The Battle of Wyse Fork occurred during the Carolinas campaign of the American Civil War as Union forces under Maj. Gen. John M. Schofield moved inland from Wilmington to join with Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman's forces at Goldsboro, North Carolina. Following the fall of the port city of Wilmington in late February 1865, Schofield's objective was to consolidate three Union armies against a Confederate force being assembled under General Joseph E. Johnston. The Union forces were divided during their advance: Schofield moved north from Wilmington with units from Alfred Terry's Expeditionary Corps, while Maj. Gen. Jacob D. Cox sailed up the coast and landed at New Bern with his XXIII Corps division. At New Bern, Union forces were augmented to three divisions and reorganized into a Provisional Corps under Cox's command. As the Union advance continued toward Goldsboro, the forces undertook the critical task of repairing railroad infrastructure to establish a supply route for Sherman's Army Group. Although Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston's main army was positioned too far away to effectively oppose Schofield's divided forces, General Braxton Bragg's forces, retreating from Wilmington, were positioned close enough to potentially threaten the Union movements. The battle thus emerged from the tactical situation created by this Union operational movement and the Confederate response to it. The engagement resulted in a Union Army victory, marking another success in the Union's campaign to defeat Confederate forces in the Carolinas and advance toward final victory in the war.
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.
This page covers First Battle of Kinston 1862 — Supplemental. A full Aubrey report for the area pulls together this battle alongside historic sites, land records, and everything else the record holds within a few miles:
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