About 300 Forsyth County men gathered 150 years ago today to fight in the Battle of Bull Run, when Confederate forces defeated Union troops in the first major engagement of the Civil War.
But most of those local soldiers didn't see much action, historians say.
The National Park Service will commemorate the battle's sesquicentennial anniversary with programs and activities at Manassas National Battlefield Park today through Sunday.
Three companies — the Forsyth Rifles, Forsyth Grays and Forsyth Southrons — were part of the 11th N.C. Volunteers, said Fam Brownlee, a historian in the N.C. Room at the Forsyth County Public Library.
The Forsyth companies didn't suffer any casualties, and Brownlee said he doubts that the soldiers from the towns of Winston and Salem inflicted any casualties on the Union troops they faced on the battlefield.
Their regiment was among the troops stationed in the middle of the Confederate line at Manassas Junction, Va., about 20 miles southwest of Washington.
The Forsyth County soldiers helped chase the Union soldiers for nearly a mile after the Union troops broke from lines and retreated to Washington, Brownlee said.
At that point in the war, Confederate soldiers displayed more discipline that their Union counterparts, he said.
"They were excited," Brownlee said of the Forsyth troops. "They thought they had won the war. Many of them wrote home, saying that 'We will be home by Christmas, Mom, and these Union guys ain't nothing.' "
Michael Hill, a historian with the N.C. Office of Archives and History, said that 11th N.C. Volunteers saw limited action in skirmishes with Union troops at Bull Run. Union artillery batteries fired on the regiment, he said.
"They received fire, and they returned fire," Hill said.
The conflict, which was known in the South as the Battle of First Manassas, occurred three months after Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, the opening salvo of the war.
The Park Service is preparing for a major turnout of re-enactors of the battle, amid a forecast of temperatures near triple digits.
"I'm sure there'll be a lot of plastic water bottles at this event, which are not all that historically accurate," said Jonathan Jarvis, the director of the Park Service. "We'll make sure everybody is well-prepared for what could be a very hot weekend."
The Civil War Trust, the National Park Service, and state and local officials announced Wednesday that the battlefield national park is expanding.
The trust, the nation's largest nonprofit battlefield preservation organization, has acquired the Stonewall Memory Garden, which involves 44 acres.
Preservationists said they feared the land, known historically as the Dogan Farm, would ultimately be developed commercially.
Jarvis said that scenario will not likely happen.
"There's always pressure for development on these lands that were really, really important," Jarvis said. "One of our best partners has been the Civil War Trust and their ability to help identify these properties, acquire them for us and hold them for us."
The properties are "directly related to the battlefield" and are welcome additions to the 5,000-acre Manassas National Battlefield Park, he said.
The Confederate Army had about 30,000 soldiers on the battlefield, squaring off against about 35,000 Union soldiers. Nearly 5,000 Union and Confederate soldiers were killed, wounded, captured or reported missing.
After the battle, Northerners and Southerners realized that the war would be much longer and bloodier than they anticipated.
"The signal that Manassas sent was, this is going to be a long, ugly war and that no one is backing down," Jarvis said. "So Manassas signaled that we're in this for the long haul."
About 125,000 soldiers from North Carolina served in the Confederate Army, and nearly 35,000 Tarheel men were killed in the war.
In total, about 625,000 Union and Confederate soldiers and sailors died in the war.
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