The Initial situation at the outbreak of the war.

This is the situation at the beginning of the First American Civil War in 1861. Lincoln, a known sympathizer with the plight of Southern Slaves, (Especially those abducted illegally from Africa, a practice which has been officially outlawed for over two decades in America at this point in the timeline, but never-the-less continued in secret), has been elected and in-office for about two months; much of the slave-holding south has officially "seceded" from the union and Lincoln looks inclined to let them go peacefully, however, that's, not going to work-out.

The County Militia of Currituck in Kituhwa, (North Carolina, our timeline, see previous post), stage a daring raid on the free-black town of "Coalington" on the island of the same name (island was named for the town which takes-up almost the entire land-mass,) at the confluence of the Albemarle, Currituck, Croatan, and Roanoke Sounds in the outer-banks. At this point in the timeline: Citizens of most of the outer-banks had long been an unofficial haven for escaping slaves, since labor is difficult to come by there and equally much-needed, so fewer questions are typically asked. According to later post-war testimony by a number of survivors of the fight from both sides a wealthy planation owner from the Raleigh region had traced his "expensive and highly-accomplished" enslaved mistress "Deborah" from his plantation to the island after she fled from his clutches. He then traveled to the nearby area of Point Harbor immediately north, rousing the county militia along the way to act as mercenary troops for re-capturing "his property" who he fully expected to violently resist re-enslavement.

Unbeknownst to him at the time, the town was hosting, (amongst a large contingent of other guests along their way to exiting the southern states before the borders would close with the official acceptance of southern secession,) the sons of not-less than ten different northern senators and congressmen, who, when the battle broke-out between the militia members and town-constabulary, would rush-into the fray and end-up dead in the swirling melee that ensued. Reports vary about weather-or-not the northern men tried to STOP the fight, or waded-in, blades drawn: later analysis by leading civil-war scholars around the turn of the 19th century would ultimately paint a consensus viewpoint that they did BOTH, but not en-mass; the first on-scene attempting to calm matters with oratory, then, when that failed, one of the young-men present trying to hold the Militia members at gunpoint and ordering them to "Calm down or I will be forced to fire!" He and his friends that had so-far arrived then were shot BY the militia members, thus swiftly provoking a generalized riot as some of their other associates who came on the scene at that moment drew blades and pistols and attacked. (Reports of who-did-what-when among the individuals involved during the incident vary WILDLY; partially due to the unreliability of human memory and partially to the natural chaos of the encounter.)

The ensuing "Battle of the Coalington Straights"; where pro-union mulitas from the communities of the outer-banks and pro-secession militias from as far away as Hertford & Craven Counties clashed on both land and sea, would occupy both sides for the next 48 hours. All concerned found themselves locked in a series of skirmishes on-and-around Coalington Island and later-on Roanoke Island as well. Over 1000 individuals perished all-told during the battle (often argued by scholars to be a series of battles not just one); though the majority died from misadventure, accident, or indirectly-related incidents such as buildings set-ablaze during the fighting collapsing on top of them as they tried to save loved-ones, pets, and property from the flames.

When the Senators and Congressmen whose sons, (and one particularly spirited daughter, Mary Elizabeth Deering Fessenden, the daughter of Sen. William Pitt Fessenden; who has been used as a romantic interest of the lead character in vast majority of stage-and-screen adaptations since due to a paucity of personal correspondence or writings of any kind noted even at the time and less-still which has survived to disprove such connections; combined with the natural appeal of the "tragic romance" angle), that were killed in the event heard the news later that week; the war between north and south, slave and free, became inevitable.

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