Fort Macon guarded the entrance to Beaufort Harbor and was built between 1826 and 1834 as one of a series of seacoast fortifications for national defense. Local secessionist militia forces seized the fort on April 14, 1861, at the outbreak of the Civil War. In March 1862, Union Gen. John G. Parke's brigade of Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside's Coastal Division captured Carolina City, Morehead City, and Beaufort. Confederate Col. Moses J. White, commanding Fort Macon's 403-man garrison, refused three Union surrender demands. Parke established 22 companies of U.S. infantry and artillery at Hoop Pole Creek, five miles west of Fort Macon, and besieged the fort. Parke's troops constructed emplacements for two mortar batteries and one rifled cannon battery about 3/4 mile from the fort. Four U.S. Navy gunboats offshore assisted in the siege, along with floating batteries positioned northeast of the fort. On April 25, the Union batteries and gunboats bombarded Fort Macon for eleven hours. By afternoon, the powerful rifled cannons had breached the fort's walls and endangered its magazines. The Confederates ran up the white flag at 4:30 p.m., and White formally surrendered to Parke's forces the following morning. Seven Confederates were killed and eighteen wounded, while the Federals lost one killed and two wounded. U.S. forces occupied the fort and Beaufort Hotel for the remainder of the war.