The Second Battle of Fort Fisher was a successful assault by the Union Army, Navy and Marine Corps against Fort Fisher, south of Wilmington, North Carolina, near the end of the American Civil War in January 1865. Sometimes referred to as the "Gibraltar of the South" and the last major coastal stronghold of the Confederacy, Fort Fisher had tremendous strategic value during the war, providing a port for blockade runners supplying the Army of Northern Virginia.
Wilmington was the last major port open to the Confederacy on the Atlantic seacoast. Ships leaving Wilmington via the Cape Fear River and setting sail for the Bahamas, Bermuda or Nova Scotia to trade cotton and tobacco for needed supplies from the British were protected by the fort. Based on the design of the Malakoff redoubt in Sevastopol, Russian Empire, Fort Fisher was constructed mostly of earth and sand. This made it better able to absorb the pounding of heavy fire from Union ships than older fortifications constructed of mortar and bricks. Twenty-two guns faced the ocean, while twenty-five faced the land. The sea face guns were mounted on 12-foot-high (3.7 m) batteries with larger, 45-and-60-foot (14 and 18 m) batteries at the southern end of the fort. Underground passageways and bombproof rooms existed below the giant earthen mounds of the fort. The fortifications kept Union ships from attacking the port of Wilmington and the Cape Fear River.
On December 23, 1864, Union ships under Rear Admiral David D. Porter commenced a naval bombardment of the fort, to little effect. On December 25, Union troops under Major General Benjamin F. Butler began landing in preparation for a ground assault, but Butler withdrew them upon word of approaching Confederate reinforcements.
The Union Army returned in January, this time under Major General Alfred Terry. Terry was chosen by Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant to lead a provisional corps of 9,000 troops from the Army of the James. Rear Admiral David D. Porter returned with almost 60 vessels of the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron to the North Carolina coast after the failed December attempt.
Confederate Major General W.H.C. Whiting commanded the District of Cape Fear and pleaded with the department commander, General Braxton Bragg to send reinforcements. Bragg was unwilling to reduce his forces, which he felt were necessary to defend Wilmington. He finally sent reinforcements from Hagood's brigade to Colonel William Lamb's garrison bringing the total at Fort Fisher to 1,900. A division of 6,400 troops under Major General Robert Hoke was stationed on the peninsula north of the fort. Whiting personally arrived at the fort and told the commander: "Lamb my boy, I have come to share your fate. You and your garrison are to be sacrificed."
The American Civil War (1861–1865) was the deadliest conflict in American history, killing an estimated 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians. The Confederate States of America, formed by eleven seceding Southern states, faced the Union in four years of warfare across 23 states and territories. Major engagements included First and Second Bull Run, Antietam (the bloodiest single day in American history, September 17, 1862), Chancellorsville, Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), Vicksburg (surrendered July 4, 1863), and Sherman's March through Georgia and the Carolinas (1864–1865). President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, transforming the war's stated purpose to include the abolition of slavery and enabling the enlistment of approximately 180,000 Black men in the United States Colored Troops. Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The war resolved the question of secession and ended American slavery, though Reconstruction would face sustained resistance in its attempt to secure civil rights for formerly enslaved people.
This page covers Colonel Lamb Wounded at Fort Fisher — January 15 1865. A full Aubrey report for the area pulls together this battle alongside historic sites, land records, and everything else the record holds within a few miles:
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