If you had been standing here on the afternoon of February 19, 1862, watching a Union gunboat approach the Winton dock, you would have been stunned by the roar of musket and cannon fire from the bluff behind you.  Commander Stephen C. Rowan's eight-gunboat flotilla had steamed up the Chowan River toward Winton, carrying part of the 4th Rhode Island Infantry and the 9th New York Infantry under Col. Rush C. Hawkins.  Aboard USS Delaware, Hawkins saw the glint of muskets on the hill and shouted orders to the gunboat’s pilot to pull away.  Confederate Lt. Col. William T. Williams had concealed 400 infantrymen and Capt. J. N. Nichols's four-gun battery on the bluff, to blast the vessel with artillery and small-arms fire.  Instead, the cannons overshot, and the bullet-riddled Delaware swept by the dock and escaped.  

That night, Winton's townspeople feted Williams and his men as heroes.  The next morning, Williams marched his troops away, followed by the town’s residents.  Shortly afterward, the gunboats returned and bombarded empty Winton.  Hawkins, enraged by Williams's ambush, led his men into town and to set it ablaze with barrels of tar, burning the courthouse with the county records.  Only the Methodist church and two buildings belonging to Union sympathizers remained standing.  Hawkins claimed that Confederates had used the buildings "as store-houses and quarters" and boasted that the burning of Winton was “the first instance [in North Carolina] during the war . . . where fire has accompanied the sword.”  Winton was rebuilt after the war.