Disunion follows the Civil War as it unfolded.
On Feb. 7, 1862, United States soldiers poured from surf boats onto Roanoke Island off of North Carolina's eastern shore. Almost three hundred years earlier, Sir Walter Raleigh had dispatched colonists to that same island to establish a famously ill-fated settlement. With the Civil War, Roanoke would once again be home to a lost colony.
For months the Union Navy had been carving its way down the coast, taking control of islands off North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. Those victories slowed but did not stop the Confederate's access to supplies. In the vast Outer Banks of North Carolina, small boats could slip past the barrier islands and dart across the shallow sound behind them, bringing goods to Carolina towns like Newbern, Edenton and Elizabeth City, and, through backdoor canals, to Norfolk, Va. Roanoke, spanning about 10 miles in the center of the sound, controlled the inner waterways, the flow of Confederate supplies and, therefore, the river towns themselves.
Both the United States and the Confederacy understood the island's importance. Under Henry G. Wise, a former Virginia governor, the Confederates had gathered about 3,000 troops there, sank ships nearby as barricades and girded themselves for attack. The United States' combined operations, led by Gen. Ambrose Burnside, commandeered ferry boats to carry a specially selected 13,000-man expeditionary force from Annapolis, Md. in early January. Beset by storms, seasickness and a perilous crossing through shallow channels, the fleet did not reach Roanoke Island until Feb. 6, nearly a month later.
Despite the United States' overwhelming numerical superiority, the island could not be easily captured. Its eastern side was too shallow to approach, the western too well-guarded by Confederate batteries. A runaway slave, a teenager named Tom, provided United States officers with a plan. South of the Confederate forts, he told them, was a farm with a protected harbor. They could land there with relative ease, then make their way up the island.
Covered by an intense bombardment of the Confederate forts, more than 10,000 soldiers landed on the beach on Feb. 7. During a "wearisome and disagreeable" night, the soldiers camped and pondered the next day's battle.