Taking care of Burke County’s Destitute after the War.

   Burke County, North Carolina, has come up several times over the years here on Looking for the Confederate War. You can learn more about the county here and about the Avery brothers here. Morganton, the county seat of Burke County, served as one of the sub- districts for the Freemen’s Bureau after the war. Usually when people think of the Freedman’s Bureau, people think of schools and taking care of former slaves, which was one function of the organization. But after March 1867, it also administered foodstuffs to destitute people, both Black and White.

   Many times, we reach the end of the war in April and May 1865, and we don’t really think about the condition of people for the next few years. Those years are boiled down to Southerners, both White and Black, suffering “untold horrors.” Untold is a large part of it. Destitution in the South became so acute in the spring of 1867 that a joint resolution was passed by the US Congress authorizing the use of unexpended Freedman Bureau funds to purchase food supplies to prevent starvation and extreme want. There were an estimated 53,945 people thought to be destitute in Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, and North Carolina.[1]

   It was the various Freedmen’s Bureau agents in the sub-districts who were responsible for distributing these rations. It is not clear just how word was spread, either by circular or word of mouth maybe, but in late June and early July 1867, people came into Morganton to apply for assistance. Many of the applicants were widows of Unionist men. Margaret Lail, supporting four children, applied. She told the agent that “My husband was a Union man, [and] was shot by one of Patterson’s home guard.” She was awarded twenty-four pounds of pork and 168 pounds of corn. Nancy York, taking care of an aged father and three children, told the agent that her husband William York, possibly of Company B, 11^th North Carolina State Troops, was a Union man, conscripted into Confederate service. He deserted and was “shot in Burke Co., by David Peter, a home guard, for deserting the Confederate army.” They had no land, no cow, no “creature.” She made her mark and received 28 pounds of pork and 196 pounds of corn. Myrah Cook had six children to take care of. Her husband, Edward Cook, was a Unionist, and was shot twice by the home guard. The second time, Cook “was shoot in the woods, where [Myrah] took care of him 8 days when he died.”[2]

   A couple of the destitute who came in had husbands that they claimed had served in the Union army and died during the war. Emeline Couch claimed that her husband, name unknown, was in the Union army when he was killed, “leaving me destitute” with one child. Likewise, Lucinda Summers, with one child, also lost a husband in Federal service.[3]

   The greatest number of applicants were rather tight-lipped about why they were destitute. Elizabeth Simpson, Mary Smith, and Louisa Petit were living with three dependent children. They told the agent that they were “landless and destitute, caused by the war.” They were given 30 pounds of pork and 252 pounds of corn. Likewise, Mary Clark, Rebecca Short, and Mary Brackett, with ten children, were all “widows and destitute, caused by the war.” Fanny Fraklin told the agent that her husband had been injured during the war in the head, and that they were destitute.[4]

   However, many of the destitute who came to Morganton to seek relief were connected to the Confederate army. Huldah Lewis told the agent that her husband was “crippled in the rebel service and [they were] destitute.” Elizabeth Sherill and Rebecca Matthews, trying to support two children, had lost their husbands “in the Rebel army.” Nancy Smith and Macey Bingham had husbands who had died in northern prison camps. Polly Chrisenburg was trying to take care of her aged father and five children. Her “husband had died in the war.” Williams Watts, with his wife, complained that he had “lost all my sons in the Confederate army.” Watts was over 60 years old “and destitute.”[5]

   Henry Goins was one of the few Confederate soldiers to come in. He enlisted at the age of 18 in Burke County on May 10,1861, and was mustered in as a private in what became Company E, 16^th North Carolina Troops. Goins was wounded in the left arm and right elbow and captured at Gettysburg in July 1863. He was paroled later in 1863 and rejoined his regiment in time to be paroled at Appomattox. Goins told the agent that he was “a volunteer in the Rebel army [and] lost an arm and the other [stiffened] at the battle of Gettysburg. Can’t feed myself and am entirely destitute.” Goins was given 16 pounds of pork and 112 pounds of corn.[6]

   If there were any applicants turned away, those files have not been made available to the public online, or they were not kept. Reconstruction as a whole is little understood in many communities. History does not end in the spring of 1865. In local history, the times are viewed as “untold horrors.” Just how much of this history is lost, versus what has yet to be explored, is another one of those horrors. Does your county or community have a history of reconstruction? There are several volumes of Reconstruction as a whole on my shelves. Only one, James W. Hagy’s After the War Over: Reconstruction in Washington County, Virginia, 1865-1870, covers a county. Are there others? These were real people, and their ordeals were real. Remembering them is important.

  Many thanks to Laura Dunning Elliott for helping me find the Burke County records on FamilySearch. Now to just discover some additional western North Carolina counties.

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[1] Beth, “The Freedmen’s Bureau in Alabama,” The Journal of Southern History 91948) 1:79.

[2] North Carolina. Freedmen's Bureau Records 1865–1872, M1909, Morganton Sub-Assistant Commissioner, Roll 32, Applications for rations, Jun-Jul 1867.

[3] North Carolina. Freedmen's Bureau Records 1865–1872, M1909, Morganton Sub-Assistant Commissioner, Roll 32, Applications for rations, Jun-Jul 1867.

[4] North Carolina. Freedmen's Bureau Records 1865–1872, M1909, Morganton Sub-Assistant Commissioner, Roll 32, Applications for rations, Jun-Jul 1867.

[5] North Carolina. Freedmen's Bureau Records 1865–1872, M1909, Morganton Sub-Assistant Commissioner, Roll 32, Applications for rations, Jun-Jul 1867.

[6] Jordan and Manarin, North Carolina Troops, 6:51; North Carolina. Freedmen's Bureau Records 1865–1872, M1909, Morganton Sub-Assistant Commissioner, Roll 32, Applications for rations, Jun-Jul 1867.

The fighting Averys

   “Major, tell my father I died with my face to the enemy,” is a well-known last request made during the war. It was uttered by Col. Isaac Avery after he was mortally wounded at the battle of Gettysburg. Isaac Avery was just one of five Avery brothers who rose to prominence in the 19^th century. They were all the sons of Isaac and Harriet Erwin Avery. The Avery family were large landowners in western North Carolina.

William W. Avery

   The oldest brother was William Waightstill Avery. Born in Burke County in May 1816, W.W. Avery graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1837. He later studied law under Judge William Gaston and was admitted to the bar. Avery became a trustee of the University in 1850, and in 1857, became a director of the Western North Carolina Railroad. Avery served several terms in the General Assembly, and in the 1856-1857 term, was speaker of the North Carolina Senate. He, along with Thomas L. Clingman, was a strong advocate for secession. In 1858, he ran for a seat in the US House, but lost to Zebulon Baird Vance. In 1860, Avery was chairman of the state’s delegation to the Democratic National Convention, meeting in Charleston. Appointed Chairman of the resolution committee, Avery “favored the majority report denying the right of congress or territorial legislation to prohibit slavery in the territories, demanding federal protection for all property in those territories, upholding the Fugitive Slave Act, and advocating the acquisition of Cuba from Spain as soon as practicable.” Many delegates walked out, but not the North Carolinians. They would walk out when the convention met again in Baltimore. Once North Carolina left the Union, Avery served as a member of the provisional Confederate Congress and as chairman of the committee on military affairs. Avery failed to win an appointment to the Confederate senate and returned to western North Carolina, where he worked on raising a regiment for Confederate service. W.W. Avery was mortally wounded while leading local home guard in a skirmish with raiders in northern Burke County in late June 1864, dying on July 3, 1864. Avery was married to Mary Corinna Morehead, daughter of Governor John Motley Morehead, and they had several children.[1]

Clark M. Avery

   Clark Moulton Avery was the next son with a wartime connection. He was born in October 1820 and, like his older brother, graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Unlike his brother, he was not a politician, but instead farmed a large piece of property in Burke County. In February 1861, friends enticed Avery to run for the state secession convention, and election that he won. However, the convention did not meet. Avery would not serve when the actual convention met in May. Instead, when the principles of the foundation of the United States came under attack, Avery joined the military. On April 25, 1861, he was elected captain of Company G, 1^st North Carolina Volunteers, fighting at the battle of Big Bethel in June 1861. Then-colonel D.H. Hill wrote that "Captain Avery Company G displayed great coolness, judgment and efficiency in the battle of Bethel." As the regiment neared the end of its six-month term of enlistment, Avery was elected lieutenant colonel of the 33^rd North Carolina Troops, and then in January 1862, colonel. In March 1862, Avery was captured at the battle of New Bern, being released seven months later. He returned to his regiment and was wounded in the fighting at Chancellorsville and at Gettysburg. At the battle of the Wilderness in May 1864, Colonel Avery was struck in the left arm. When he refused to go the rear, a stretcher was brought forward, and he was carried along the lines, encouraging his men. Avery was eventually struck four times that day, including in the leg, neck, and through the body. Avery survived for six weeks before dying of his wounds on June 18, 1864. Avery was married to Elizabeth Tilghman Walton and was survived by four children.[2]

Isaac E. Avery 

   Isaac Erwin Avery was born in December 1828 in Burke County. For one year, he attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill but then left the school to help manage his father’s farms in Burke and Yancey Counties, North Carolina. He also worked with Charles F. Fisher and Samuel McDowell Tate to construct the Western North Carolina Railroad. When the war came, he worked on forming a company that became a part of the 6^th North Carolina State Troops. Avery was elected captain of Company E on May 16, 1861. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel and then colonel of the 6^th NC and was wounded at the battle of Malvern Hill. On July 2, 1863, while leading Hoke’s brigade in an attack on the Confederate left, Avery was mortally wounded, penning the famous note after his wound: “Major, tell my father I died with my face toward the enemy.” Avery died the next day. Colonel A.C. Godwin, 57^th NC, wrote in his official report that, upon the death of Avery, “the country lost one of her truest and bravest sons, and the army one of its most gallant officers.” His slave, Elijah, began to return to Burke County with the body, but he was forced to stop and bury Avery in Williamsport, Maryland. Avery’s body was later moved to Rose Hill Cemetery in Hagerstown.[3]

   Alphonso Calhoun Avery was born in September 1835. After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Avery studied law under Chief Justice Richmond M. Pearson and was licensed in June 1860. AC Avery helped his brother Isaac raise a company and was then elected first lieutenant in that company in the 6^th NCST. Following the battle of Seven Pines, he was promoted to captain, but by the end of 1862, he was transferred to the staff of Maj. Gen. D. H. Hill as assistant inspector general. Major Avery later served on the staffs of John C. Breckinridge, Thomas C. Hindman, and John B. Hood. At the end of the war, Avery was commanding a battalion in the western parts of North Carolina, attempting to curtail some of the damage being done by Federal raiding parties and bushwhackers. Avery was captured in Salisbury by some of Stoneman’s men and was imprisoned at Camp Chase until August 1865. After the war, Avery practiced law and was elected to the state senate; he lost his seat when the radicals came to power, served as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1875, and then served as judge of the superior court. Trinity College (now Duke University) conferred upon him a MA, and the University of North Carolina honored him with an LL.D. In 1888, A. C. Avery was elected an associate justice of the Supreme Court, serving for eight years. In 1892, he assumed the position of dean of the law school at Duke University. Avery retired in 1897 and became a prolific writer, respected historian, and prominent member of the Southern Historical Society. His first wife was Susan Washington Morrison, daughter of the Rev. R. H. Morrison. His brothers-in-law included D.H. Hill, Stonewall Jackson, and Rufus Barringer. Avery’s second wife was Sarah Love Thomas, the daughter of Col. William Holland Thomas. A.C. Avery died in June 1913.[4]

   The last Avery brother to serve in the war was Willoughby Francis Avery, born in Burke County in May 1843. He was attending the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill when the war broke out, and, leaving the school, he joined the 3^rd North Carolina Cavalry, where he was elected third lieutenant. When the company was reorganized, he failed to win reelection and resigned. Avery was then appointed a second lieutenant in Company C, 33^rd North Carolina Troops. Promotion to first lieutenant came on January 14, 1863, and on December 15, 1863, he was promoted to captain and transferred to Company E. A month later, he was transferred to Company I. Captain Avery was wounded in the mouth and throat at the battle of the Wilderness in May 1864, returned to duty in November 1864, and was captured at Salisbury on April 12, 1865. He was confined at Camp Chase and released in June 1865. After the war, Willoughby Avery edited newspapers in Charlotte and Asheville before returning to Burke County and establishing a newspaper in Morganton. He was married twice and died November 1876.[5]

   There are, of course, the Avery daughters as well. Adelaide Leah Avery (1822-1897) never married but became one of the first librarians in Burke County. Mary Ann Martha Avery (1831-1890) married Joseph Franklin Chambers. Harriet Justina Avery (1833-1902) married Pinckney B. Chambers, a major in the 49^th North Carolina Troops. The last daughter, Laura Myra Avery (1837-1912), never married.

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[1] Warner and Yearns, Biographical Register of the Confederate Congress, 9-10; Powell, Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, 1:67.

[2] Powell, Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, 1:111; Allardice, Confederate Colonels, 68.

[3] Jordan, NC Troops, 4:266; Allardice, Confederate Colonels, 47; The Herald-Mail, November 4, 2007.

[4] Powell, Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, 1:66-67.

[5] Manarin, NC Troops, 2:221; Jordan, NC Troops, 9:220; Powell, Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, 1:72.

The sad, cruel fate of war, or, the war-time life of Tod R. Caldwell.

   On May 11, 1865, Tod R. Caldwell wrote this letter to J. P. H Russ, W. R. Richardson "and others":

   Gentlemen: Your polite and kind invitation to attend and address a public meeting of the citizens of Wake County, proposed to be held this day in the City of Raleigh for the purpose of giving expression to our feelings on the occasion of our restoration to the Union and to the protection of the flag of our common county, has been received, and I must cordially thank you for the compliment. I deeply regret, however, my inability to be present, as I am compelled to hasten to my home in the west on important business which cannot be postponed. I shall nevertheless be present with you in sentiment and in sympathy and no one of the many spectators who will attend the meeting will hail with more delight that I do, the advent of peace and the deliverance of our people from the iron rule of tyranny and oppression. Let us all, then, with one accord, as good and loyal citizens, respect, and reverence, the glorious stars and stripes which are emblazoned upon our country's banner.

   Let us cherish it as our benefactor and deliverer from a worse than Egyptian bondage, and as a protector from insult and injury, both at home and abroad; let us return to our peaceful avocations determined to cultivate feelings of amity and brother's love toward the people of all sections of our country-to stand to and faithfully abide by the Union, the Constitution and the laws; and to stamp forever with the seal of our disapprobation, the miserable hearsay of secession, which has been the prolific source of so much distress and suffering to a once happy and prosperous people. 

While Caldwell might have kept a low profile in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains during the war years, the war came to his home as well. Caldwell had a son, John, who pleaded with his father for permission to join the army. Tod Caldwell finally consented, and John Caldwell enlisted in Company E, 33rd North Carolina Troops, on May 3, 1863. The younger Caldwell was just eighteen years old. He would serve a little less than two months in the Confederate army.

North Carolina Monument, Gettysburg. 

There are two stories regarding his death at Gettysburg. One takes place on the afternoon of July 2 on a picket line near Long Lane, or out in front of it. The other account has Caldwell dying on July 3 as Lane's brigade neared the Emmittsburg Road. There were several newspaper accounts of the death of John Caldwell published after the war. In one of those accounts, when the Governor was told of the events of the death of his son, "the Governor locked himself in his room and was all day in tears. He never told his wife" of the details "and told it only to his private secretary."

So as Caldwell sat in Raleigh, getting ready to head back to Burke County for "important business," he too well understood the "distress and suffering" of the war. His own family had been split, and his son, just 18 years old, was killed in the heat of battle in distant Pennsylvania.

Reconstructing the War-time Life of Tod R. Caldwell

Flip open John G. Barrett's The Civil War in North Carolina and you will find just one reference, per the index, to Tod R. Caldwell. Barrett quotes Caldwell in a March 1864 letter to Gov. Zebulon B. Vance, complaining about "men professing to be impressing agents from Longstreet's army and elsewhere are getting to be as thick in this community [Burke] as leaves in Vallambrosa." Caldwell adds that scarcely a week goes by without a new and hungrier group. (240-41)

Who was Tod R. Caldwell? The short answer would be that Caldwell was the 1st lieutenant governor of the state of North Carolina, and upon the impeachment W. W. Holden in July 1871, became the 41st Governor of North Carolina.

Caldwell was born in Morganton in February 1918. In 1840, he graduated from the University of North Carolina, and studied law under David L. Swain. He was admitted to practice law before the Superior Court in 1841.  Caldwell served in the House 1842-1846, and in 1850, represented Burke County in the state senate.

In pre-war politics, Caldwell was a Whig and opposed the movement to take the state out of the Union, lobbying hard for the Conservative Union party. In June 1860, the Weekly Raleigh Register reported that Caldwell spoke at a meeting in Morganton advocating the nomination of Bell and Everatt, Constitutional Unionist, for president and vice-president of the United States. In September 1860, he wrote: "Trusting that every friend of our beloved country, and every foe of Black Republicanism, Disunionism and Secession, will rally as one man around the National standard of Bell and Everett, with the war cry of "Death to Sectionalism" on their lips, I take my stand ready to do duty among the honest rank and file of the country, who alone are its real defenders in times of danger...."

Once North Carolina left the Union, Caldwell had a choice to make. It appears that he was nominated as the Presidential Elector for the 9th district in October 1861. After this nomination, Caldwell largely disappears from the public record during the war years. There is one account in the Raleigh Weekly Progress, May 10, 1864, in which W. W. Avery and Caldwell got into a debate about who would win the Confederate Congressional district: Leach or Foster.

 It was probably at the same time that Caldwell attended a rally in Morganton in which W. W. Avery nominated Zebulon Vance for re-election as governor of North Carolina. After several speakers, Caldwell asked to address the crowd, "and so thoroughly exposed these Vance leaders and Confederate officer-holders, that Mr. Avery himself was forced to come to the rescue." After Avery spoke for half an hour, Caldwell "then took him in hand and trimmed him in good style, especially in relation to his activity in bringing on the war and then in being so successful in keeping himself out of it. He also told him that two years ago he and his party were denouncing Gov. Vance in the most unmeasured terms, but now--all at once--he had a marvelously proper man, and was their first choice for Governor."

For the most part, it seems that Caldwell lay low during the war years. In his application for presidential pardon, penned in Burke County on July 25, 1865, he wrote that he was "opposed to the late Rebellion from its inception to its termination, but that, to avoid levies in the armies of the so-called "Confederate States," he accepted the officer of Solicitor for the county of Rutherford.... Your Petitioner would add that he canvassed his section of the state and opposed, upon the hirelings, the doctrine of secession and disunion to the best of his ability, and exacted every effort to prevent the call of the State  Convention which passed the ordinance of Secession; -that, during the existence of the said Rebellion, he actively opposed the David Usurpation -- indeed, so much so, that he was threatened by the Rebel leaders with the destruction of private property and personal violence." Caldwell was pardoned on August 14, 1865.

Caldwell's pronounced Unionism soon propelled his political prospects. Not only did he become president of the Western North Carolina Railroad, Caldwell became an aid to Governor Holden in July 1865.  He  represented Burke County in the Constitutional Convention In October 1865. He was recommended as a candidate for the US House in November 1865.

Caldwell went on to become the first lieutenant governor of the state of North Carolina. When Holden was impeached in 1871, Caldwell ran for governor in 1872 and barely won by a margin of 2,000 votes. While in office, he fell ill of a gall bladder attack, and died on July 10, 1874. 

So why my interest in Caldwell? At the Avery Museum, we have a desk that belonged to the governor. 

Looking for NC's Civil War - Burke County Courthouse

There are not many war-time courthouses in North Carolina. Most of the county seats of government have been replaced a time or two since the war ended. One of the few remaining structures is found in Morganton, Burke County.

Burke County's courthouse was built in the 1830s. From 1847 to 1861, the North Carolina Supreme Court used the building to hold summer sessions, escaping the heat in Raleigh. According to local legend, some of Stoneman's troops rode  their horses through the building in April 1865. The building survived the war and serves as a museum today.

This photo was taken in July 2012.

Burke County

Tomorrow night, I will be heading up the Burke County Civil War Round Table at the Burke County History Museum, so I thought we might spend some time surveying Burke County and the War. By the way, the program, on June 26, 2012, begins at 6:00. Everyone is welcomed.

Burke County, in the western portion of the state, was created in 1777 and named for Thomas Burke, delegate to the Continental Congress and governor of North Carolina from 1781-1782. The county is the parent county of Alexander, Buncombe, Caldwell, Catawba, Madison, Mitchell, McDowell, and Yancey counties. The county seat is Morganton, incorporated in 1784 and named for Gen. Daniel Morgan, who led the Patriot forces during the battle of Cowpens.

In 1860, there were 9,237 people who lived within the confines of Burke County. This included 2,471 slaves, and 276 free persons of color.

One of the Burke citizens was local politician William W. Avery. Avery had served in the General Assembly, and in 1856, was speaker of the Senate. Avery ran for the U. S. Congress in 1858, but lost to Zebulon Baird Vance. In 1860, Avery chaired the committee which introduced the resolution that split the party, leading some members to walk out of the meeting. He later served in the Provisional Confederate Congress, but was defeated for election. Avery returned to western North Carolina, and was in the process of recruiting a cavalry battalion when he was killed.

Avery County men cast 470 votes for Breckinridge, 447 for Bell, and 4 for Douglas in the 1860 presidential election. In the February 1861 call for a convention to consider a secession convention, Burke Cast 718 votes for, with 273 against the convention. Surprisingly, the voters elected Dr. John Calhoun McDowell, who opposed secession, as the local representative, over lawyer Burgess S. Gaither. McDowell's brother, Dr. Joseph A. McDowell, also served in the convention, representing Madison County.

Local men served in Company G, 1st North Carolina State Troops;  Company D, 6th North Carolina State Troops; Company D, 11th North Carolina State Troops; Company E, 16th North Carolina State Troops; Company B, 46th North Carolina Troops; Company H, 6th North Carolina Cavalry;  Company G, 3rd North Carolina Junior Reserves, and Company G, 8th Battalion North Carolina Junior Reserves. There were also a few men in the 2nd and 3rd North Carolina Mounted infantry (US). Several of the Avery slaves also served in the 40th United States Colored Troops. Overall, Terrell Garren in Mountain Myth, writes that there were 1,450 men from Burke County who served in the Confederate army, and 28 men who served in the Union army. Of the Confederate forces, 308 died while in service.

Probably the most famous soldier from Burke County was Isaac Avery, colonel of the 6th North Carolina State Troops and brother to W. W. Avery. Colonel Avery, after being mortally wounded on day 2 of the battle of Gettysburg, penned the hauntimg words "Major, tell my father I died with my face to the enemy." This blood-spattered letter is a part of the collection at the North Carolina Museum of History. Another Avery brother, Col. Clarke Moulton of the 33rd North Carolina Troops, was killed the following year during the battle of the Wilderness. A fourth Avery brother, Maj. A. C. Avery, led a cavalry battalion, known as Avery's Battalion, during the war. A. C. Avery was a brother-in-law to Stonewall Jackson.  

Confederate officials established Camp Vance in Burke County, to the east of Morganton not far from where the railroad terminated, in mid-1863. The camp was a base for the efforts in western North Carolina to deal with new soldiers (such as the junior reserves in 1864), and for conscripts rounded up in periodic sweeps through the area. Men were taken to the railroad depot and sent further on, back to their regiments or to Salisbury prison. Camp Vance contained several buildings, such as a jail, barracks, and a hospital. In June 1864, Capt. George W. Kirk, of the 2nd North Carolina Mounted Infantry, led a raid out of east Tennessee, through the mountains of western North Carolina, and attacked Camp Vance. The camp was forced to capitulate, and the Federals captured over 200 men. Kirk's band, after burning a train, boxcars, and other supplies, along with the buildings of the camp, set out back to east Tennessee. They fought three different skirmishes in northern Burke County. In one skirmish, Kirk used some of his prisoners as human shields, and then laughed when the local home guardsmen shot and killed Confederate soldiers. In another of the skirmishes, W. W. Avery was mortally wounded. Kirk, wounded himself, was able to make it back to Federal lines. Camp Vance was rebuilt.

The war was never far from Burke County. Numerous small raids were conducted through the area in 1864 and 1865. In April 1865, a large contingent of Federal soldiers, conducting what has become known as Stoneman's Raid, arrived in Burke County. On April 17, Union soldiers battled with the  local home guard at Rocky Ford along the Catawba River. After holding the Federals at bay for several hours, the local home guardsmen began to run low on ammunition for both small arms and their one artillery piece. Also, a large Federal force soon attacked at Flemmings Ford, pushing aside the defenders. The main defensive force at Rocky Ford was forced to withdraw. Federal cavalry was soon in Morganton. Homes, barns, and smokehouses were ransacked. Louisa Norwood wrote that the Federal soldiers "tore everything to pieces... and put pistols to the ladies' heads, drove them out of the house and took what they liked, guided by a negro boy." Some homes were burned, including that of Dr. Felix Dula, and the records from the courthouse. On April 19, the Federal cavalry headed west toward Asheville.

Following the war, a permanent post for the Federal army was established in Morganton, and continued in operation for a number of years. On June 22, 1918, a Confederate monument was dedicated on the grounds of the Burke County Court House. There is also a Civil War Trail Marker at Rocky Ford and Morganton.