Fort Johnston (North Carolina) army and naval forces with weapons, munitions, and supplies imported from Europe, Canada, Bermuda, Cuba, and eventually other Caribbean territories. Railroads carried goods from Wilmington, North Carolina, to Richmond, Virginia, providing critical supplies to Confederate General Robert E. Lee and his Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. The Confederacy in late 1862 renamed Fort Johnston as Fort Branch in honor of Confederate Brigadier General Lawrence O'Bryan Branch, a local who died in Battle of Antietam. In 1863, the Confederate Army renamed Fort Branch as Fort Pender in honor of Confederate Major General William Dorsey Pender, who died of wounds sustained at
Joseph E. Johnston Johnston, emigrated to Virginia from Scotland in 1726. Joseph was the seventh son of Judge Peter Johnston (1763–1831) and Mary Valentine Wood (1769–1825), a niece of Patrick Henry. He was named for Major Joseph Eggleston, under whom his father served in the American Revolutionary War, in the command of Light-Horse Harry Lee. His brother Charles Clement Johnston served as a congressman, and his nephew John Warfield Johnston was a senator; both represented Virginia. In 1811, the Johnston family moved to Abingdon, Virginia, a town near the Tennessee border, where his father Peter built a home he named Panecillo. Johnston attended