Josiah Pender’s ‘Harbor Guards’ prepare for a civil war

On April 13, 1861, a group of Carteret County secessionists formed a volunteer militia called the Beaufort Harbor Guards with Josiah Solomon Pender as its captain. 

This was just one day after the U.S. garrison at Fort Sumter in Charleston, S.C., was surrendered to the Confederate rebels. (This event on April 12, 1861, would become known as the dawn of the War Between the States.)

 

Josiah Pender

Pender, 42, was a wealthy and influential entrepreneur. He owned a steamship company as well as the grand and luxurious 100-room Atlantic Hotel in Beaufort. 

On April 14, 1861, Pender led his unit – more than 50 men – over to Fort Macon on Bogue Banks to capture the five-sided garrison for the Confederate cause. 

The Beaufort Harbor Guards didn’t have to storm the fort…or fire a shot. They walked right in through an open front gate and were received courteously by U.S. Army Sgt. William Alexander, the sole caretaker, who had no weapon. 

Sgt. Alexander handed over the keys, and “Fort Macon was seized without bloodshed,” reported historian Paul Branch, a veteran park ranger at Fort Macon State Park. 

Unharmed, Sgt. Alexander and his wife, Ann L. Livesay Alexander of Morehead City, were transported to Beaufort. 

The first order of business inside the fort for the Beaufort Harbor Guards was replacing the Stars and Stripes with “an improvised flag showing a green pine tree with a coiled rattlesnake at its foot,” Branch said. 

On April 15, 1861, North Carolina Gov. John Willis Ellis responded to a “demand” he had received from U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. The president directed North Carolina to “furnish two regiments” to help subdue the Southern rebellion.

 

 President Lincoln

Fat chance. Gov. Ellis told President Lincoln in no uncertain terms that he would “get no troops from North Carolina.” Instead, Gov. Ellis declared that his state would fight along with its Southern brethren to repel any invasion by Union troops, according to Branch.

 

Gov. Ellis

Also on April 15, Gov. Ellis directed Capt. Marshall Craton of the “Goldsboro Rifles,” a well-trained and experienced militia group, to take charge of Fort Macon. 

Pender stayed on at the fort for a time, but he was released from military duty in December 1861. He immersed himself in a new pursuit based in Hamilton, Bermuda. From there, Pender’s steamships served as Confederate blockade runners, smuggling goods into the Port of Wilmington. 

Indeed, the Civil War would eventually come to Carteret County, brought this direction by Union Gen. Ambrose Everett Burnside, who won major victories at Roanoke Island in February 1862 and at New Bern in March 1862.

 

Gen. Burnside’s next target was Fort Macon and to conquer Beaufort Harbor and the settlements in Beaufort and Morehead City. Union troops, led by Gen. John Grubb Parke, would use the newly established Atlantic & North Carolina Railroad to transport heavy artillery down from New Bern. 

However, a band of Confederate soldiers from Fort Macon was sent out to burn down the railroad bridge at Newport. It took one regiment of Union soldiers about a week to rebuild the trestle and bridge.

Gen. Parke

 

Gen. Parke pressed on to establish a Union encampment at Carolina City (near the present location of Carteret Community College). From there, Union soldiers moved on to peacefully occupy Morehead City on March 23 and take control of Beaufort on March 26. 

Two young, intrepid Union Signal Corps officers observed that Josiah Pender’s majestic, three-story Atlantic Hotel, located between Marsh and Pollock streets in Beaufort overlooking Taylors Creek, offered an unobstructed view of Fort Macon. Hmmm.

 

 

Civil War comes to Carteret County April 25, 1862

Union Gen. Ambrose Burnside’s master plan to capture Fort Macon involved a combined Army-Navy assault. Four gunboats stationed offshore would shell the fort, while four batteries of artillery would fire from the sand dunes on Bogue Banks. 

The ground forces – about 1,500 men – were commanded by Union Gen. John Parke. He gave the order to begin bombardment at dawn on April 25, 1862, after Confederate Col. Moses James White, the commander at Fort Macon, had declined offers to surrender on three separate occasions.

 

Col. White

Col. White only had 403 soldiers at Fort Macon, but illness within the ranks reduced the fighting force to fewer than 300, according to historian Paul Branch. 

The Union Navy, led by Commodore Samuel Lockwood, was ineffective, Branch said. Seas were choppy that day, disrupting gunners’ aim. Shots from Fort Macon’s cannons damaged two ships. The Union fleet withdrew after about 90 minutes of action.

 

The initial bombardment from Gen. Parke’s batteries had limited success during the morning. Most of the Union shells missed the mark, with some splashing harmlessly into Beaufort Inlet. 

The turning point in the battle, according to Branch, was the work of two Union Signal Corps officers who perched on a third floor porch at the Atlantic Hotel in Beaufort. They were Lt. William S. Andrews and Lt. Marvin Wait. Using signal flags, they gave instructions. 

Later, Lt. Andrews wrote that the 10-inch shells were falling more than 300 yards beyond the fort, while the 8-inch shells were falling short. The signalmen kept messaging the officers in charge until the correct range was obtained. The battery of Parrott guns was too elevated. That was corrected as well. 

From about noon on, Lt. Andrews said: “Every shot fired from our batteries fell in or on the fort.” 

Branch concurred. “The fort was hit 560 times by artillery fire,” he said, knocking out 17 of Fort Macon’s cannons. The fort’s walls began to crumble, and Col. White observed a 12-foot crack, which threatened to breach the main magazine where 10,000 pounds of gunpowder was stored. 

Rather than be blown up by their own gunpowder, the garrison had little choice but to surrender. At 4:30 p.m., a white flag appeared over Fort Macon’s parapet. The 11-hour battle came to an end. 

Surely, Lt. Andrews and Lt. Wait saw the white flag and took pride in their work.

 

The distance from the hotel in Beaufort to Fort Macon was less than 2 miles. The Union’s “Manual of Signals” said the “4-foot x 4-foot flags on a 12-foot staff” that were commonly used by the Signal Corps can be “easily read at a distance of 8 miles.”

 

The inventor of the flag signaling system used by the Union troops during the Civil War was Dr. Albert James Myer of Newburgh, N.Y., who was a U.S. Army surgeon in the 1850s. While stationed at Fort Duncan on the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass, Texas, he developed a system of signals, using flags.

Dr. Myer

 

To the untrained observer, the flagman appears to be merely waving a flag back and forth, but the movements were coded communications. Dr. Myer referred to his system as aerial telegraphy, but soldiers called it “wig wag.” 

Casualties at Fort Macon were remarkably low. Branch said seven Confederate soldiers died in the fighting and 18 were wounded. The Union troops lost one man and had three injured.