RALEIGH, N.C. (April 7, 2014) — The North Carolina Division of Tourism today unveiled a new statewide Civil War Trails guide that will direct travelers across the state during the final year of the 150th anniversary observance.
“The release of the new map is well-timed to draw attention to the most under-told story of the war,” said Wit Tuttell, Executive Director of the Division of Tourism, Film & Sports Development. “Fort Fisher, Bentonville, the surrender of troops in Durham — North Carolina is where the war effectively ended. The new entries also remind us that within the framework of military action, complex struggles played out in the lives of the people who endured this defining American war.”
The original Civil War Trails map, released in 2005, covered the most significant military action in North Carolina, including the critical events of 1865. The Second Battle of Fort Fisher sealed the port of Wilmington and choked the only remaining supply line to Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. The Battle of Bentonville two months later marked the last time the Confederacy was able to mount a tactical offensive. And in the aftermath of Bentonville, Gen. William T. Sherman and Gen. Joseph E. Johnston negotiated the war’s largest surrender at Bennett Place, a farmhouse in Durham.
The latest version of the trail highlights 239 sites in 78 counties. Additions include the reading of the Emancipation Proclamation to the formerly enslaved congregants who built St. Philips Moravian Church in Old Salem; and an encampment of more than 10,000 Union soldiers in Louisburg as they made their way to Washington, D.C., after the surrender. The soldiers stored so much corn at Louisburg Male Academy that the floor collapsed.
“The town is full of Yankee Soldiers riding and walking up and down every street, and coming into our yards and kitchens,” wrote a Louisburg woman whose diary is quoted on the marker.
Trail markers span the state from Hatteras Island, site of the war’s first amphibious battle, to Robbinsville, a divided mountain community that saw one of the last surrenders east of the Mississippi. Stories unfold at battlefields, field hospitals, cemeteries and the Salisbury Confederate Prison with stops at museums and other sites to advance understanding of the state’s role in the war.
Civil War Trails is a five-state project that also includes Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland. In North Carolina, the $1.3 million program represents years of work by the state departments of Commerce, Cultural Resources and Transportation. It was funded by a federal Transportation Enhancements Grant with matching funds from local communities.
North Carolina Civil War Trails brochures are available at all nine state Welcome Centers as well as Department of Transportation visitor centers. They can be ordered by phone (800-VISIT NC) or online (www.visitnc.com/travelpubs), or downloaded from www.civilwartrails.com.
For more ideas, inspiration and planning tools for a Civil War journey, head to VisitNC.com. Among the comprehensive statewide listings, you can find events, attractions, inns and even a winery with connections to the war.