Almost three months after Potter's expedition returned to New Bern after hitting Greenville, Tarboro, and Rocky Mount, the raid was still in the newspapers. The Mercury, a paper in Hobart, Tasmania ran a paragraph about Potter's Raid under its "Foreign Intelligence" columns on October 13, 1863. This article was an echo, drawn from American newspapers, of the story carried about the raid by the Petersburg Express on July 22. One can see the time lag between news reaching California by the Trans-continental Telegraph; going by steamship to Australia; and then making a final ocean trip to the island of Tasmania.
The Tasmanian excerpt read:
The Petersburg Express of the 22nd of July states that a Federal cavalry expedition, sent by General Foster into North Carolina, destroyed the bridge of the Washington and Weldon Railroad over the Tar River at Rocky Mountain, burned 5,000 bales of cotton, and a large factory. The expedition also captured and destroyed a train of cars loaded with ammunition and prisoners. The amount of property destroyed by this raid into North Carolina is estimated at 5,000,000 dollars.
The story went through a succession of editors and typesetters by the time it got to Tasmania. Note that the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad has been turned into the "Washington and Weldon". And, Rocky Mount has become "Rocky Mountain".
This article was found at the National Library of Australia's "Historic Australian Newspapers, 1803 to 1954" site at http://newspapers.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/home. Their newspapers carried many items about the Civil War as it was going on, and makes for an interesting point of view.
I hunt in the Tarboro area and have an interest in potters raid to see if any of the features i have seen in the woods are from that action. Do you have you found a map showing the chronology of events?
ReplyDeleteI referred to lots of different maps (from 1863 to the early 1900s) to prepare some maps for the book, but they didn't have the level of detail needed to show features such as earthworks. I understand that Union Army regulations required a topographical engineer to make a detailed map of the route of such operations as Potter's Raid, but I was not able to locate such a map, if it still exists.
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed reading your book. Looking for any information I can find on the 1st NCUV.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.rrphillips.com
Richard, thanks! I hope that Footnote.com will add the North Carolinians to their series of Union Soldiers' Service Records.
ReplyDeleteHave you looked through the microfilm of the North Carolina Times? This was a Union paper published in New Bern in 1864 and 1865; they cover local events and sometimes mention the NCUV. There was also an edition of the paper published in Beaufort. ECU has them on microfilm, and may let them be borrowed through the Interlibrary Loan.