10th battalion, North Carolina Heavy Artillery

You know, I don’t spend a lot of time writing on North Carolina artillery. While the Tar Heel state fielded regiments and battalions of artillery, they didn’t work like infantry or cavalry regiments. The individual companies, or batteries, were assigned to different brigades (at the start of the war), or divisions and writing a history of, say , the First North Carolina Artillery would be a very disjointed affair. Plus, infantry and cavalry regiments have more men. Both the 37th NCT and the 58th NCT had 2,000 plus men who served in their ranks. A researcher stands a greater chance of finding letters and diaries and post war stories from an infantry or cavalry regiment than from an artillery battery. Most batteries had only 200 men. Added to this, many North Carolina artillery batteries only did coastal duty, or at least that was their lot until the end of the war. So, many of their letters home were not filled with descriptions of battles. For an artilleryman, he might see one or two Union warships a month, and those ships usually stayed out of range.

I guess I write all of this as an encouragement for you to check out the Robert C. Caldwell papers (online) at East Carolina University. Caldwell served in the 10th battalion, North Carolina Heavy Artillery, during the war. They were stationed in the Wilmington Area for much of the war, with a brief stint in Charleston. In late 1864, they were ordered to join the Army of Tennessee, and later fought as infantry at Averysboro and Bentonville. Let me encourage you to check out Caldwell’s letters by visiting this link here.