Massacre of African Americans at the Battle of Plymouth
North Carolina
Intersection of East Main Street & Rankin Lane
Plymouth, NC 27962
United States
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African American soldiers, sailors, and civilians played a pivotal role in the Battle of Plymouth, courageously clashing with Confederate forces. However, the Confederate victory became a grim chapter in history, as the defeat of Union forces was marked by the brutal massacre of Black troops in a horrific act of racial violence.
The Union occupied the Roanoke River port of Plymouth in May 1862. On April 17, 1864, the Confederates attacked Plymouth’s well-fortified, but outnumbered, Union defenders. African Americans made up nearly a quarter of the people within the Union lines including 111 sailors, approximately 80 United States Colored Troop (USCT) uniformed soldiers — mostly raw recruits slated to join the 37th USCT and 38th USCT along with a detachment of 10th USCT soldiers — ten Black cooks serving with white units, and an estimated 1,000 freed men, women, and children. Control of the river determined who controlled the town. The ironclad ram CSS Albemarle launched from upriver and, undeterred by Union defenses, sank the Federal gunboat Southfield, turned its guns on the Union fortifications, and in coordination with army units surrounding the town, forced the Union troops to surrender on April 20.
Arriving just eight days after the widely publicized massacre of Black soldiers and civilians at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, the Black soldiers, "volunteer" civilians who took up positions in the trenches, and the additional 500 Black civilians seeking shelter in Plymouth had every reason to fear they might face a similar fate. They may have also known that a month earlier some of the Confederate soldiers now attacking them had slaughtered Black cavalry soldiers at Suffolk, Virginia.
What happened next must be assembled from numerous and varied claims and denials of atrocities carried out at Plymouth. In 1995, historians carefully reviewed the record and determined that at some point Black civilians and a few soldiers ran for nearby swamps where Confederates killed many of them. Other African Americans who fought for the Union were murdered in town after they surrendered. The historians concluded that,
The number of blacks, uniformed or otherwise, who were murdered in Plymouth on April 20 was probably no more than ten. Fifteen more may have been executed on April 23 or 24, presumably on orders sent down from Richmond. Forty were killed as they fled the battlefield, forty were hunted down and dispatched in the swamps, and ten died under circumstances that qualify as legitimate combat.
As you stand at this memorial which asks us to give “Honor to Whom Honor is Due,” consider the tragic sacrifices made by these African Americans in their pursuit of freedom.
Acknowledgement
This battle and its tragic aftermath are far too complex to adequately describe in this brief description drawn primarily from the thorough investigation by Weymouth T. Jordan, Jr. and Gerald W. Thomas, “Massacre at Plymouth: April 20, 1864,” The North Carolina Historical Review Vol. 72, No. 2 (APRIL 1995), pp. 125-197.