previous next

South Mills, battle of

In April, 1862, General Reno, with New England, New York, and Pennsylvania troops, went in transports up the Pasquotank to within 3 miles of Elizabeth City, N. C., and, landing cautiously in the night of the 19th, a part of them, under Colonel Hawkins, pushed forward to surprise and intercept a body of Confederates known to be about leaving that place for Norfolk. Misled by his guide, the Confederates were apprised of the movement before he appeared, and near South Mills, in the vicinity of Camden Court-house, they assailed the Nationals with grape and canister. Reno, with his main body, met the attack bravely. The Confederates were flanked, and hastily withdrew. A gunboat drove them out of the woods along the river-bank, and Hawkins's Zouaves made a charge, but were repulsed with heavy loss. The Confederates were defeated. This event caused much consternation at Norfolk. The Nationals lost (chiefly of Hawkins's Zouaves) fifteen killed, ninety-six wounded, and two made prisoners. The Confederates left thirty killed and wounded on the field. Winton, at the head of the Chowan; Plymouth, at the mouth of the Roanoke; and Washington, at the head of the Pamlico River, were now all quietly occupied by the National forces. For the remainder of the year the coasts of North Carolina were in possession of the Nationals.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
John Hawkins (3)
J. L. Reno (2)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
April, 1862 AD (1)
19th (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: