3. Roanoke Island was the only hope of defence for Albemarle Sound and the many rivers flowing therein. To defend it, General Henry A. Wise was sent with a small force to be added to the Eighth and Thirty-first Regiments of North Carolina Volunteers. He was sick on February 7th, 1862, when General Burnside, with a great fleet and fifteen thousand Federal troops, sailed up Croatan Sound and began the attack. 4. Colonel Henry M. Shaw, of the Eighth North Carolina Regiment, was in command, and made a gallant but unavailing defence. The Federals landed and moved up the island in the rear of the forts which had been constructed to prevent the passage of vessels to the west of the defences. The only recourse left was to abandon the lower batteries and concentrate the Southern troops at a point near the centre of Roanoke Island. 5. It was hoped that the morasses, indenting both shores and leaving a narrow isthmus, would enable the small Confederate force to defend that position; but the bravery and enterprise of the enemy enabled him to turn both flanks, and nothing was left Colonel Shaw and his command but to fall back to the northern end of the island and there lay down their arms. 6. The battle had been bravely fought for two days, and the two thousand Confederate prisoners and their gallant leader became captives, but only after inflicting heavy loss upon the assailants. The place was untenable against superior naval appliances, and quite men enough had been sacrificed in view of the impossibility of preventing its isolation by Federal fleets. 7. Very different were the defensive capacities of the city of New Bern. It was immediately foreseen that this important place would be next assailed, and with enough troops it would have been an easy feat to have held it indefinitely, but whether its value as a strategic point would have justified such a defence may be doubted. The Confederate authorities entrusted its defence to General L. O'B. Branch, who had no experience in military affairs, and in whose command, like General Wise's, was not a single regiment that had been under fire, though there were skillful officers of lower rank who had seen much service in the old army. On March 14th, General Burnside, with the army and fleet so lately the victors at Roanoke, moved to attack the forts which had been constructed just below the junction of Neuse and Trent Rivers. 8. General Branch had in his command the Seventh, Twenty-sixth, Twenty-seventh, Thirty-third and Thirty-fifth North Carolina Regiments, a portion of the Nineteenth (cavalry), with Brem's and Latham's light batteries and a small force of militia. These were disposed along a line stretching from Fort Thompson, on Neuse River, across the railroad to an impassable swamp, which afforded abundant protection to his right flank.