Batchelder's Creek, Marker C-51 - North Carolina Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

During the later parts of the Civil War, about 60 North Carolinian deserters and Unionist citizens were recruited into the Union Army and became part of Company F, Second North Carolina Union Volunteers.

On January 18, 1864, Company F, along with regular Union troops, was assigned to an outlying fortification near Batchelder's Creek. On January 30, Confederates under Major General George Pickett attacked the Federals. Company F was manning a outpost on the extreme right of the Union lines. Fifty three North Carolinian Union troops were captured and their identity as citizens of North Carolina was made known.

Shortly thereafter 22 of these Carolinians were hung in Kinston as deserters and traitors who had taken up arms against their own countrymen. The rest were sent to prison where most would be dead from disease within months.

From the Union standpoint, the soldiers of Company F were Union soldiers and should have been treated as prisoners of war, not executed. In July 1863, President Lincoln ordered that for every Union soldier executed by the Confederacy, a Confederate prisoner would be executed in retaliation.

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