Palace commemorates Battle of New Bern

On the 148th anniversary of the Battle of New Bern, which has been called “one of the most significant events of the Civil War,” Tryon Palace hosted a Sunday of period music and special tours to teach visitors what it was like when the city was occupied by Union troops.

The battle took place on March 14, 1862, when Confederate troops under the command of Brig. Gen. Lawrence O’Bryan Branch clashed with the better-equipped forces led by Union Brig. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside.

It was a bloody fight. In Branch’s Army, 68 men were killed, 116 were wounded and 400 were captured or missing. Burnside lost 90 of his Union men, while 385 were wounded and one man was captured.

By that night, Union forces had pushed the Confederates out of the city, and after 24 hours of looting by both sides, federal forces restored order and put New Bern under military rule. It would remain occupied by Union troops until the end of the Civil War.

“The battle was a pivotal point in the Civil War and, certainly, the occupation was a pivotal point for New Bern,” said Nancy Gray, an exhibit coordinator at the palace. “It shaped our city, in terms of population shifts, and it also likely preserved many of our historic structures.”

On Sunday, the Stanly and Dixon houses near the palace grounds were modified slightly, as reproduction photographs and drawings showed what they looked like during the Union occupation. Guides giving tours of the houses also talked specifically about their uses during the Civil War.

The Stanly House served as a headquarters for Burnside, and the Dixon House became a makeshift hospital for those who were sick, but not seriously wounded.

Sylvia Miller, a guide at the Dixon House, studied a pencil sketch that showed what one room of the home looked like as an infirmary. The sketch depicted a no-frills kind of place, with lines of cots against the wall, and only an ornate mantle over a fireplace hinted that the room had once been more formal living quarters.

“Those original mantles are gone,” Miller said. “I like to believe that they are hanging in a beautiful home somewhere in Vermont, but I know they probably … were destroyed.”

In the palace’s visitors’ center, local musician Simon Spaulding led two concerts of Civil War-era music.

The concerts were only for the weekend, but the “interpretive tours” about the Union occupation are ongoing all day, Gray said.

“We commemorate this anniversary because it is vital not only to the nation, but to us,” Gray said. “We may have been an entirely different city had it not been for the occupation by Union troops.”

Nikie Mayo can be reached at 252-635-5665 or nmayo@freedomenc.com.