The Battle of Pig Point, Virginia was an early naval battle of the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...

, after Lincoln had extended the Union blockade to include Virginia. On June 5, 1861, the

Union Union commonly refers to: * Trade union, an organization of workers * Union (set theory), in mathematics, a fundamental operation on sets Union may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * Union (band), an American rock group ** ''Un ...

gunboat USRC ''Harriet Lane'' under Captain John Faunce was ordered to attack Pig Point, but due to shallow water, the shots fell short, and the Union suffered five men wounded before withdrawing.

Background

On April 15, 1861, the day after the small U.S. Army garrison surrendered

Fort Sumter Fort Sumter is a sea fort built on an artificial island protecting Charleston, South Carolina from naval invasion. Its origin dates to the War of 1812 when the British invaded Washington by sea. It was still incomplete in 1861 when the Battl ...

in the harbor

Charleston, South Carolina Charleston is the largest city in the U.S. state of South Carolina, the county seat of Charleston County, and the principal city in the Charleston–North Charleston metropolitan area. The city lies just south of the geographical midpoint o ...

to Confederate forces,

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Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln ( ; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation thro ...

called for 75,000 volunteers to reclaim federal property and to suppress the incipient rebellion of the seven

Deep South The Deep South or the Lower South is a cultural and geographic subregion in the Southern United States. The term was first used to describe the states most dependent on plantations and slavery prior to the American Civil War. Following the war ...

Slave states In the United States before 1865, a slave state was a state in which slavery and the internal or domestic slave trade were legal, while a free state was one in which they were not. Between 1812 and 1850, it was considered by the slave states ...

. Four

Upper South The Upland South and Upper South are two overlapping cultural and geographic subregions in the inland part of the Southern and lower Midwestern United States. They differ from the Deep South and Atlantic coastal plain by terrain, history, econom ...

States which also permitted slavery, including Virginia, refused to furnish troops for this purpose and began the process of

secession Secession is the withdrawal of a group from a larger entity, especially a political entity, but also from any organization, union or military alliance. Some of the most famous and significant secessions have been: the former Soviet republics le ...

from the Union. On April 17, 1861, a convention in

Richmond, Virginia (Thus do we reach the stars) , image_map = , mapsize = 250 px , map_caption = Location within Virginia , pushpin_map = Virginia#USA , pushpin_label = Richmond , pushpin_m ...

passed an ordinance providing for Virginia's secession from the Union and authorized the governor to call for volunteers to join the military forces of Virginia to defend the state against Federal military action.Scharf, John Thomas
''History of the Confederate States Navy From Its Organization to the Surrender of Its Last Vessel''
New York: Rogers & Sherwood, 1887, p. 39. . Retrieved February 1, 2011 The

Virginia Secession Convention The Virginia Secession Convention of 1861 was called in Richmond to determine whether Virginia would secede from the United States, to govern the state during a state of emergency, and to write a new Constitution for Virginia, which was subsequent ...

made the act of secession subject to a vote of the people of the state on May 23, 1861, but the actions of the convention and Virginia political leaders, especially

Governor A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political ...

John Letcher John Letcher (March 29, 1813January 26, 1884) was an American lawyer, journalist, and politician. He served as a Representative in the United States Congress, was the 34th Governor of Virginia during the American Civil War, and later served in ...

, effectively took Virginia out of the union. In view of developments to complete secession in Virginia, President Lincoln also did not wait for the vote of the people of Virginia on secession to take action that treated Virginia as part of the Confederacy. On April 27, 1861, he extended the blockade of the original Confederate States that he had declared on April 19, 1861 to include the ports of Virginia and North Carolina.Long, E. B. and Barbara Long. ''The Civil War Day by Day: An Almanac, 1861–1865''. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971. . p. 66 On May 27, 1861,

Major General Major general (abbreviated MG, maj. gen. and similar) is a military rank used in many countries. It is derived from the older rank of sergeant major general. The disappearance of the "sergeant" in the title explains the apparent confusion of a ...

Benjamin Butler Benjamin Franklin Butler (November 5, 1818 – January 11, 1893) was an American major general of the Union Army, politician, lawyer, and businessman from Massachusetts. Born in New Hampshire and raised in Lowell, Massachusetts, Butler is best ...

commanding

Fort Monroe Fort Monroe, managed by partnership between the Fort Monroe Authority for the Commonwealth of Virginia, the National Park Service as the Fort Monroe National Monument, and the City of Hampton, is a former military installation in Hampton, Virgi ...

at the tip of the Virginia Peninsula between the

James River The James River is a river in the U.S. state of Virginia that begins in the Appalachian Mountains and flows U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map , accessed April 1, 2011 to Chesapea ...

and the York River sent forces north to occupy Newport News, Virginia. By May 29, the Union Army established a camp and battery at Newport News Point that could cover the entrance to the James River ship canal and the mouth of the

Nansemond River The Nansemond River is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed April 1, 2011 tributary of the James River in Virginia in the United States. Virginian colonists named the river ...

. Meanwhile, the Confederates established a battery at Pig Point across the Nansemond River from Newport News with guns captured from the

Gosport Navy Yard The Norfolk Naval Shipyard, often called the Norfolk Navy Yard and abbreviated as NNSY, is a U.S. Navy facility in Portsmouth, Virginia, for building, remodeling and repairing the Navy's ships. It is the oldest and largest industrial facility tha ...

Norfolk County, Virginia Norfolk County was a county of the South Hampton Roads in eastern Virginia in the United States that was created in 1691. After the American Civil War, for a period of about 100 years, portions of Norfolk County were lost and the territory of th ...

, now part of

Portsmouth, Virginia Portsmouth is an independent city in southeast Virginia and across the Elizabeth River from Norfolk. As of the 2020 census, the population was 97,915. It is part of the Hampton Roads metropolitan area. The Norfolk Naval Shipyard and Naval M ...

. After establishing the Union position at Newport News, Butler wished to move up the Nansemond River to capture

Suffolk, Virginia Suffolk is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and as such has no county. As of the 2020 census, the population was 94,324. It is the 9th most populous city in Virginia and the largest city in Virginia by boundary land area as ...

. He had to dispose of the battery at Pig Point to accomplish this objective.

Battle

General Butler ordered Captain John Faunce to take the ''Harriet Lane,'' one of the boats which had tried to reinforce and resupply Fort Sumter, and attack the Confederate battery at Pig Point on June 5, 1861 in order to ascertain its strength. Faunce attacked the battery but due to shallow water, he had to fire his 30 shots from too great a distance. Most fell short of the Confederate position. The Confederate defenders, including the Portsmouth Rifle Company. returned fire and wounded five of the Union steamer's crew. From this brief engagement, Faunce determined that the battery was strong and considered his mission complete. He withdrew the ''Harriett Lane'' from the engagement in the face of the superior Confederate firepower. Captain Robert Pegram commanding the Confederate battery reported that the ''Harriet Lane'' fired 33 shots and inflicted no casualties or damage. The Confederates returned fire with 23 shots. A later account stated that the ''Harriet Lane'' had disabled a 48-pound cannon at the battery. Five of the ''Harriet Lane's'' crew were wounded by the Confederate gunfire. On the same date, June 5, 1861, the USS ''Quaker City'' captured the Confederate ship ''General Greene'' off the nearby

Virginia Capes The Virginia Capes are the two capes, Cape Charles to the north and Cape Henry to the south, that define the entrance to Chesapeake Bay on the eastern coast of North America. In 1610, a supply ship learned of the famine at Jamestown when it l ...

Aftermath

The Confederates maintained control of Pig Point and operation of the battery until they abandoned Norfolk and Portsmouth, Virginia at the start of the Peninsula Campaign on March 9, 1862. Union forces occupied Norfolk and Portsmouth on May 10 and 11.Long, 1971, p. 210

Notes

References

''The American annual cyclopedia and register of important events of the year 1861''
Volume 1. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1870. . Retrieved May 3, 2011. * Barnes, James
''The Photographic History of the Civil War in Ten Volumes: Volume 6: The Navies''
Miller, Francis Trevelyan, Robert S. Lanier, and James Verner Scaife, eds. New York: Review of Reviews Co., 1911. . Retrieved May 1, 2011. * Davis, William C. and James I. Robertson, Virginia Center for Civil War Studies
''Virginia at war: 1861''
Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2005. . * Fredriksen, John C
''Civil War Almanac''
New York: Facts on File, 2007. . * Hansen, Harry. ''The Civil War: A History''. New York: Bonanza Books, 1961. . * Long, E. B. and Barbara Long. ''The Civil War Day by Day: An Almanac, 1861–1865''. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971. . * Lossing, Benson John and William Barritt
''Pictorial history of the civil war in the United States of America'', Volume 1
Philadelphia, George W. Childs, 1866. . Retrieved May 1, 2011. * Neeser, Robert Wilden
''Statistical and Chronological History of the United States Navy, 1775–1907''
Volume 2. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1909. . Retrieved April 22, 2011. * Porter, John W. H
''A record of events in Norfolk County, Virginia: from April 19th, 1861, to May 10, 1862''
Portsmouth, VA: W. A. Fiske, 1892. Retrieved March 16, 2011. * Salmon, John S. ''The Official Virginia Civil War Battlefield Guide''. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2001. . * Scharf, John Thomas
''History of the Confederate States Navy From Its Organization to the Surrender of Its Last Vessel''
New York: Rogers & Sherwood, 1887. . Retrieved February 1, 2011. {{DEFAULTSORT:Pig Point, Battle Of Pig Point Battles of the Chesapeake Bay Blockade of the American Civil War Battles of the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War Inconclusive battles of the American Civil War Battles and conflicts without fatalities Naval battles of the American Civil War Portsmouth, Virginia Battles of the American Civil War in Virginia 1861 in the American Civil War 1861 in Virginia Riverine warfare June 1861 events