Honoring the Union Dead

On March 14, 1862, Union Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside captured New Bern after seizing Roanoke Island in February and moving his army inland. After the battle for the town, the Federals established hospitals in the New Bern Academy, the Masonic Lodge, and other structures, all later known as Foster General Hospital. After the war, the remains of Union dead buried in New Bern and the surrounding area, including Beaufort, Hatteras, and locations along the coast, were reinterred here. Confederate soldiers in Cedar Grove Cemetery, southeast of here.



New Bern National Cemetery was established on February 1, 1867. More than 1,000 unknown soldiers are buried in a separate section. Another section contains the graves of more than forty U.S. Colored Troops. New Bern National Cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997.



The cemetery contains several notable monuments. The granite 9th New Jersey Infantry Monument was erected by that state in 1905. Union and Confederate veterans, as well as the governors of both states, attended the elaborate dedication ceremony. Massachusetts erected a granite memorial in 1908 in memory of its soldiers who died in North Carolina during the war. Also in 1908, the Connecticut Monument was constructed to commemorate the Connecticut men who died of yellow fever as well as combat casualties. The Rhode Island Monument consists of a granite base topped by a bronze figure, donated by that state and dedicated on October 6, 1909.

Major funding for this project was provided by the North Carolina Department of Transportation, through the Transportation Enhancement Program of the Federal Transportation Efficiency Act for the 21st Century.

(captions)

(left) Three drummer boys in the 2nd Rhode Island Infantry posed with their drums sometime during the Civil War. Most of the young men like these—both Northern and Southern—who fell in battle were interred in shallow, hastily dug graves with no identification, and in many cases their families never knew exactly what happened to them or where they were buried. After the war, the remains of thousands of Union soldiers were reburied ion national cemeteries, often in graves marked simply "Unknown." Courtesy Library of Congress

(upper right) Gen. Ambrose Burnside Courtesy Library of Congress

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A National Cemetery System
Greenwood Cemetery
King Solomon Lodge
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New Bern Academy
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