The war seemed far from Franklin when Union forces captured Roanoke Island and the North Carolina Sounds in February 1862, but after they occupied Norfolk and Suffolk in May to control both coastal Virginia and North Carolina, the conflict was suddenly only twenty miles away. Recognizing Franklin as an important supply thoroughfare for General Lee's army, Federal forces sought to disrupt that line. Union gunboats ranged up the Blackwater River in May and August searching for Confederates and military supplies, but found nothing. Confederate authorities then sent a brigade under Col. James K. Marshall of the 52nd North Carolina Infantry to defend Franklin. After Union Gen. John J. Peck at Suffolk learned that Confederate troops were massing along the Blackwater River, he organized a joint army-navy expedition against Franklin. Col. Samuel P. Spear marched from Suffolk with 1,300 infantrymen while Lt. Cmdr. Charles W. Flusser led a three-gunboat flotilla from Edenton up the Chowan and Blackwater Rivers. At dawn on October 3, as Flusser's squadron approached Franklin at Crumpler's Bluff, it met Confederate sharpshooters, including civilians and African Americans. The gunboats shelled the riverbanks as they passed, but stopped beyond the bluff where felled trees blocked the narrow river. Confederate infantrymen meanwhile countered Spear's advance. When Spear did not arrive as scheduled, Flusser shelled the town and then retreated downstream under heavy rifle fire. Franklin had experienced its first taste of warfare.