During the Civil War, divisions over slavery, secession, abolition, and loyalty to the Union split families and communities and fueled violence, as quasi-military groups fought a brutal "war within the war" between 1861 and 1865. In and around Elizabeth City, that guerrilla conflict intensified in February 1863. On February 9, Lt. Thaddeus Cox of Company D, 1st North Carolina Volunteers (U.S.), rode sixteen miles into the country to bring his family to town. On the return, according to Capt. Enos C. Sanders, guerrillas attacked from a thicket and fired a volley, killing Cox and his four-year-old daughter instantly, fatally wounding his nine-months-pregnant wife, who died on February 13, and wounding three other men of his company, one mortally, one badly, and one slightly. Sanders's own brother had been killed by guerrillas the previous month. After Cox and his child were recovered, Unionists in Elizabeth City, inflamed by the killings, urged Sanders to shoot jailed prisoners captured after the January attack in retaliation and as an example. Sanders reported to Gen. John G. Foster that although he had not favored it at first, he ordered one prisoner, Addison White, brought out and shot, and held himself personally responsible. White was executed on the waterfront nearby, and his body reportedly remained where it fell until his sister was allowed to claim it on February 17. Angry secessionists appealed to the Federal army to arrest Sanders; ten months later he was detained but never brought to trial.