9. At what point on the North Carolina coast were fortifications specially needed?
10. Describe the Federal attack on Fort Hatteras. Point out Hatteras on the map.
11. What was the result of the fall of Hatteras?
CHAPTER LVI.
THE COMBAT DEEPENS.
A. D. 1662.
1862.
By the fortune of war in the Revolution, as again in 1812, the State was nearly always left with a small proportion of her own troops to defend the home of their birth. So, also, when the spring opened in 1862, though fully forty thousand men of the State were under arms, they were to be found in Virginia and South Carolina, except a small force left at Wilmington and Roanoke Island.
2. This condition of affairs did not result, however, from any indifference on the part of the general government to us, but from the fact that the main strategic points were in other States, and fortunate it was for North Carolina that this was so; for whatever may have been the necessities of local defence, or the evils incident to an unprotected coastline, or those inseparable from its occupation by the enemy at various points, they cannot be compared to the evils resulting from the prolonged occupation of a State by large contending armies.
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.