Thirty caches are located in five different regions throughout NC. Instructions for sending the documentation are in the passport. Once all five regions are completed, you have earned a special NC Civil War trackable geocoin. Mail the passport to the address inside the passport – then your passport will be returned with your unique coin.
All of the containers are the same - camouflaged 6 inch PVC tubes - the code word you need for your passport is inside the container on a laminated card and also taped on the container that holds the log sheet. Date your logbook and add your code word in the numbered area for the cache. As the containers may become over tightened, carry a TOTT to ease the opening process.
Passports will be available at the event, some Civil War Museums in NC, and via mail if you send me you address or you can download your passport here.
Northeast Station Prisoners Exchange
In early February 1865 Gen.Ulysses S. Grant informed Secretary of War Edwin Stanton that an agreement regarding prisoners held by the warring armies was at hand. The negotiated agreement was completed on February 16 and word relayed to field officers and prison commandants.
In Salisbury, where as many as 10,000 prisoners of war were held prior to the bitter winter of 1864-1865, word was received on February 21. A total of 3,411 of the 10,000 died between October 1864 and February 1865. Wilimington fell to Union troops under the command of Maj. Gen. J. M. Schofield on February 22, 1865. The following day he sent word to his Confederate counterpart, Gen. Robert F. Hoke, that he was prepared to receive prisoners of war “at the crossing of the Northeast Cape Fear River, on the main road from Wilmington to Goldsborough.”
Schofield assigned Brevet Brig. Gen. Joseph C. Abbott as his special agent of exchange. Abbott reported that the exchange of troops at that site commenced on Sunday, February 26, and extended to the following Saturday, March 4. A total of 8,684 Union troops (992 of them commissioned officers and 120 African American troops) were part of the exchange. No information is available on the number of Confederate prisoners exchanged. Rations and medical attention were offered at a field hospital onsite. Roughly one-third of the total number of former Union prisoners was from the Salisbury prison. (The sickest among them were transported directly to Richmond.)
Gen. Robert E. Lee requested that able prisoners be marched overland so that the rails might be reserved for supplies. The 2,750 prisoners from Salisbury marched on February 22 in a two-mile-long column to Greensboro where they boarded a train to Goldsboro and then marched to the Northeast Cape Fear River. A few prisoners remained at Salisbury until the site was destroyed by Stoneman's troops in April.