Burning of Washington
Washington, Beaufort County, North Carolina
Marker Inscription
Burning Of Washington. The town was burned and shelled by evacuating United States troops in April, 1864.
Erected by North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources
The Story
When Union forces evacuated the occupied town of Washington in April 1864, departing troops burned and shelled it, leaving much of the community in ruins. The destruction came at the close of a long Federal occupation of this Pamlico River port. It was one of many Southern towns scarred as armies withdrew.
Why it matters
The burning of Washington is a stark reminder of how the Civil War's occupations and evacuations devastated the civilian towns caught between the armies.
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Related events
- · Burning of Washington, N.C., 1864
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
St. John the Evangelist Church
Washington, NC
Consecrated in 1829 one block east of here, St. John the Evangelist was the first Roman Catholic church in North Carolina, a landmark for a tiny Catholic community in an overwhelmingly Protestant region. Its life was cut short during the Civil War, when Federal troops burned it in 1864. The church stood as a rare marker of Catholic faith on the antebellum Carolina coast.
African Americans Defend Washington
Washington, NC
During the 1863 siege of Washington, North Carolina, roughly 100 Black men took up arms to help Union forces hold the town. Their service came even before the formal organization of the 1st North Carolina Colored Volunteers, making them among the earliest African Americans to fight for the Union in the state. They defended a community and a cause that promised their own freedom.
Siege of Washington
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Union troops seized the port town of Washington in March 1862, and it remained a contested Federal outpost deep in eastern North Carolina. Confederate efforts to retake it failed in 1862 and again in 1863, and the Union army finally withdrew on its own in April 1864. The struggle for the town reflected the wider fight for control of the state's rivers and sounds.
Daniel G. Fowle
Washington, NC
Daniel G. Fowle, whose home stood on this spot, packed a lifetime of public service into the turbulent decades around the Civil War. He served as a Confederate officer and as the state's Adjutant General in 1863, later sitting as a superior court judge and state legislator before winning the governorship, which he held from 1889 to 1891. His career traced North Carolina's arc from secession through Reconstruction to the New South.