History of New Bern, NC

free; more freedmen came to the Trent River camp for protection. The Army appointed Horace James, a Congregational chaplain from Massachusetts, as the "Superintendent of Negro Affairs for the North Carolina District." In addition to the Trent River camp, James supervised development of the offshore Roanoke Island Freedmen's Colony, which was intended to be self-supporting. Beginning in 1863, a total of nearly 4,000 freedmen from North Carolina enlisted in the United States Colored Troops to fight with the Union for their permanent freedom, including 150 men from the Colony on Roanoke Island.

Due to the continuous occupation by the Union troops, New Bern avoided some of the destruction of the war years but there was much social disruption because of the occupation, and the thousands of freedmen in the camp near the city. It recovered more quickly than many cities after the war. By the 1870s the lumber industry was quickly becoming New Bern's major source of revenue. Timber harvested could be sent downriver by the two nearby rivers. The city continued to be a center for freedmen, who created thriving churches, fraternal associations and their own businesses. By 1877 it had a majority-black population.

The state legislature defined the city and county as part of North Carolina's 2nd congressional district, which elected four African Americans to the US Congress in the late 19th century. The state's passage of a constitutional suffrage amendment in 1900 used various devices to essentially disfranchise black citizens. As a result, they were totally closed out of the political process, including participation on juries and in local offices; this situation mostly persisted until after passage of federal civil rights legislation in the mid-1960s.

By 1890 New Bern had become the largest