The Gibraltar of the Confederacy falls to a joint Army, Navy, and Marine Corps amphibious assault.
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE
The Gibraltar of the Confederacy falls to a joint Army, Navy, and Marine Corps amphibious assault.
TACTICAL IMPORTANCE
Perched atop Federal Point Peninsula between the Atlantic Ocean and the Cape Fear River, Fort Fisher was crucial to the protection of the port of Wilmington, NC. With construction beginning in 1861, Fort Fisher was a behemoth. The L-shaped fort ran 1,800 feet along its land face and stretched over a mile along the sea, stood over 30 feet tall, contained almost 50 pieces of artillery of various calibers, was protected by a ditch and palisade, and was protected from the rear by Battery Buchanan along the tip of the peninsula. The fort’s commander, Col William Lamb, employed Confederate soldiers, slaves, and local civilians in building this impressive fortification. For years, Fort fisher allowed blockade runners to import foreign supplies into Wilmington, and by late 1864 this supply line was essential to sustaining the Army of Northern Virginia—which was currently embroiled in the siege of Petersburg. Realizing the strategic importance of Wilmington, President Abraham Lincoln’s administration directed Gen Ulysses Grant to launch an amphibious assault to seize Fort Fisher and cut off the vital supply line for the Confederacy. In December 1864, an expedition led by MajGen Benjamin Butler’s Army of the James and ADM David Porter’s naval forces attempted to capture the fort but were embarrassingly repulsed. Butler was promptly relieved and replaced by MajGen Alfred Terry, who was ordered to take Fort Fisher in a second attempt.
Terry and Porter’s plan was to first bombard the fort to silence as many of its guns as possible. Terry’s forces would then land to the north and impose themselves between the fort and Wilmington to prevent any reinforcements from arriving by land. Then, while Terry’s men assaulted the land face, Porter’s naval contingent would land sailors armed with swords and revolvers who would assault the hinge of the fort near the sea face while Marines provided covering fire with rifles. In total, the assaulting force numbered over 10,000 men. On the Confederate side, there were disagreements on how to best defend the fort: Lamb and his immediate superior, MajGen William Whiting, had around 1,900 men stationed inside the fort, with 6,400 men of MajGen Robert Hokes’ division stationed to the north of the fort. Despite warnings from Lamb and Whiting that Fort Fisher was vulnerable to a land attack and that its fall would doom Wilmington, their overall commander, Gen Braxton Bragg, withheld Hoke’s division from reinforcing the fort, believing instead they should protect the land approach to Wilmington.
Beginning on 13 January 1865, Terry’s forces began to land north of Fort Fisher, where he sent one of his divisions to build a series of fortifications between the fort and Hoke’s division. On the 15th, Porter’s ships opened fire and began silencing the majority of the Confederate artillery. While the bombardment occurred, Porter landed his sailors and Marines in preparation for an assault on the fort’s apex while the army forces advanced toward the western end of the land face. While the assault between the two wings was supposed to be coordinated, the naval forces attacked first in a single, massed wave. Armed only with revolvers and swords with limited rifle support, the sailors were cut down by withering fire en masse and were forced to retreat. However, this assault managed to distract the Confederate defenders from the army’s advance, who managed to breach the fort’s defenses. What ensued was among the most chaotic, personal, and bloodiest fights of the American Civil War, as the Union forces battled for the interior of the fort. Despite repeated pleas from Lamb and Whiting, Bragg refused to deploy Hoke’s division to relieve the fort. The fighting lasted into the night, but having sustained terrible casualties and with both Lamb and Whiting wounded, the Confederates retreated to Battery Buchanan, and without any means of escape, they were forced to surrender. The Union forces suffered over 1,000 casualties compared to the 1,900 Confederates killed, wounded, and captured.
STRATEGIC IMPACT
The Union victory at the Second Battle of Fort Fisher was total. By successfully capturing the fort and its garrison, the Union Army and Navy rendered the Port of Wilmington useless to the Confederate war effort by cutting off the Army of Northern Virginia from a major supply source. Within five months, the Confederates would be forced to evacuate Petersburg and Richmond—leading to the eventual end of the war.