In 1725, Maurice Moore convinced his friends and family from the Goose Creek section of South Carolina to relocate to North Carolina's Cape Fear River and build their own settlement. The Moores quickly laid out a new town called Brunswick that would become the colony's only port with direct access to the Atlantic Ocean. Over the course of its existence, Brunswick was raided by Spanish privateers, sacked by British redcoats, and was home to some of the leading figures in colonial and Revolutionary War North Carolina. Two Royal Governors made their home there, and one of the earliest rebellions against English rule were acted out at Brunswick. During the Civil War, Fort Anderson was built on the ruins of the colonial town. After the fall of Fort Fisher in 1865, Fort Anderson became the last obstacle to the Union occupation of the port of Wilmington, further up the Cape Fear River. In this book, Franda D. Predlow and Jack E. Fryar, Jr. have put together a beginner's primer that initiates history lovers into the rich past of one of North Carolina's most significant historic sites.

In 1848 Benson J. Lossing set out on an 8,000 mile journey that took him to all of the thirteen original colonies and Canada. His mission was to see and record the stories of the American Revolution before they were lost to time and the rapid growth of the still young United States. Two years later, he published his Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution. The two volume set each contained over a thousand pages with illustrations from the author. It chronicles virtually every fight and skirmish of the war, the stories often gleaned from eyewitnesses or their children. If an American and a Briton stood on opposite banks of a stream and threw rocks at each other, chances are it's recounted in Lossing's fine work. Additionally, Lossing's book serves as a time capsule travelogue of what America was like in the years just prior to the Civil War. In this edition, editor Jack E. Fryar, Jr. has reproduced the chapters of Lossing's work that pertain specifically to North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. Lavishly illustrated by Lossing's wonderful drawings and with meticulous end notes that read like a book in themselves, this seminal work is a super addition to any history collection of the Revolutionary War in the South, especially as it happened in the Carolinas or Georgia.

This is Volume II of the classic work that tells the story of the Revolutionary War in North Carolina. In 1854, and again in 1856, Rev. Eli Washington Caruthers published a compilation of stories, gathered over the course of many years, that spotlighted the bravery, sacrifices and viciousness that were a part of life for North Carolinians during the Revolutionary War. From the actions of Governor William Tryon in suppressing the Regulator rebellion, through the first Patriot victory against British forces at Moores Creek, to the depredations of Tory terror David Fanning and the climactic battle at Guilford Courthouse, the Old North State was the scene of some of the most pivotal episodes in the struggle for American independence. Long out of print, this newly illustrated edition tells the stories of the men and women who paid for American liberty with their blood and sacrifice. Caruthers' two volumes on the Revolutionary War in North Carolina are the stories of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events. They are the stories of men like John Grady, John Ashe, Andrew Balfour and countless others who gave their all for the cause of freedom, and in doing so showed the character that has been a benchmark for patriotic sacrifice ever since.

From the very beginning, the North Carolina coast has been feard by mariners because of its treacherous coastline and hidden shoals.The Cape Fear in particular has haunted the nightmares of those sailors who have had the bad luck to be on its waters when the whitecaps churn or the cannons roared. James Sprunt served as purser aboard the blockade runner Lilian when just a teenager during the American Civil War. During those years he became inimately acquainted with the daring men and fast ships that challenged the might of the Union navy and its blockade of North Carolina and Cape Fear ports. There were Captains John Newland Maffitt, John Wilkinson, and Joseph Fry. Jim Billy Craig and others piloted the sleek steamers carrying the lifeblood of the Confederacy into the port at Wilmington with steady hands. Characters like Thomas Taylor, Daisy Lamb and the rebel spy Rose O'Neal Greenhow all played their parts in the drama that took place off the Cape Fear between 1861 and 1865. There were the men and ships of the U.S. Navy: Porter and Lee, Cushing and Braine, and all of the enlisted sailors and marines who stood watch on fog-slicked decks, trying to plug a bottle with two openings. Too often they were unsuccessful, but if they could close the Cape Fear and the rest of the North Carolina coast, they just might end a long and costly war. These are their stories, told by a man who saw it all happen first-hand.