Two days before the battle of Fredericksburg, General Foster left New Bern, N. C., with a force of 10,000 infantry, 6 batteries, having in all 40 pieces of artillery, and 640 cavalry.1 On the 13th, Foster had reached Southwest creek, not far from Kinston. The Confederates had destroyed the bridge, and Colonel Radcliffe's Sixty-first North Carolina regiment was posted on the west side to delay Foster's advance. The Ninth New Jersey and Wessell's brigade crossed over the creek, and after an engagement of about an hour, Gen. N. G. Evans, commanding the Confederates, was obliged to withdraw. He took position on the Neuse river, about two miles from Kinston bridge. General Evans had, to oppose Foster's 10,000 men, the Seventh, Twenty-second, Twenty-third and Holcombe legion, all South Carolina volunteers; in addition, he had the Sixty-first North Carolina regiment, Mallett's North Carolina battalion, and Boyce's South Carolina, and Starr's and Bunting's North Carolina batteries—in all 2,014 men.
While Evans was moving from the creek to the river, a fleet of small gunboats that had come up from New Bern to attack the works at Kinston, under Commander Murray, endeavored to get in reach of the works. Owing to
