Burnside’s Field Operations

The following from an editorial in the Richmond dispatch a few weeks ago, is a good description of Gen. Burnside’s field operations, so far as they go:

Roanoke Island is at the mouth of Albemarle Sound, and is the boundary line between that and Pamlico Sound, which the enemy’s ships enter upon crossing the bar at Hatteras.  Pamlico Sound is a shallow body of water, only navigable by light-draught vessels, eighty miles long, and from eight to thirty miles broad, separated from the Atlantic by low sandy Islands, covered with bushes.  Pamlico receives Neuse, Tar and Pamlico rivers.  Newbern is on the Neuse, at the Junction of the Trent river with it – the Trent being a sort of estuary of Pamlico Sound.  It is not without protection, but it is unnecessary to say what.

Washington is on the Tar river, at its entrance into Pamlico river, at the head of navigation for sea-going craft, and forty miles from the Sound.  No large vessel can reach it, the water not being sufficiently deep.

On the north, Pamlico connects with Albemarle Sound, which is sixty miles from East to West, and from four to fifteen miles wide.  It receives the waters of the Roanoke and Chowan rivers, and communicates with the Chesapeake Bay and the Dismal Swamp Canal.

Edenton is situated near the mouth of Chowan river, on Edenton Bay, which sets up from the Albemarle Sound.  It is sixty-six miles from Norfolk.

The Chowan river is formed by the union of Nottaway and Meherran rivers, which rise in Virginia and unite above Winton, N. C. and flowing southeast, it enters Albemarle Sound by a wide estuary a little south of the mouth of the Roanoke.  It is navigable for small sail vessels to Murfreesborough, on the Meherran branch, about seventy-five miles from the ocean.

Elizabeth City, N. C., is on the Pasquotank river, twenty miles from its entrance into Albemarle Sound, forty miles S. S. W. of Norfolk.  Vessels drawing seven feet of water come up to Elizabeth City, which communicates with Norfolk by water via the Dismal Swamp Canal.

There are the following ways of getting to Norfolk from Albemarle Sound, viz: by Currituck Sound and the Albemarle Canal, which is the most eastern route; by the Pasquotank river and dismal swamp canal, either direct into Elizabeth river, on which Norfolk is situated, or through Drummond Lake and the Jericho Canal to Suffolk, seventeen miles by rail from Norfolk; or by about thirty miles’ marching on Suffolk from convenient points on the Chowan river.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, February 22, 1862, p. 2