Overview

In the fall of 1861, Confederate Brigadier General Lawrence O'Bryan Branch was given the responsibility for setting up the Confederate defenses in Eastern North Carolina. His plans for doing that are found in his Order Book. In this publication that effort is documented with transcriptions of his orders and other relevant documents to detail his planning. Trying now to trace the people and paths that took this Order Book found some 200 yards north on the railroad where General Branch had established his field headquarters from which he directed his brigade numbering less than 4,500, routed by a blue-clad juggernaut as it swept through the Confederate line will likely never be known in greater detail. What is important are the contents of the book as they recall for the reader the tremendous frustration and anxiety felt by General Branch as he dictated those instructions for actions by the officer reading the order. Although General Branch reflects in his words a feeling of confidence and expectation for success in this, his first meeting of the elephant, it would not be so for his few, poorly equipped men of no experience. Indeed, behind his confidence and bravado he felt abandoned by all those whom he had sought to protect and serve, as well as by the Richmond authorities. The Richmond leadership held North Carolina in contempt for its moderation in the secession debate, had demanded and received the rich resources and the greatest manpower so readily provide by the Old North State, and denied support in planning and eventually opposing the enemy. General Branch was abandoned also by the planter class who responded to his several newspaper advertisements asking for their slaves to be provided to build fortifications with under ten men. The area's militia units were not now eager to join the real fight as they learned of the debacle at Roanoke Island. Perhaps the Governor of North Carolina, Henry T. Clark summed it up best when he said essentially that ... we'll have to do our own fighting, and save ourselves.

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