The siege of Fort Macon took place from March 23 to April 26, 1862, on the Outer Banks of Carteret County, North Carolina. It was part of Union Army General Ambrose E. Burnside's North Carolina Expedition during the American Civil War.
In late March, 1862, Major General Burnside’s army advanced on Fort Macon, a casemated masonry fort that commanded the channel to Beaufort, 35 miles (56 km) southeast of New Bern. The Union force invested the fort with siege works and on April 25 opened an accurate fire on the fort, soon breaching the masonry walls. Within a few hours the fort's scarp began to collapse, and in late afternoon the Confederate commander, Colonel Moses J. White, ordered the raising of a white flag. Burnside's terms of surrender were accepted, and the Federal troops took possession of the fort the next morning.
Fort Macon was one of the Third System coastal forts that were built around the borders of the still-young United States following the War of 1812. It was built on the eastern end of Bogue Banks, in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and was intended to defend the entrance to the ports of Beaufort and Morehead City. Begun in 1826, it was completed and received its first garrison in 1834. As it was intended for defense against attacking enemy naval forces, it was built of masonry. Gunfire from a rolling ship's deck was not accurate enough at that time to be able to break down brick and stone walls. Although the advent of rifled artillery would soon make its walls vulnerable, no alterations were made in the fort. It was a generation out of date when the Civil War came.
After the first spate of enthusiasm, the fort was allowed to deteriorate. The woodwork rotted, the ironwork rusted, and gun carriages were allowed to decay. The garrison was steadily reduced in size, until by the time of the beginning of the Civil War the care of the fort was entrusted to a single sergeant. When the fort was taken over by North Carolina troops under Captain Josiah Solomon Pender on April 14 (before the state had seceded from the Union), only four guns were mounted. The local military authorities immediately set about improving the armament. A total of 56 pieces (5 8-inch and 2 10-inch columbiads, 19 24-pounders, 32 32-pounders, and 6 field guns) were mounted, but they had ammunition for only three days of action.
At the time of the siege, the garrison of the fort numbered about 430 officers and men, commanded by Colonel Moses J. White. Sickness reduced this number by about a third. Despite the poor diet and other living conditions that they suffered, only one man died. Morale among the men was generally not good, as they were cut off from their families, and White was unpopular, both with his men and with the people of Beaufort. A few men deserted during the siege.
The American Civil War (1861–1865) was the deadliest conflict in American history, killing an estimated 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians. The Confederate States of America, formed by eleven seceding Southern states, faced the Union in four years of warfare across 23 states and territories. Major engagements included First and Second Bull Run, Antietam (the bloodiest single day in American history, September 17, 1862), Chancellorsville, Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), Vicksburg (surrendered July 4, 1863), and Sherman's March through Georgia and the Carolinas (1864–1865). President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, transforming the war's stated purpose to include the abolition of slavery and enabling the enlistment of approximately 180,000 Black men in the United States Colored Troops. Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The war resolved the question of secession and ended American slavery, though Reconstruction would face sustained resistance in its attempt to secure civil rights for formerly enslaved people.
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