The Civil War Arrives in Raleigh

The Civil War Arrives in Raleigh. . Union Troops and the Hospital In April 1865, 89,000 of General Sherman’s troops occupied Raleigh during the last days of the Civil War. Many Union soldiers camped on the hospital’s grounds and interacted with patients. , On the night of April 17, 1865, learning of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, soldiers of the Union Army camped at the hospital marched toward downtown Raleigh intent on burning the city down. Union Major General John A. Logan famously saved the capital city by intercepting the troops, threatening to fire on them with their own artillery unless they returned to camp. , The presence of Union troops also forced the hospital to integrate as commanders required doctors to treat newly freed African Americans, starting with a Wake County man named Isaac admitted with the cause noted as ‘the war’. Integration of the hospital lasted until Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era when North Carolina opened a separate facility in Goldsboro for African American patients in 1880. Dorothea Dix Hospital reintegrated in the 1960s. , Raleigh’s Earthwork During the Civil War, an earthwork was constructed around Raleigh to protect the capital from Union forces heading inland from Eastern North Carolina. Enslaved African Americans, brought in from 15 different counties, were forced to build the earthwork – a large embankment of soil that formed a fortification around the city – cutting through the state hospital property. , [Captions (clockwise from left)] , . Illustration of Maj. Gen. John A. Logan confronting his troops. “Life and Service of John A. Logan”, by George Frances Dawson, 1887. , . Map of Raleigh Earthworks. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration , . Andrew Andrews, pictured here as a free man, was enslaved by the Mordecai-Cameron families and was one of the over 260 enslaved men who built Raleigh’s earthwork. The News and Observer, 1935 , . A boulder near Hunt Drive has engravings believed to be from troops camped on Dix Hill during the Civil War.