment established its headquarters on the grounds of the Warm Springs Hotel. Within a few days, part of Confederate Maj. John W. Woodfin's Cavalry Battalion advanced along the French Broad River road from Marshall to attack the Federals; Woodfin was shot from his horse and killed just across the river, and cavalryman Jake Davis was wounded and later died. Gen. Robert B. Vance, brother of Gov. Zebulon B. Vance, led further attacks on the Union troops there in several engagements from October 20 to 26, 1863. Both sides suffered casualties, and by November 1 the 2nd North Carolina Mounted Infantry had returned to East Tennessee to recruit. The fighting at Warm Springs was unusual because local Southern Unionists and local Southern Confederates, both serving in regularly enlisted units, fought each other on their home soil, brother against brother. Pvt. John C. Pickens of Company B, 2nd North Carolina Mounted Infantry, fought there while his older brother, Sidney Vance Pickens, adjutant of the 14th North Carolina Battalion, served on the opposite side and had earlier served under Woodfin. The Warm Springs Hotel, established in the 1830s, became a nationally known resort because of its curative waters; its thirteen massive columns and portico faced the river, Zebulon B. Vance had worked there as a young clerk and read law under John W. Woodfin of Asheville, the building burned in 1884, and later buildings replaced it while the springs continued in use.