Download excerpt of the Civil War in Wilmington

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Fort Anderson and the Battle for Wilmington
TO FORGE A THUNDERBOLT
The Dilemma
General Johnson Hagood faced a desperate situation.
Dispatches from cavalry, together with testimony
from prisoners and deserters, convinced the South
Carolina brigadier that as many as 6,000 Federal
troops were encircling his position at Fort Anderson.
The Confederate garrison of about 2,100 men was
much too small to oppose the Union flanking force
as well as the blue-clad brigades assembled in front
of the fort and the flotilla of enemy warships on the
Cape Fear River. Hagood was inclined to evacuate
the fort in an effort to save his command, but such a
drastic move would require the authorization of his
superior officer.
The Defenses
With time slipping away, Hagood telegraphed Major
General Robert F. Hoke, headquartered at Sugar
Loaf on the opposite side of the river from Fort
Anderson, expressing concern that his command was
on the verge of being surrounded. Hagood cautioned
Hoke that if he consented to the fort’s evacuation, the
withdrawal would need to be executed immediately.
The Federals were sure to strike at sunrise, and the
Confederates controlled only two narrow avenues of
escape—the Wilmington Road and Orton Plantation
causeway. Both of these routes would take the
retreating army dangerously close to Union troops
advancing on Fort Anderson’s right flank.
Hoke sat on the horns of a dilemma. Despite
Hagood’s dire message, he was reluctant to authorize
the abandonment of the fort. He recalled the high
command’s instructions that, except in the case of an
emergency, Fort Anderson must be held. A retreat
from there would not only give Federal forces a key
Confederate stronghold in the Lower Cape Fear, but
would also necessitate the evacuation of the Sugar
Loaf defenses and threaten the most important city
in the Confederacy—Wilmington, North Carolina.
What was Hoke to do?1
Wilmington never enjoyed the commercial success or
fame of Charleston, South Carolina and Savannah,
Georgia along the Atlantic seaboard, but it grew
steadily and prospered during the antebellum era
as the Old North State’s most active seaport and
one of the world’s largest supplier of naval stores.
Wilmington emerged as the Confederacy’s most
important port by the summer of 1863, and its most
important city by late the following year.
For the better part of three years Wilmington was
the favorite port of call for blockade running ships
that smuggled supplies into the Confederacy. Unable
to compete with the industrial might of the North,
the Confederacy turned to the European market—
Our Whole Country: or the Past and Present of the United States, Historical and Descriptive
U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center
Brigadier General Johnson Hagood commanded Confederate
Fort Anderson in 1865.
On the eve of the Civil War, Wilmington was
North Carolina’s largest city, boasting a population
of approximately 10,000 people. It had grown
from a small trading post in colonial days to a
bustling seaport with an active mercantile trade, two
commercial shipbuilding yards, two iron and copper
works, a sword factory, five banks, several turpentine
distilleries, cotton presses, saw mills, and three
railroads. One of the railroads—the Wilmington
and Weldon—was reportedly the longest in the
world upon completion of its 161.5 mile stretch to
Weldon, North Carolina in 1840. During the war the
Wilmington and Weldon Railroad became the major
supply route for General Robert E. Lee’s Army of
Northern Virginia.
Confederate staff officer’s button
excavated at Fort Anderson in 2011.
Wilmington, North Carolina became the Confederacy’s most important seaport by 1863.
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Fort Anderson and the Battle for Wilmington
TO FORGE A THUNDERBOLT
especially Great Britain—for firearms, artillery,
ammunition, sabers, bayonets, lead, iron, wool for
uniforms, brass buttons, medicines, blankets, boots,
shoes, hardware, food, and other such provisions that
could not be easily procured at home. To reach the
Confederacy, however, blockade-runners had to evade
U.S. Navy gunboats blockading the South’s coastline.
In late April 1861, President Abraham Lincoln had
proclaimed a naval blockade to dissuade European
nations from trading with the seceded Southern
states. At 3,549 miles, the South’s lengthy shoreline
forced Union blockading vessels to concentrate their
efforts against the South’s major seaports, including
New Orleans, Charleston, Mobile, Savannah,
Norfolk, and Wilmington.
Wilmington was ideally situated for blockade
running as it was close to transshipment points at
Bermuda and Nassau in the Bahamas. Transatlantic
merchantmen carried supplies earmarked for the
Confederacy to the British colonial islands, where
they were transferred to swift blockade-runners of
light draft for the final run into Southern seaports.
Blockade-runners preferred trading at Wilmington
because it could be accessed by two entryways—Old
Inlet, the main bar at the mouth of the Cape Fear
River, and New Inlet, a shallow strait five miles to
the north. Bald Head Island and Frying Pan Shoals
separated the two inlets, offering blockade-runners a
choice of entrance and exit at the harbor. No other
Southern seaport enjoyed this geographic advantage
for Confederate commerce vessels.
The dual passageways made it virtually impossible
for Union blockading ships to halt the clandestine
maritime business at the Cape Fear. At least 106
different steamships, to say nothing of the numerous
sailing vessels employed as blockade-runners, traded
at Wilmington. More times than not they evaded
even the most vigilant blockaders. Studies suggest that
the success rate for blockade-runners at Wilmington
was an astounding 80 percent for the duration of the
war. Making it even more difficult for the U.S. Navy,
Wilmington was located twenty-eight nautical miles
from the mouth of the Cape Fear River at Old Inlet,
and far out of range of bombardment.
After Union forces captured New Bern and Beaufort,
North Carolina, and retook Norfolk in the spring
of 1862, Wilmington became the closest seaport
to the Virginia battlefront. Good interior lines
of transportation and communication connected
the city with key points throughout the southeast.
The Cape Fear River was navigable to Fayetteville,
North Carolina, almost ninety miles northwest of
Wilmington, and three railroads linked Wilmington
to other prominent cities in the Carolinas and the
Old Dominion. The most important of these rail lines
was the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad, which
indirectly connected Wilmington with Petersburg,
Virginia. The Wilmington and Weldon Railroad
served as General Robert E. Lee’s main artery of
supplies in the last year of the war, and it became
known as the “lifeline of the Confederacy.”
To protect Wilmington, the river, the railroads, and
especially the inlets that blockade-runners used,
Confederate engineers planned and constructed a vast
network of forts, batteries, and fieldworks across the
Author’s Collection
More blockade-runners, including the Dare seen here running out of New Inlet, traded at Wilmington, N.C., than any other Southern seaport.
Lower Cape Fear. Artillery batteries ringed the city,
while a series of outer defenses guarded the region
from an overland attack from Union-occupied New
Bern or an enemy invasion along the sea beaches to
the east.
The strongest and most heavily armed forts were built
to protect Old and New inlets for blockade-runners.
Forts Caswell and Campbell and Battery Shaw on
Oak Island, and Fort Holmes on Bald Head Island
guarded Old Inlet. Despite Old Inlet’s status as the
main bar, many blockade-runners preferred using
New Inlet. The deeper-draft blockading gunboats
could not enter the inlet’s shallow channel as could
light draft blockade-running vessels. The entryway
was also well defended.
To safeguard New Inlet, engineers constructed the
strongest seacoast fortification in the Confederacy—
Fort Fisher. The fort and its auxiliary works were
located near the end of Federal Point (renamed
Confederate Point by Southerners during the war),
a narrow peninsula bounded by the Cape Fear River
on the west and the Atlantic Ocean on the east. The
sand spit tapered to a point at New Inlet. The massive
two-sided earthwork comprised a series of imposing
elevated gun batteries mounting forty-seven pieces
of seacoast artillery, connected by a broad rampart.
Fort Fisher’s land face stretched 682 yards from the
river to the sea, and then turned southward along the
ocean’s shoreline for almost 1,900 yards. Both Union
and Confederate observers alike considered Fort
Fisher impregnable against a naval attack. Dubbed
the “Gibraltar of the South,” the immense fort was
crucial to Wilmington’s defense.
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Fort Anderson and the Battle for Wilmington
TO FORGE A THUNDERBOLT
Supplementing the works guarding Old and New
inlets was a web of forts and batteries constructed
along the banks of the Cape Fear river to guard the
waterway and roads leading to Wilmington. Fort
Johnston (renamed Fort Pender by the Confederates
in October 1863) at Smithville, a village on the west
side of the river three nautical miles from Old Inlet,
overlooked the estuary. Battery Lamb on Reaves
Point about six miles north of Smithville (modern
Southport) commanded the river behind New Inlet.
A series of four large earthen batteries along the
river’s east bank three miles south of Wilmington
guarded the water approaches to the city’s docks.
The most notable of the interior fortifications in the
Lower Cape Fear was Fort Anderson. Built atop the
ruins of the colonial port town of Brunswick, the fort
was positioned on low bluffs along the west side of
the Cape Fear River in Brunswick County, fourteen
miles south of Wilmington. Like Fort Fisher, Fort
Anderson was a massive earthen work. Despite the
similarity in appearance and strength, however, Fort
Anderson has always been considered the region’s
other Confederate fort. It has been overshadowed by
Fort Fisher’s more strategic location, its reputation as
the Confederacy’s most powerful seacoast fortification
and, in the end, by the two important battles fought
there in 1864 and 1865—the largest Union naval
bombardments of the Civil War. But Fort Anderson,
known early in the war as Fort St. Philip, was also
important to Wilmington’s defense.1
Photograph by Nancy S. Fonvielle
Fort Anderson, the largest interior defensive work that protected Wilmington, was built at Brunswick Point, fourteen nautical miles from the
mouth of the Cape Fear River at Old Inlet.
Atlas to Accompany the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies
The Cape Fear estuary and approaches to Wilmington, North Carolina.
South wall of Confederate Fort Anderson.
Photograph by Chris E. Fonvielle Jr.
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Fort Anderson and the Battle for Wilmington
TO FORGE A THUNDERBOLT
To Close the Port of Wilmington
A Union attack on Wilmington was a long time
coming. The U.S. Navy had targeted it as early as
the summer of 1861. When the Blockade Strategy
Board issued its recommendations in September,
the Tar Heel seaport was on the list of places to
be hit. Shoals and shallow waters along the Cape
Fear coast, however, made a unilateral naval assault
impracticable. Warships could not approach close
enough to destroy the earthen forts, which were then
under construction to protect the river and its inlets
for blockade running ships. The Navy Department
insisted that Wilmington could only be captured by a
well-planned and well-executed combined operation,
but the War Department and the Abraham Lincoln
administration focused their attention on what
they considered more important places, especially
Richmond and Charleston. Wilmington was put on
the back burner.
In the spring of 1862, Secretary of the Navy Gideon
Welles renewed his efforts to gain political and
logistical support for an assault on Wilmington.
While dismal defeats plagued the Army of the
Potomac in Virginia, the navy had experienced
considerable success in coastal operations. Between
March and May, navy and army forces captured
several principal seaports, including New Bern and
Beaufort, North Carolina; Norfolk, Virginia; and
New Orleans, Louisiana. Port Royal, South Carolina
had fallen into Union hands the previous November,
and Savannah, Georgia lost its status as a blockade
running port when Federal forces captured Fort
Pulaski on Cockspur Island in April 1862.
With momentum clearly in his favor, Secretary
Welles proposed a strike on Wilmington in May
1862. His plan failed to attract much attention as
the Army of the Potomac, led by General George B.
McClellan, slowly but surely advanced on Richmond.
After McClellan’s defeat in the much publicized
Peninsula campaign that summer, Welles again
tried to persuade the army to go after Wilmington.
In the autumn of 1862, the navy planned an assault
to coincide with General Ambrose E. Burnside’s
advance on Richmond by way of Fredericksburg.
Acting Rear Admiral S. Phillips Lee, commander of
the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, assembled
a flotilla of ironclads for an attack on Fort Caswell at
the mouth of the Cape Fear River. Among these was
the famed Monitor that had battled the CSS Virginia
in Hampton Roads, Virginia the previous March in
the first duel between ironclad ships. The operation
also called for conventional warships to bombard Fort
Fisher near New Inlet, and Union infantry to advance
out of New Bern to hit Wilmington’s relatively
weak north side. The campaign collapsed when
General Robert E. Lee thrashed Burnside’s army at
Fredericksburg in mid-December, and the Monitor
sank in a gale off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina,
on New Year’s Eve 1862. The “Sailors’ Grave” had
claimed yet another vessel.1
Admiral Lee proposed other ideas for taking
Wilmington during the following two years, but to
no avail. The War Department showed little interest
in providing a large expeditionary force to strike what
it considered a backwater port of little strategic value
compared to Richmond, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga.
The army’s apathy toward Wilmington and the lack of
resources compelled the Navy Department to pick and
choose its targets. Attention shifted to Charleston,
the birthplace of secession and the war, and the center
of popular and political interests. Operations on the
Mississippi River also took precedence, particularly a
combined operation against Vicksburg in the spring
and early summer of 1863.
Wilmington as the only major seaport open to
trade with the outside world. Secretary Welles
used Farragut’s grand victory to convince President
Lincoln of the necessity of going after the Tar Heel
port. Lincoln now concurred, recognizing that its fall
would both sever the Confederacy’s lifeline and pacify
northern shippers and merchants who were pressuring
the administration to combat Wilmington-based
commerce raiders. The CSS Tallahassee and CSS
Chickamauga had done considerable damage to
merchant marine vessels off the north Atlantic coast
that summer.
U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command
U.S. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles stated: “To
close the port of Wilmington is undoubtedly the most
important and effective demonstration that can be made.”
All the while, blockade-runners smuggled tons of
military equipment, supplies, and provisions into
the Confederacy by way of Wilmington. “To close
the port of Wilmington is undoubtedly the most
important and effective demonstration that can be
made,” Gideon Welles exclaimed. “If of less prestige
than the capture of Richmond, it would be as
damaging to the Rebels.” Unfortunately for the Navy
Department head, neither his counterpart in the War
Department, Secretary Edwin Stanton, nor President
Lincoln agreed.2
Finally, in the summer of 1864, the government’s
attitude toward Wilmington changed. On August 5
Rear Admiral David G. Farragut sealed Mobile,
Alabama to blockade running by passing the forts
at the mouth of the bay and defeating a flotilla
of Confederate warships in the harbor. That left
A quick victory at Wilmington might also reap
political benefits for the president by reigniting
popular support from war weary Northerners. Things
were so bad on the battlefront that Lincoln predicted
he would not be returned to the White House in the
upcoming election in November unless the tide of
war turned more favorably for the Union. His popular
Democratic opponent, General George B. McClellan,
the former U.S. Army commander whom Lincoln
had twice dismissed from service in 1862 for poor
leadership, posed a stiff challenge for the embattled
incumbent president. Political considerations aside,
Lincoln deferred final approval of a campaign against
Wilmington to Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant.
The president placed great faith in the U.S. Army
commander’s judgment about such matters.
Grant initially expressed little enthusiasm for Welles’
proposed attack on Wilmington, as it would require
him to provide a large expeditionary force to assist
the navy. In his opinion he needed more soldiers to
maintain the pressure on Robert E. Lee. Since the
late spring of 1864, Grant’s operational forces—the
Army of the Potomac and the Army of the James—
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Fort Anderson and the Battle for Wilmington
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had been battling Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia
for possession of Petersburg. As the summer wore on,
the siege had devolved into a stalemate that neither
side had been able to break. Like two angry fighting
dogs, the armies were locked in mortal combat with
no end in sight. His repeated frontal assaults against
Lee’s vastly out-manned but strongly entrenched
army, followed by efforts to outflank his defenses,
gained little ground and came at a great cost in blood
and lives. Grant did not believe he could afford to
dispatch the estimated 10,000 troops for an attack
250 miles away on the North Carolina coast.
Gideon Welles argued that the deadlock in Virginia
could be broken by closing Wilmington to blockade
running, thus denying General Lee the food, weapons,
and clothing his army so desperately needed. Grant
eventually came around, agreeing to supply troops
“when the time was right.” Despite his assurances, it
was not until December that the expeditionary force
was prepared, more than a month after the navy after
was ready to go. The naval warships and the army
transports finally set sail on December 13, 1864.3
Heading the naval task force was Rear Admiral
David Dixon Porter, an authoritative, ambitious,
and acerbic fifty-one year old veteran of the sea.
A scion of professional navy commanders, Porter
had won his laurels fighting on the Mississippi
River, quickly emerging as one of the navy’s best
and brightest officers. He led a mortar flotilla in
the capture of New Orleans in April 1862, and
headed the Mississippi Squadron in the taking of
Vicksburg in July 1863. Porter cooperated closely
with Generals Grant and William T. Sherman in
the Vicksburg campaign, which Grant professed
“could not have been successfully made” without
the navy’s able assistance. Porter remained as head
Godfrey Weitzel, former chief engineer in the Army
of the James, but now commander of the 25th Army
Corps. Grant’s instructions to Weitzel called for
him to assist the navy in the capture of Fort Fisher
and New Inlet, the favorite entryway into the Cape
Fear River for blockade-runners. Much to Grant’s
chagrin, Weitzel’s superior officer, Major General
Benjamin F. Butler, decided to accompany the army
and in effect take over command. Bad blood existed
between Admiral Porter and General Butler going
back to the New Orleans campaign in 1862, where
they had argued over Porter’s role in the Crescent
City’s capture. In short, they intensely disliked each
other. The acrimonious relationship did not bode well
for the success of such an important mission at the
Cape Fear.
Author’s Collection
The U.S. Navy Department selected Rear Admiral David
Dixon Porter to command the North Atlantic Blockading
Squadron and the task force in the attack on Wilmington.
of the Mississippi Squadron until ordered east to
assume command of the North Atlantic Blockading
Squadron in early October 1864. After carefully
considering other worthy candidates, including
Admiral S. Phillips Lee, Gideon Welles concluded
that Porter was “probably the best man for the
service” of going against the strongly defended
seaport of Wilmington. The admiral selected sixtyfour warships, including four frigates, to make the
attack.4
To complement Porter’s fleet, the largest assembled
during the war, Grant detached a 6,500-man
expeditionary force to be led by Major General
The politics of command was not exclusive to
the Union side, as controversy also plagued the
Confederate high command. Finally convinced of the
seriousness of an attack on Wilmington in the autumn
of 1864, President Jefferson Davis replaced the
District of the Cape Fear commander, Major General
W.H.C. Whiting, with the most controversial and
vilified officer in the Confederate army—General
Braxton Bragg. Whiting’s alleged alcohol abuse and
opposition to some of Davis’ war policies had eroded
the executive’s confidence in the general’s ability to
defend Wilmington at such a critical hour. Bragg, on
the other hand, was the president’s trusted adviser
and friend, despite the fact that he had resigned in
disgrace as commander of the Army of Tennessee.
Subordinates had threatened to mutiny over the
general’s incompetence following his crushing defeat
at the battle of Chattanooga in November 1863.
Critics claimed that Davis was making a fatal error
in sending Bragg to North Carolina. “Braxton Bragg
has been ordered to Wilmington,” announced the
Richmond Enquirer. “Goodbye Wilmington.” The
general assumed his new command on October 22,
1864.
Bragg’s contentious appointment coincided with
General Robert E. Lee’s dire warning that if
Wilmington fell, he “could not maintain his army.”
The message was clear. The survival of the
Confederacy depended upon the survival of the Army
of Northern Virginia, and the Army of Northern
Virginia’s survival depended largely upon the survival
Library of Congress
General Robert E. Lee warned that if Wilmington fell,
he “could not maintain his army.”
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Wilmington and Weldon Railroad
Wilmington, Charlotte and
Rutherfordton Railroad
Wilmington
Eagles
Island
Wilmington and Manchester Railroad
TOPSAIL SOUND ROAD
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Fort Davis
Fort Lee
Fort Campbell
Fort Meares
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Brunswick County
CONFEDERATE
POINT ROAD
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Town Creek
Atlantic
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Fort Anderson
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Sugar
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Battery Anderson
Fort Fisher
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Fort
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Oak Island
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Fort Caswell
Old
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Bald Head
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Cape Fear
Map by Daniel Ray Norris
of Wilmington as a blockade running seaport.
Always the dutiful subordinate to President Davis,
Lee did nothing to challenge Bragg’s appointment.
His unwillingness to do so sealed the fate of his army.
He did, however, dispatch one of his elite divisions
containing more than 6,400 troops under Major
General Robert F. Hoke to help defend Wilmington.
Leaving Petersburg on December 21, 1864, the grayjacketed reinforcements traveled slowly but surely
by rail toward southeastern North Carolina. As they
approached the coast, the Union naval task force
appeared off Fort Fisher.
Having learned of the powder boat experiment gone
awry, General Butler was in no mood to cooperate
with his nemesis when he finally reached the Cape
Fear late on Christmas Eve. The following morning
he put ashore only one-third of his infantry to
assault Fort Fisher. General Weitzel personally led a
reconnaissance force down the beach toward the fort,
but soon reported that Porter’s bombardment, despite
its intensity, had not damaged the imposing works or
armament enough to warrant a frontal assault. Butler
needed little reason to abort the mission, and so
withdrew his troops and sailed back to Virginia.5
One novel feature of the Federal effort to reduce Fort
Fisher was a powder ship. Convinced that a giant
floating bomb could blow down the sand walls of
the mighty stronghold, General Butler packed the
USS Louisiana with 430,000 pounds of gunpowder
and planned to detonate her close by the fort. Such a
military experiment had not been attempted before,
but Butler was convinced that it would revolutionize
warfare against harbor defenses, for which he could
claim credit. Admiral Porter tried to steal Butler’s
thunder by deploying the Louisiana before the army
commander was on the scene. When the powder
boat turned out to be a dud, Porter blamed Butler
for wasting valuable time, money, and energy on such
a preposterous notion. Determined to subdue Fort
Fisher the old fashioned way, Porter then unleashed
a massive naval bombardment, the likes of which had
never been seen before in warfare. Over a two day
period, December 24-25, 1864, his warships fired at
least 20, 271 shells at the sand bastion. Nevertheless,
the stout Confederate defenses and defenders held
their own.
As General Bragg awaited the arrival of Robert F.
Hoke’s division for Wilmington’s defense, he also
made preparations to evacuate the forts at Old Inlet
in case Fort Fisher fell. “Should it become necessary
to evacuate Fort Fisher, Forts Holmes, Caswell, and
Campbell must be abandoned also,” he declared. “A
sufficient force from them will be left to hold Fort
Anderson and prevent the enemy from ascending the
river. The balance will march to the city.” The fallback
plan infuriated General Whiting who considered it
pessimistic and symbolically weak, while Bragg saw
it as a necessary contingency plan. It came to nothing
when the Confederates emerged victorious in the
first battle of Fort Fisher, but portended badly for
Wilmington’s defense.6
According to official military records, 600 troops at
Fort Anderson were ready to be transported to Sugar
Loaf on Christmas day to support Fort Fisher if
necessary. Major James Reilly, one of the foremost
artillerists in the Confederate army, now commanded
both Fort Anderson and Fort Pender at Smithville.
Reilly had taken over command of Fort Anderson
from Major Wilton Young in late November 1864.7
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As for the Federals, the failed combined operation
sparked a firestorm of controversy that led to Butler’s
dismissal from command of the Union Department
of Southeastern Virginia and North Carolina. It also
prompted a Congressional investigation into why
the campaign had gone so badly. While politicians
huffed and puffed, General Grant got serious about
capturing Wilmington. Although indifferent to the
first expedition, the commanding general’s interest
now heightened. Fortunately for the Federals, General
William T. Sherman offset the defeat at Fort Fisher
by his capture of Savannah, Georgia on December 21,
1864.
After occupying and destroying Atlanta in the
autumn of 1864, Sherman led a 60,000 man force
virtually unopposed across Georgia to the coast by
late that December. The cocksure Sherman presented
the city to President Lincoln as a Christmas gift.
For his part Grant was glad to see Sherman safely
on the seaboard and eager to transfer his powerful
army by ships to Virginia for a final push against
Robert E. Lee at Petersburg. Sherman had other plans.
He proposed to march his army to the Old Dominion
by way of the Carolinas, destroying supply depots and
railroads and “smash things generally” along the way,
as he had done so effectively in Georgia. Once he
reached Goldsboro, North Carolina he could “make
a bee-line” for Raleigh or Weldon, placing his legion
in an advantageous position to strike the beleaguered
Army of North Virginia. “Then the game is up with
Lee,” Sherman predicted, as his advance would force
Lee out of Petersburg and into open country where
the two commanding Union generals together could
trap him in a pincer movement. If need be, Sherman
could attack Wilmington from the rear or retreat to
the coast in case he found himself in trouble. Indeed,
neither he nor Grant knew what kind of opposition
Sherman might face in the Tar Heel state.8
Sherman’s ambitious plan and his confidence in it
excited Grant. The crowning benefit might well be
the collapse of the Confederacy. At the very least
Grant believed that a successful campaign would
keep the South and its armies in disarray. He wrote
to Sherman on December 27, 1864, authorizing him
to “make preparations to start on your Northern
expedition without delay. Break up the rail-roads
in South & North Carolina and join the Armies
operating against Richmond as soon as you can.”9
Having agreed to Sherman’s bold Carolinas
Campaign, as it became known, Grant determined
to guarantee its success by furnishing Sherman’s army
with reinforcements, equipment, and provisions,
as well as a haven on the seacoast halfway between
Savannah and Petersburg in case he needed to
withdraw to safety. Wilmington took on a whole new
meaning for Grant. Possession of the Cape Fear River
and the city’s three railroads would best enable him to
assist Sherman’s army. The transportation routes could
be used to funnel soldiers and supplies to Sherman
once he reached North Carolina. The irony of sending
Union troops and war material to the front through
the same pipeline the Confederates had exploited for
years must have crossed Grant’s mind, as he sighted
Wilmington in his cross-hairs.
The Union attacks against Fort Fisher at Christmas 1864 and again in mid-January 1865,
constituted the two largest naval bombardments of the Civil War.
From a drawing by T.F. Haycock, lithograph by Endicott, New York, N.Y.
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General Charles J. Paine. Terry also took along his old
unit, the Second Brigade, First Division, 24th Army
Corps. Together with artillery and support personnel
the increased force numbered about 9,600 officers
and men.10
General Alfred Howe Terry
Author’s Collection
To cooperate with the mercurial Admiral David
D. Porter, Grant assigned the affable and capable
Brigadier General Alfred Howe Terry, respected
commander of the newly formed 24th Army Corps,
Army of the James, to command the Wilmington
expeditionary force. Despite his renown in the
wartime army, Terry is better known as the
commander of a U.S. Army column in Montana
Territory at the time of the defeat and death of his
subordinate, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong
Custer, and his command at the Battle of Little
Bighorn in June 1876. Terry’s Provisional Corps,
as it was officially designated for the Wilmington
Campaign in 1865, comprised the same handpicked
troops from General Butler’s ill-fated expedition:
Brigadier General Adelbert Ames’ Second Division,
24th Army Corps, and two brigades of U.S. Colored
Troops, 25th Army Corps, commanded by Brigadier
Porter’s warships, slightly scaled down to fifty-eight
in number, and Terry’s transports reached Fort Fisher
on the night of January 12, 1865. The battle opened
early the following morning. The navy proceeded
to bombard the fort for two-and-a-half days, firing
almost as many projectiles (19,682) as during the
Christmas attack. While the gunboats pummeled the
defenses, General Terry’s infantry landed virtually
unopposed on the beach and entrenched. After
positioning his troops over the following two days,
Terry launched the army’s attack late on the afternoon
of January 15, with General Ames’ division in the
lead. A landing party of more than 2,200 volunteer
sailors and Marines from various ships in the fleet
also stormed Fort Fisher.
The Confederate defenders, led by Colonel William
Lamb and General W.H.C. Whiting, rushed from
their underground bombproofs to meet the attack.
They succeeded in turning back the poorly armed
and disorganized naval column that had advanced
along the beach, but soon became locked in hand-tohand combat with Ames’ soldiers, who had secured
a lodgement on the fort’s ramparts. The savage,
close-quarters fighting raged for more than five
hours before the heavily outnumbered and exhausted
Southerners were driven from the fort and forced to
surrender. The small arms fire grew so loud that it
could be heard by soldiers stationed at Fort Anderson,
five miles northwest of Fort Fisher. At about ten
o’clock on the night of January 15, 1865, with both
Lamb and Whiting seriously wounded, the garrison
surrendered. The two officers were captured along
with about 2,000 of their men.11
officer. “The enemy should have been attacked by
Hoke whether he could carry the works or not. [We]
have no confidence in Gen’l Bragg.”12
The battle’s outcome might have turned out differently
had Braxton Bragg sent in sufficient reinforcements
from General Hoke’s division that manned the Sugar
Loaf lines four-and-a-half miles north of Fort Fisher.
When he finally responded to Lamb and Whiting’s
frantic pleas for assistance, Bragg made only a
halfhearted attempt to send troops to Fort Fisher by
way of the Cape Fear River. Less than 500 soldiers
of Brigadier General Johnson Hagood’s Brigade got
ashore on the morning of January 15, before heavy
fire from Union gunboats on the ocean-side drove off
the troop transport. Bragg made no other attempt to
support the fort in defense of the Confederacy’s most
important city, either by dispatching additional troops
or attacking the rear of the Federal army. Instead,
the man Jefferson Davis had personally sent to save
Wilmington kept Hoke’s men sitting on their riflemuskets within striking distance of the enemy.
Bragg’s incompetence played right into the hands of
Union military forces that now had a good foothold
in southeastern North Carolina. They soon turned
their covetous eyes toward Wilmington with the idea
of assisting General Sherman’s plan to march through
the Carolinas and attack the underbelly of Lee’s
beleaguered army in Virginia. News of the Union
victory at Fort Fisher greatly pleased Sherman.“The
capture of Fort Fisher has a most important bearing
on my campaign and I rejoice in it for many reasons,
because of its intrinsic importance and because it
gives me another point of security on the seaboard,”
Sherman informed Grant. “I hope General Terry
[and Admiral Porter] will follow it up by the capture
of Wilmington.”13
After receiving the stunning news that Fort Fisher
had fallen, both President Davis and General Lee
implored Bragg to launch a counterattack, but to no
avail. Bragg declined, fearful that Porter’s warships
alone would destroy his assaulting force before it
reached the fort. His abandonment of Fort Fisher
raised howls of protest from both soldiers and
civilians alike, but they fell on deaf ears. They did
succeed, however, in confirming Bragg’s reputation
for being “not a fighting general.” “I am not given to
croaking about our generals, but I must say I think
the blame of the fall of Fort Fisher rests on [General
Bragg’s] shoulders,” stated one young Confederate
Library of Congress
“The capture of Fort Fisher has a most important bearing
on my campaign,” stated General William T. Sherman.