 Ambrose Burnside's legacy survives most prominently in his mutton chops that earned a nickname from him, Sideburns. His history as a Civil War general is famous for his defeat at the hands of Robert E. Lee more than anything else. But before this, he was among the first Union generals to claim significant strategic victories for the Union by taking control of North Carolina's coast. After the Battle of Bull Run, Burnside's close friend, General George McClellan, called him to Washington and tasked him with raising 15,000 volunteers for a coastal division of the U.S. Army. He was to join with Rear Admiral Lewis Goldsboro, who believed that the Navy should have command over anything that floats, but this idea was not yet adopted by the military so Burnside was in charge. Raising the troops was easier said than done and one of the regiments under Burnside's command had so many problems with mutiny that its officers were arrested and the regiment disbanded. But in time, Burnside got 12,000 men, which he formed into three brigades. Combined with Admiral Goldsboro, they had 80 ships when they departed Annapolis at the beginning of 1862. It took nearly a month to get to where they were going. The ships had to move slowly, trying to stay together, with dozens of ships of different types, some steam powered, some sailing ships. Some of the skippers were incompetent or drunkards. A storm hit them after only two days on the water and raged for three days, sending the men to the sides of the ship to pay their, quote-unquote, customary tribute to Neptune. They would face two serious three-day storms during their journey and in the January weather, this meant that while the men were vomiting over the rails as the waves violently rocked their ship, they were exposed to the ice-cold downpour. The weather would also cost Burnside five ships. But some entrepreneurial types on board at least had the foresight to capture some of the rainwater when they faced the storm. A cup of fresh rainwater could fetch as much as a full dollar on some ships. And this is because storms weren't the worst of what the men had to suffer through. The provisions on the ships were atrocious. One man said, quote, I should think the water casks were a cemetery for dead rats, by the way it tastes, end quote. The food wasn't any better. One Massachusetts volunteer remembered, quote, worst of all was the poor food furnished to the men, which was fast becoming almost disgusting. The meat ration consisted entirely of pork, which had been boiled and put into barrels before leaving inapolis and had now become sour and moldy, end quote. When Burnside gave his men orders not to loot or pillage any towns they might occupy, one of his regimental officers said, quote, there is a feeling among the men, which will be apt to show itself when the time comes, that if they happen on anything really good to eat, they ought to have it after the vile food furnished to them, end quote. The time, of course, would come, and the officer's prediction would be proven true. When they took a break at Hatteras Island, apparently I was mispronouncing Hatteras Inlet in the previous episode before the review episode, and a listener corrected me on that, which I appreciate. It's Hatteras Island or Hatteras Inlet, I was pronouncing it, Hatteras. But when these men took a break on Hatteras Island, the first confederate territory that the Union Navy conquered, the description of the people there read like something we'd expect to find from European explorers, first encountering some island natives. One Massachusetts man wrote a letter home describing them, quote, queer folks in this region. Several hundred are scattered along the bar who get their living by fishing, gathering oysters, wrecking and piloting. Most of them were born here, never saw any other locality and all are happy. There are women here who never wore shoes, end quote. But they weren't significantly better off for their break from confinement to the ships. Sand was everywhere and it inevitably made its way into their rations. Pots of coffee, once emptied, would show three inches of sand sitting at the bottom. The baked beans the men were fed were so caked with the sand that they couldn't even chew them. They had to swallow them whole like pills. To these men, the only thing they had to look forward to was their glimpse of battlefield glory. I mentioned last week in the review episode that one of the themes of 1861 was the loss of romanticism about the war as soldiers tasted combat for the first time. For most of the soldiers on Burnside ships, the romanticism was still there. But at least one had more rational expectations about combat. He described his comrades, quote. One would have supposed to have heard the boys talk last night that we were all Napoleon's. They talked of booming guns, the rattle of infantry, of splendid bayonet charges, daring and heroism. On the principle, I suppose that those who know nothing fear nothing, end quote. The same day he left this entry, his regiment was given its first supply of live ammunition since they left Maryland. The battle was coming. He made another entry in his diary, quote. This loading with ball and cartridge was a new order to me. It implied that our holiday soldiering was over. A peculiar feeling such as I had never before experienced came over me. I felt it to the very taps of my brogons and thought that I would rather be excused, end quote. The men were about to face their first battle. McClellan's orders were very specific. They were to capture the North Carolina Island, block the canal that connected to Norfolk, capture New Bern and Fort Macon, destroy the railroad and to conclude the order. McClellan said that if Burnside issued any proclamation to citizens of occupied areas, he should say quote, as little as possible about politics or the Negro merely states that the true issue for which we are fighting is the preservation of the union. I'm Chris Calton and this is the Mises Institute podcast, Historical Controversies. We've recently wrapped up 1861 and I ended the year by talking about some of the Union naval operations to start slowly building the blockade. By capturing Hatteras Inlet and Port Royal Sound, the Union Navy was strategically well placed to start conquering the east coast of the Confederacy. In today's episode, we will be looking at Burnside's expedition to fully conquer the coast of North Carolina. Roanoke Island had three forts to defend it. In charge of the island was Brigadier General Henry Wise, the former Virginia governor who ordered the execution of John Brown. After the Union captured Hatteras Inlet back in August, Wise had been begging Richmond to send him reinforcements. But all he got was his own legion sent to reinforce the North Carolinians on the island, bringing the combined force to roughly 3,000 fighting men. In January, as he continued to press for more men, Richmond newspapers ran stories about how a protective God had wreaked havoc on Burnside ships for them, so no reinforcements were needed. The papers were overestimating the damage. While the storms may have been a headache for Burnside, they left him with 13,000 or so men to take the island. The numbers for the total of men that he had at any given time seemed to vary in the sources that I've read, which is not uncommon, of course, when dealing with Civil War history. So there are some inconsistencies there. I don't always know whether he's getting more men and losing some or whether the numbers are just tabulated differently. But roughly 13,000 men with him to take the island, assisted by Goldsboro's 20 ships carrying a combined 67 cannons. The men on the island were poorly equipped as well. Wyze's own legion was well off, but many of the North Carolinians were wearing rags and carrying shotguns or small game rifles, neither of which were ideal for battle. Several were even worse off, armed with only their homemade bowy knives. To make matters worse, the same day that Burnside started moving toward the island, General Wyze came down with pneumonia, leaving Colonel H. M. Shaw in charge. He was unpopular with his men, offering no help with the defensive preparations and spending most of his time in his tent playing chess. One regimental officer said that Shaw was, quote, not worth the powder and ball it would take to kill him, end quote. In the water, North Carolina's mosquito fleet, which had caused so much aggravation for the Union since the war started, was helping to defend the island as well. But as Burnside ships approached, the nickname mosquito fleet seemed more accurate. They were hardly more than an annoyance to Goldsboro's significantly more well armed fleet. As he moved his ships towards the island, the Admiral didn't even bother to chase them, choosing instead to fire on them when they happened to be in sight. And this was enough to do serious damage. The CSS forest lost an engine and its captain lost the top of his head from the fragment of a shell. Another ship from the mosquito fleet was torn in half by a well-placed shell. The skipper of this ship, who went by the nickname Tornado Hunter for some reason, had been in some kind of a trance for three hours since the firing started, and he only snapped out of it when he realized the ship was sinking. He also realized that he was not wearing any pants, and he later admitted that he had no idea how his pants were lost. Funny as the story is, his apparent trance was probably the product of combat trauma, and he wasn't the only soldier to deal with it. The soldier on another ship from the mosquito fleet was part of an artillery team working a 32-pound cannon. When a Union shell would explode above them, the men dropped to the deck until they were ordered to get back up and work their gun. One man, though, was in such terror from his first combat experience that even after the order, he remained huddled down on the deck, with his arms and legs tucked in under him like a turtle, looking left and right, as if searching for a way to escape, according to the description of his commander, Captain Parker. Parker's response was to pull out his revolver, cock it, and place it against the young man's head, calmly telling him, quote, Get up, or I will kill you. The tactic worked, and the terrified soldier resumed his duties working the cannon. He later apologized to Parker, blaming it on shock. He said, quote, It's all and getting used to it, Cap. Most of Goldsboro's battery was focused on Fort Bartow, though, the southernmost fort on Roanoke Island. Although he did little serious damage to the fort, he helped secure an easy landing for Burnside's men. As the barrage kept up above them, 4,000 of Burnside's infantry crammed into barges and rowboats pulled by shallow draft steamers to take them to the beach. Once they got close enough, the tow lines were severed, and the men hopped into the shallow waters. What they didn't know is that hiding in the bushes were 200 Confederates armed with rifles under the command of Colonel J.V. Jordan. They were outnumbered, but they were hidden from the men who were busy wading through the waters. But Jordan gave no order to fire, and when they were finally spotted due to the sun glaring off their bayonets, it took only one round of grapeshot to compel Jordan to order his men to retreat, never having fired a volley. It's hard to judge Jordan's decision. The books I've read are critical. Historian William Trotter writes, quote, Had a braver man been in charge, the Yankees would have suffered severe casualties during the landing and might even have been forced to retire, end quote. This kind of Monday morning quarterbacking is common in military histories, but this statement strikes me as an easy thing for Trotter or anybody else to say today, sitting behind a keyboard. Yes, Jordan could have fired off a volley and done some damage, but with 200 men against 4,000 and another 9,000 or so still in the ships, it's absurd to say, as Trotter does, that they might have forced the Union men to pull back. After the first volley, their locations would no longer be a secret, and they would have had to continue fighting under a hail of mini-balls. So what Trotter interprets as cowardice could also be interpreted as pragmatism in concern for the lives of his men in the face of a futile battle, depending on your perspective. But whether Jordan pulled back due to cowardice or pragmatism, Burnside's landing went as smoothly as he could have hoped for. By midnight, the rest of his 13,000 men were ashore and the land-based attack could commence the next morning on February 8th. When the attack came, Colonel Shaw kept the majority of the men stationed behind the defense of earthworks they had constructed before General Wise came down with ammonia, keeping them too far back to aid in the combat. Only 400 Confederates were sent to slow down Burnside's much larger army. Still, the Union army moved slowly toward the fort, as they got tangled up by the foliage, briars constantly tugging at their uniforms and the smoke from the 400 Confederates firing at them, making it difficult to see where they were going. One soldier who had fought in the Seminole Wars said that the terrain on the island was even worse than the Everglades. At least one regiment resorted to crawling on their bellies, only popping up to fire off around before dropping back down to resume their snail's pace advanced to the fort. One soldier from the 21st, Massachusetts had a mini-ball grace his forehead. He wrapped it up, smiled at the guy next to him and yelled over the firing, a man never gets hit twice in the same fight. Does he, Captain? Barely a moment after he finished this quip, he was ironically knocked off his feet by another mini-ball hitting him in the neck. But when two groups of regiments decided to cut different ways, flanking the Confederates, they had better luck. They yelled, no bull run here, as they moved forward on either the left or the right flank of the Confederate line. One of the men on the field was the brother of Walt Whitman, George Washington Whitman, and he described the maneuver in a letter to his poet brother, quote, we worked around their right flank through a thicket that you would think it was impossible for a man to pass through. It was mighty trying to a fellow's nerves as the balls was flying around pretty thick, cutting the twigs off overhead and knocking the bark off trees all around us. But our regiment behaved finely and pressed on as fast as possible. We were under fire for about an hour and a half before our regiment dared fire a shot for fear of hitting our friends, as we could not see 10 yards on either side. As soon as our regiment got side of the battery, General Reno gave the order to charge in a way we went, water flying over our heads as we splashed through it, end quote. But when they came out of the swamp and closed in on the Confederate right flank, they opened fire. Minutes later, the Confederate left face to the same situation. Finally, in a vain attempt at glory, the commander of the ninth New York regiment, Rush Hawkins, ordered a bayonet charge, but the Confederate line had already broken and his men charged pointlessly at retreating soldiers. This wouldn't stop Hawkins from falsely claiming credit for breaking the Confederate line as New York press has hyped him up, as states always tried to lineize their own soldiers. 30 minutes later, Colonel Shaw waved the white flag. The Union men had 37 killed and more than 200 wounded during the fight, more than four times as many wounded as the Confederates. But they would claim a whopping 2,500 prisoners. One Union man described to the poor state of the Southern soldiers quote, the prisoners are a motley looking set, all clothes, I can hardly say uniformed, and a dirty looking homespun gray cloth. I should think every man's suit was cut from a design of his own. Some wore what was probably meant for a frock coat, others wore jackets or roundabouts. Some of the coats were long skirted, some short, some tight fitting, others loose, and no two men were dressed alike. Their head covering was in unison with the rest of their right, from stove pipe hats to coon skin caps, with everything for blankets, from old bed quilts, cotton bagging, strips of carpet, to buffalo robes, end quote. But the animosity between soldiers from the two sides didn't run as deep as we might expect. The war still had only been raging for less than a year and most of the prisoners being North Carolinians hadn't faced any of their oppressive occupation strategies that Missourians, for example, had witnessed. Similar to the soldiers on either side of balls bluff before that battle, enemy soldiers here grew friendly. One Union soldier gave an account of the conversation with one of the men from Wyze's Legion, quoting the Richmond soldier as recounted by the Union man himself, quote. This has turned out not as I wished, but not different from what I expected when we saw the force you had. I accept the situation and am glad it is no worse. I am secessh, clear and through, and after I am exchanged, she'll be at you again. But when this little dispute has settled, if any of you fellows ever come to Richmond, hunt me up. If alive, you will be welcome for as long as you choose to stay. And when you leave, if you don't say you've had as right smart a time as you ever had, call me a liar and I will call you a gentleman, end quote. Taking Roanoke wasn't enough for Burnside. He wanted to make sure he finished off the pesky mosquito fleet once and for all. While what was left of the meager North Carolina Navy was inspecting one of the other two forts around the island, which had only eight terrified young soldiers defending it with four cannons. One of Admiral Goldsboro's tactical commanders, Stephen Roan, ordered his ships to quote, dash at the enemy. Although it hardly qualifies as a battle, this began what became known as the Battle of Elizabeth City. Eight boys who were stationed in the fort took off and Captain Parker of the mosquito fleet was forced to take every man he could from his own ships to try to defend the fort. But when they got there, they found that the guns had not been positioned to be able to fire upstream and they couldn't quickly be moved. Once the Union ships got past the fort, they would be out of harm's way. But because he'd brought his own men to the fort, the mosquito fleet's six remaining ships were left only with skeleton crews. It ultimately wouldn't have mattered much either way against the far superior Union fleet, but this made Roan's job that much easier. Watching uselessly from the fort, Parker saw as his ship, the Black Warrior, was battered so severely that his own men set it on fire before jumping overboard. Then one Union ship rammed to the seabird, splitting it in half and cynic it to the bottom of the river. Another of the mosquito fleet, the Ellis was grappled and boarded. Some of its men jumped overboard as they were ordered to do by their captain, but others stubbornly or bravely, however you wanna look at it, stayed to fight the Union soldiers, armed with cutlasses. The captain of the Ellis, J.W. Cook, stayed and fought himself. And he and the men who didn't take to the water engaged in hand-to-hand combat until Cook himself took a serious wound. The rest of the mosquito fleet suffered similar fates. The Fanny, which you might remember had originally been a Union ship that the mosquito fleet captured, now caught fire after taking several Union shells and it was run aground and abandoned. The Appomattox got away, only to find that it was too wide for the canal, so it was set on fire by its crew and abandoned. Only one of North Carolina's ships, the Beaufort, managed to escape to Norfolk. The Mosquito Fleet, which had been such a thorn in the side of the Union in 1861, was officially done for. After the Battle of Roanoke Island and the destruction of North Carolina's tiny but important Navy, fears and the rest of the Confederacy at least had the effect of mobilizing new volunteers, enough to form seven regiments of fresh soldiers. Richmond, of course, wanted answers for the defeat, but after an official inquiry, general Wise, whose son was among the few men killed in the battle, was exonerated and with good reason. Judah Benjamin, who'd replaced Leroy Walker in September as the Secretary of War for the Confederacy, had been given ample warning about the pending Union attack and had failed to adequately deal with the situation. He would be replaced by the third Confederate Secretary of War, George Randolph, by the end of March. General Benjamin Huger, who was in charge of the Virginia, North Carolina coastline, also deserves some of the blame for refusing Wise's request for supplies and reinforcements. But after the defeat at Roanoke, he finally saw fit to send men to help defend the canals still controlled by the Confederacy. Although he would serve throughout the war, his mistake here would prevent him from being trusted with any more significant commands. Despite the defeat, Richmond newspapers heralded the bravery of the men who fought at Roanoke. Many of the men there were Richmond locals who served in Wise's Legion, following the common practice of newspapers to glorify their own soldiers just as New York did for Rush Hawkins. But eventually, the Richmond examiner published a letter to the editor, written anonymously by somebody who claimed to be an officer for one of the glorified Virginia regiments. For Richmond readers, it offered a depressingly pessimistic take on the war in light of the fall of Roanoke, at red quote. The Roanoke affair is perfectly incomprehensible. The newspapers are filled with extravagant laudations for our valor. The annals of Greece and Rome offer no parallel. Whole regiments were defeated by companies and we yielded only to death. And what is the loss? Richmond blues, two killed and five wounded. McCaulick Rangers, one killed and two wounded. The other companies lost in all, two killed and 11 wounded. Comment is needless. The whole army had better surrender at once, for it will eventually come to it. End quote. After the victory, General Burnside was interested in the small North Carolina town of Wynton. Supposedly it held 500 Union sympathizers who after the Union's victory raised old glory on top of the courthouse, signaling their willingness to welcome the Union troops. If Union support was really this strong, then Burnside could use the town as a base inside enemy territory. So in mid-February, he sent a small expedition of eight gunboats and 1,000 soldiers to check it out. This was the New York's waves under the command of the Vainglorious Rush Hawkins who falsely took credit for breaking the Confederate line at Roanoke as well as part of the 4th Rhode Island Regiment. As the boats sailed up the river to the town, they were relaxed. The weather was nice and they were on their way to friendly territory. Hawkins and his men were on the Delaware and Hawkins himself was up on the cross trees serving as the lookout. As they approached to the town, he saw a black woman waving a piece of cloth, welcoming them into the town. But when the ship got to within 50 yards of Wynton, he saw sunlight glaring off the barrels of rifles. Then he noticed two cannons aimed toward them. He started to yell, "'Rebels on shore, sheer off!" He yelled six times before the pilot of the ship realized what was going on. And when he finally started to turn the ship, they were a mere 10 feet from the shore. Contrary to the rumors, about 500 Union sympathizers controlling the town, Wynton's population was only about 300 total. But defending the town were the 400 Confederates from the 1st to North Carolina volunteers under the command of Lieutenant Colonel William T. Williams, aided by a small four-gun battering. They were waiting to ambush the Yankees. As the Delaware tried to pull away, Williams and his North Carolinians let loose a hail of gunfire. The cannons, which were positioned on top of a bluff, were aimed too high and overshot their targets. The Delaware was left with more than 100 holes from the Confederate mini-balls, but nobody was hurt. As the gunboats came up to assist the Delaware, they circled up in the river like a wagon train ready for an attack. But the night passed without any more fighting. The next morning, Hawkins led them into the small town. Colonel Williams and his soldiers thought they had driven the Yankees off. And after a night of being celebrated as heroes by the town's people of Wynton, they were eating breakfast when the swabs showed up. With the gunboat cannons aimed at them, fighting this time would be futile. Williams immediately ordered his men to fall back. With their defenders retreating, the civilians in Wynton fled as well, all while Union shells started to rain down upon their town. The only people who stayed behind were those too old to flee and a handful of black citizens. I don't know if they were all slaves, but at least some of them were. One of the ones who stayed behind was Martha Keane, who had apparently been the woman who waved to the soldiers into the ambush. Hawkins was ready to have her hanged, but she claimed that her master had threatened to kill her if she didn't help with the ambush. So Hawkins let her live. Instead, the New Yorkers took their rage out on the town. They rolled barrels of tar and turpentine into the buildings and set them on fire, including the local courthouse, destroying a mountain of historical records. The two criminals who were caged inside were broken free before the courthouse burned and they fled into the woods. The soldiers looted everything they could. They dragged featherbeds out into the streets and tore into them with their bayonets. They slaughtered every pig and chicken they came across far more than they could eat. They took everything of value that they could carry, from chamber pots to clothing, including children's clothing and rare books. They destroyed everything else, smashing pianos to bits and ripping down velvet drapes to drag them through the mud. Not all of the New Yorkers approved of the pillaging, but Hawkins and the majority of his men felt that it was a just punishment for the Confederates who they saw as starting the war. This attitude would motivate pillaging throughout the conflict. The Southerners started the war and they deserved whatever punishment the Yankees inflicted. Not everybody in the North agreed with this logic. Back in New York, one newspaper editor started taking donations to pay for medals to honor those waves for their actions during the Battle of Roanoke. But the New York Times undercut this glorification by reporting on their quote, promiscuous plunder and violence, end quote. Southern papers compared the pillaging of Wynton to the sack of Rome by the Visigoths. Burnside himself was undermined by those waves as he was trying to carry out a conciliatory policy in North Carolina to attract union support. But he still opted to justify the pillaging in his official report, claiming that they only burned militarily important buildings and the rest caught fire due to strong gusts of wind, which was an obviously ludicrous account that was contradicted by the logs of the gunboats that reported only very light winds that day. The next North Carolina target was Newburn and Burnside attacked here on March 14th. In charge of the defense was General Lawrence Branch, who had a total of 4,000 men to garrison two forts, Fort Ellis in the North and Fort Thompson in the South. Like the forces at Roanoke, they were poorly equipped and at any given moment, a good chunk of them were out of commission due to illness. Despite their poor situation, the Confederates here were apparently overconfident, still maintaining the idea that it would take five Yankees to beat one Southerner in combat. The officers didn't help matters with their complacent attitude about their own defense. One of Branch's subordinates, Colonel Estvin, was astonished by this. He was a European and a Crimean war veteran and he joined the Confederacy for the adventure of it. A few days before the battle of Newburn, he wrote in his diary, quote, the works were carried on here just as if no danger was apprehended. The commander of the place, this being the commander at Fort Ellis, was an easy going sort of man, smoking his pipe by the fireside and apparently carrying as little about General Branch as he did about Burnside and his fleet. The man's coolness and unconcern were quite astounding. If my comrades, said he, should really attempt to defend the place, I will stand by them. Should they run away, I am not far from the bridge. So I may as well smoke my pipe quietly and not bother myself by anticipating the course of events, end quote. In his diary, he also contrasted the overconfidence of the Confederates with their apparent incompetence at handling artillery. Estvin himself was pointed to as the source of some of their confidence apparently, as he had defended a fort against England and France with only 10,000 men and they were confident that he could do the same here. But when the European tried to point out the harsh realities of their situation, he wrote quote, I soon perceived that I had lost to their favor, end quote. When the attack came, Burnside decided to attempt the same strategy that had proven so successful at Roanoke Island. But the day before the battle, as they marched toward the Confederates, they had to trudge six miles through the muddy roads under a downpour of cold rain. The muddy roads prevented the Union from bringing any of its artillery, save a few small howitzers into the battle. The storm raged through the night, depriving the men of a decent sleep before the battle. Even worse, it left many of them with damp gunpowder so they went into combat with only their bayonets as weapons. The attack commenced near Fort Thompson and its three cannons were devastating to the Union infantry. But it wasn't just the Confederate cannons that wreaked havoc on the Northern soldiers, but their own as well. Fort Thompson was to the Union right, facing a river to the east. And the river were Union gunboats firing shells upward over the fort itself to hit soldiers on the other side, indiscriminately taking out both friend and foe. One Union man described the situation, quote, to add to the pandemonium of legitimate battle, our gunboats in the river behind us a half mile or more away, but cut off from view by their timber. Their comrades thinking to help us opened fire in our rear with their big guns. The shorts from which came tearing through our ranks with a roar, such as an ordinary freight train might have made if running at 100 miles an hour. And their shots were quite as well-aimed to reach us and as destructive as those of the enemy. To my left, almost within reach, one of the smaller of their shots carried away the arm of one of our boys. And within 10 feet of me smashed the intestines of another to jelly, almost severing his body in two. End quote. Although the soldiers account implies that Commodore Rowan, the man in charge of the gunboats, didn't know he was hitting Union men, it seems he was fully aware of what he was doing. This being a tactic taken by the British Lord Cornwallis during the battle of Guilford Courthouse in the Revolutionary War, the trade-off was the demoralizing effect of a Union bombardment on the enemy. And this was the justification that Rowan later gave for his decision to allow his shells to kill Union soldiers, saying quote, I know the persuasive effect of a nine inch shell and thought it better to kill a Union man or two than to lose the effect of my moral suasion. End quote. We might let that sink in for a moment. If you'll forgive me a bit of commentary in terms of Machiavellian justifications for abhorrent behavior, this is the kind of thing that comes near the top of the list. It reminds me of the scene from Braveheart where Longshanks orders his archers to fire while his troops battle the Scots. And when his general says, I beg your pardon, Sire, won't we hit our own troops? Longshanks replies, yes, but we'll hit theirs as well. And the scene is one of those intended to demonstrate what a bad guy this is. Now, I know in war, people have to make difficult decisions so you can come to your own judgment about these tactics if you want. But in a war in which people still tend to treat one side as the good guys and the other side as the bad guys, these kinds of decisions shouldn't be whitewashed or ignored. It also doesn't seem that Rowan's tactic did all that much good, possibly even doing more to help the Confederacy. Even though many of the Union men had useless guns, their advantage of numbers still gave them greater firepower than the smaller defending force. Those who could shoot were firing as much as three bullets a minute, jamming their ramrods into the soft dirt so they wouldn't have to bend down to pick it up for every reload. But their advance was still brought to a halt by the beating they took. It was only when the Confederate right flanks started to unlimber two large cannons that a regiment of New Englanders took advantage of the opportunity to drive off the men while they couldn't fire back. More soldiers poured in to help push on the weak flank. The North Carolinians on the right flank couldn't hold off the more powerful Union forces anymore. One Southerner, Major Carmichael, took a mini-ball in his open mouth, which ripped through the back of his neck killing him. His friends later figured that he must have been an easy target for a Yankee sniper because of the small rebel flag he wore on his hat, which had been a gift from his girlfriend who made him promise to wear it into battle. Of course it could have just as easily been a chance hit by a random bullet. With the Confederate line crumbling, some Southerners started to flee. The officers tried to stop them, yelling that the newspapers would print tales of their cowardice. One retreating soldier quipped back, quote, I'd rather fill 20 newspapers than one grave, as he took off. As they fled, the Southerners left their wounded allies behind under flags of truce to be taken care of as Union prisoners. With the casualty counts at Newburn much higher than Roanoke, the sight of the injured had an effect on the soldiers. One Massachusetts soldier wrote a letter home saying, quote, the sad aside I saw at the aid post was some rebel officers, splendid gray charger, both of whose four legs had been carried away at the knee by a cannonball, standing immobile and silent upon the stumps, a sickening monument to man's barbarity, end quote. Like Winston, the soldiers spent two days after the battle pillaging Newburn and the newly liberated slaves in the area took part in the looting as well. Burnside finally got fed up with the looting and demanded that the property be returned. But in practice, few soldiers were actually forced to return any of their spoils and almost all the property that was returned had been taken by former slaves. The events following Newburn mirrored those that followed Roanoke Island. And I won't go into much detail because this episode is getting long, but just as he had taken a force into Wynton, Hawkins and his New York's waves went into the town of South Mills along with some other regiments under the command of General Jesse Reno. Similar to the slave women who had waved Hawkins into an ambush, this time he conscripted a black man to serve as a guide to take him to the small force of Confederates defending the town. The guide deliberately took him on a circuitous five mile trek to tire them out before leading them into a rebel ambush. This time Hawkins carried through with his inclination to have the man executed, ordering his men to take the guide into the woods to be shot. The Confederates held off the larger force of zwoves by ripping up fence posts, throwing them into ditches and setting them on fire. And what became referred to as roasted ditches and his men attacked from the other side of the flames. The tactic proved successful as 400 Confederates held off 2,000 Yankees, but the success was only temporary. Reno rallied his men for a new assault and the Confederate artillery captain, W.W. McComas was killed by a mini-ball causing the rest of his men to panic and flee. Hawkins thought this was his chance to attack and he ordered another unwise bayonet charge, which was a violation of his orders to stay with the flanking column, but his men were completely worn out. When they charged, they were cut to pieces. Nearly 70 of them killed or wounded, including Hawkins himself who took a bullet to the arm. This completely undermined Reno's attack and the Confederates held the Yankees off until they ran out of ammo and safely pulled back, but Reno's force was too damaged to take the town. So they were treated as well, leaving their wounded behind to be taken care of by the Southerners. The final victory in Burnside's campaign came a week later when he waged a successful siege on Fort Macon, completely securing the North Carolina coast for the Union. After this, he was called in by Lincoln to reinforce General McClellan in Virginia, which was a pointless and rash move that made little sense as Burnside's 7,000 reinforcements would hardly make a difference in McClellan's gigantic army and he almost certainly would have been more effective in continuing his coastal campaign. But both sides were over-prioritizing the Virginia Theater, which was why the Confederates had neglected to send reinforcements to North Carolina. But the Burnside expedition was enormously important for the Union cause and it had a number of significant consequences. 13 North Carolina counties were taken by the Union, some of them being among the most productive agricultural areas of the state, which meant the loss of nearly 2.5 million acres of food producing land for the Confederacy. It also displaced the 120,000 white inhabitants of the area who left behind 50,000 slaves. This cost the Confederacy an enormous source of food. Blockade runners and privateers could no longer use the area as a base of operations as the Mosquito Fleet had been doing since early in the war. Confederate troops also now had to be diverted to protecting Goldsboro and its important railroad, which no longer had a layer of territory between it and the Union. The area also gave points of resupply for Eastern blockade ships and proved useful launch points for extending the blockade further south. Burnside's expedition gets little attention in single volume histories of the war, but it was strategically a tremendous success for the Union cause, even if McClellan and Lincoln fell to appreciate this at the time, as their focus was on the Virginia land battles. In the next episode, we are going to start talking about how the Confederacy worked to fight back against the much larger US Navy. Instead of trying to build enough ships to match the Union numbers, they sought to put together a ship that would be invulnerable to Yankee artillery. By the time Burnside's expedition was taking place, this was already becoming a tremendous concern in the North, leading to the famous battle of the iron clads. History rarely does this fascinating story the justice it deserves, so I'll be spending a bit more time on it than you'll find elsewhere, beginning with the next episode. Historical Controversies is a production of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. If you would like to support the show, please subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher and leave a positive review. You can also support the show financially by donating at Mises.org slash SupportHC. If you would like to explore the rest of our content, please visit Mises.org. That's M-I-S-E-S dot O-R-G. Thank you.