Local historian will speak in Wilmington at Round Table meeting

The Cape Fear Revolutionary War Round Table will hold its annual dinner meeting event beginning at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 4 at the Pine Valley Country Club, 500 Pine Valley Drive. The keynote speaker will be Chris E. Fonvielle Jr. giving a PowerPoint presentation on “With Such Great Alacrity”: The Destruction of Fort Johnston and the Coming of the American Revolution in North Carolina."

Fonvielle is a professor emeritus in the Department of History at University of North Carolina Wilmington and vice president of the Cape Fear Revolutionary War Round Table.

He will discuss the brazen firebombing raid by Patriot forces on British Fort Johnston near the mouth of the Cape Fear River on July 19, 1775. Most historians of the American Revolution in the South recognize the Battle of Moores Creek Bridge in late February 1776 as the beginning of the war in North Carolina, but Fonvielle claims it started at Fort Johnston more than seven months earlier. Led by John Ashe, Cornelius Harnett, and Robert Howe, hundreds of armed Patriot militia burned the only serviceable British fort in North Carolina in an effort to deny Royal Governor Josiah Martin a base of operations from where he planned to launch a military campaign in the southern colonies in 1776. In doing so, however, they destroyed property owned by King George III. What, in the minds of the Patriots, gave them just cause to resort to such a blatant and bellicose course of action? Did they mean to burn Fort Johnston at all, or did they intend for their destructive attack to incite war in North Carolina in a powerful and public display of solidarity with other colonies already in rebellion? What kind of response did the people of the Lower Cape Fear anticipate from the British government? How did their actions affect the coming of the American Revolution in North Carolina? “A splendid time is guaranteed for all!”

Fonvielle is a native Wilmingtonian with a lifelong interest in American Civil War, North Carolina, and Cape Fear history. He attended public schools, including New Hanover High School, class of 1971. After receiving his B.A. in anthropology at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, Chris served as the last curator of the Blockade Runners of the Confederacy Museum. He subsequently received his M.A. in American history at East Carolina University, and his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina.

After a brief teaching stint at East Carolina University, Fonvielle returned to his undergraduate alma mater at UNCW in 1996, where he taught courses on the Civil War, Wilmington and the Lower Cape Fear, and Antebellum America. His in-depth research focuses on coastal operations and defenses, and blockade running in southeastern North Carolina during the Civil War. He has published books and articles including “The Wilmington Campaign: Last Rays of Departing Hope,” “Wilmington and the Lower Cape Fear: An Illustrated History,” and “Fort Fisher 1865: The Photographs of T.H. O’Sullivan.”

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