Battle of Pig Point
1861 battle of the American Civil War
The Battle of Pig Point was an early naval battle of the American Civil War, after Lincoln had extended the Union blockade to include Virginia. On June 5, 1861, the Union 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 in the harbor Charleston, South Carolina to Confederate forces, President Abraham Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to reclaim federal property and to suppress the incipient rebellion of the seven Deep South Slave states. Four Upper South States which also permitted slavery, including Virginia, refused to furnish troops for this purpose and began the process of secession from the Union. On April 17, 1861, a convention in Richmond, Virginia 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. The Virginia Secession Convention 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 John Letcher, 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.
On May 27, 1861, Major General Benjamin Butler commanding Fort Monroe at the tip of the Virginia Peninsula between the James River and the York River sent forces eight mi (13 km) 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.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Battle of Pig Point” is 1861 battle of the American Civil War. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Battle, Point and battle, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “1861 battle of the American Civil War” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4872037. Authority coordinates are 36.917, -76.435. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1861.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Battle of Pig Point”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Battle of Pig Point primary sources, Battle of Pig Point archive and Battle research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Battle of Pig Point”?
- What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Battle of Pig Point” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.