Fort Fisher
State Historic Site, considered the “Last Major Stronghold of the Confederacy,”
is N.C.'s most visited historic site and the scene of the two largest naval
bombardments and the most ambitious amphibious assault of the Civil War. Today,
the Fort Fisher visitor center boasts an exhibit hall with a 16-ft fiber optic
map detailing the second battle, an orientation film, and a gift shop. A
half-mile tour trail circles the remains of the western bastion of the fort.
Visitors may enjoy the scenic views of both the Cape Fear River and the
Credits: North Carolina Historical Sites
http://www.nchistoricsites.org/
History:
In early
1865, Fort Fisher stood as an imposing symbol of Southern defiance. Situated at
the tip of a small finger of land, the citadel lorded over the Atlantic
entrance to the Cape Fear River leading to Wilmington, North Carolina. Its
formidable artillery served as vital protection for both the city and the
blockade runners that regularly zipped past the American Navy on supply runs to
Europe and the Caribbean. With the fall of Mobile, Alabama in August 1864,
Wilmington was now the Confederacy’s last major open port. No less an authority
than Robert E. Lee had cautioned that its supplies were the lifeblood of his
army, and Fort Fisher’s small garrison knew it. “If the Yankees ever get this
place they will never get us all alive,” one soldier wrote. “We are going to
fight until they disable us and then we will look vengeance at them.”
Since taking
over the garrison in 1862, Confederate Colonel William Lamb had transformed it
into a masterpiece of coastal defense—many even called it the “Gibraltar of the
South.” The L-shaped bastion included a long line of bombproofed batteries on
its eastern “sea side,” and a shorter line of 30-foot-tall earthen mounds and
cannons shielded by palisades on the northern “land side.” It boasted more than
40 artillery pieces, and was protected by a maze of state-of-the-art,
electrically detonated landmines. Lamb’s seemingly impregnable defenses had
proven a thorn in the side of Lincoln’s army. Union forces had tried to take
action against Fort Fisher in late-December 1864, when a massive fleet under
Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter lobbed some 20,000 shells at its walls. A
subsequent land assault fell victim to poor coordination, however, and the
invasion ended in disgrace.
Despite the
farcical results of the first attempt to take Fort Fisher, the Union high
command almost immediately approved a second offensive. In early January 1865,
Rear Admiral Porter sailed back to North Carolina with an armada of some 60
warships and more than
Wilmington
was outfitted with a contingent of some 6,000 troops under General Robert Hoke,
but Braxton Bragg, the officer in charge of the city’s defenses, had called
them away to participate in a dress parade. When Hoke’s men finally arrived,
Terry’s federals had entrenched themselves in a line that spanned from the
Atlantic all the way to the Cape Fear River. Many suggested Bragg should attack
at once and take the enemy from the rear, but the General was wary of Porter’s
artillery and elected to remain on the defensive. One of his subordinates,
General W.H.C. Whiting, was so furious at the decision that he left his post
and took a steamer to join Lamb at Fort Fisher. “I have come to share your
fate,” he said when he arrived. “You and your garrison are to be sacrificed.”
Porter’s
artillery continued to pummel Fort Fisher during January 14 and 15, destroying
the lion’s share of its heavy guns and reducing its defenses to ruins. “Shot
and shell rained on us,” one of the fort’s defenders later remembered. “We could
not repair our displaced guns, cook or eat or bury our dead lying around us. We
were helpless.” By the afternoon of the 15th, Terry’s infantry had advanced
within striking distance of the fort and were prepping for an assault. Not
wanting the Navy to miss out on a chance at glory, Admiral Porter committed a
force of 1,600 sailors and marines who volunteered to charge the ramparts armed
with pistols and cutlasses. Inside bombed-out Fort Fisher, Lamb and Whiting
were getting desperate. The fort’s entire garrison amounted to fewer than 2,000
men, and there were now nearly 10,000 bluecoats assembled outside their walls.
“Attack! Attack!” Whiting urged in a message to General Bragg. “It is all I can
say, and all you can do.” Bragg sent reinforcements, but ignored the plea to
commit Hoke’s men to the fight.
Shortly
before 3:30 p.m., the main Union onslaught commenced. At the sound of two wails
from the steam whistles on Porter’s ships, a sea of men surged toward the
sand-colored ramparts of Fort Fisher. Terry’s men immediately made for the
battery closest to the river on the fort’s land side, while Porter’s sailors
moved on the northeast sea side. The Navy force was the first to reach the
fort. When they moved within 200 yards, Lamb’s men unleashed a withering salvo
of musket fire and canister shot, slicing deep holes into their lines. Most of
the Navy party had little to no experience in land combat, and once under the
garrison’s punishing fire, their ranks fell into disarray.
Porter’s force
quickly crumbled under the weight of nearly 400 casualties, but its failure
served as an unintentional diversion for the infantry attack. Lamb had trained
most of his guns on the Navy men closer to his position, leaving the fort’s
northwest side exposed. Advancing behind a column of men armed with axes to
chop through the palisades, three of Terry’s brigades braved furious fire and
began scaling Fort Fisher’s outer defenses. Lamb’s landmines, which many had
touted as the fort’s greatest weapon, proved useless. Their detonating wires
had been damaged during Porter’s naval barrage.
Soon, scores
of Union troops had poured into the battery on the left of Fort Fisher’s land
While blue
and grey crossed swords on the fort’s northwest river side, Porter’s shipboard
batteries spewed fire on the sea side, carefully avoiding their brothers in
arms and dealing serious damage to Lamb’s rebels. All the while, the Union
forces continued their bloody advance. “It surpassed all that I had ever seen
or thought that men were capable of doing,” one officer later remembered.
“There they fought, from parapet to parapet, through traverse and bombproof,
outside and in, the Navy in the meantime throwing shells just ahead of our
soldiers. We could see them advance by the glorious Stars and Stripes, which
our people planted upon each successive parapet as they took them.”
It was after
10 p.m. before the stubborn Confederate resistance finally sputtered and died
out. By then, Union troops controlled the fort’s entire land side, and blue and
grey bodies
With the
defeat of the “Gibraltar of the South,” Wilmington’s fate was all but sealed.
By mid-February 1865, Union forces had advanced 20 miles up the Cape Fear
peninsula and shut down Dixie’s lone remaining seaport. It was a bitter blow
for a Confederate infrastructure already crumbling under the strain of nearly
four years of war, and the rebel army began to fall victim to mass desertions.
Less than three months after Union forces stormed the ramparts at Fort Fisher,
Robert E. Lee would surrender to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox.
Credits:
History
Channel
http://www.history.com/news/the-fall-of-fort-fisher-150-years-ago
January 15,
2015
By Evan Andrews
