Wilmington

From February 11 to 22, 1865, Union and Confederate forces attached to their respective Departments of North Carolina clashed in a string of engagements and skirmishes just outside Wilmington, North Carolina, a campaign that became known as the Battle of Wilmington, or alternatively the Wilmington Campaign. This fighting followed on the heels of a Union triumph the previous January at the Second Battle of Fort Fisher, a victory that had already stripped Wilmington, situated 30 miles upriver, of its usefulness to the Confederacy as a working port. Union forces went on to take the city itself once they broke through Confederate positions guarding the Cape Fear River to its south. Before abandoning Wilmington, Confederate General Braxton Bragg set fire to stockpiles of tobacco, cotton, and other supplies and equipment, ensuring none of it would fall into Union hands.

Background

Once Fort Fisher had fallen, Wilmington lost its usefulness as a haven for blockade runners, leaving the Confederacy without a single major port left on the Atlantic coast. The other fortifications guarding the mouth of the Cape Fear River were given up by Confederate troops, who had to disable their heavy guns and leave them behind since no way existed to haul them further upriver. Desertion rose somewhat and spirits dipped following the loss of Fort Fisher a month earlier, yet the troops who stayed described their morale as still strong. Wilmington's defense fell to General Braxton Bragg, whose available manpower included General Robert F. Hoke's division on loan from the Army of Northern Virginia, along with artillery crews and home guard units. Three of Hoke's brigades held positions east of the Cape Fear River near Sugar Loaf, just north of Fort Fisher, while his remaining brigade garrisoned Fort Anderson across the river to the west. Bragg himself stayed behind in the city, focused on clearing out a cache of government supplies and on keeping Union troops stationed along the coast from joining forces with Major General William T. Sherman's army.

Grant, serving as the Union's general in chief, envisioned Wilmington as a launching point for a push toward Goldsboro, North Carolina, since railroads connecting the coast to that town offered a way to resupply Sherman's armies as they pressed northward through the Carolinas. The Fort Fisher Expeditionary Corps, under Major General Alfred H. Terry, received reinforcement from the Union XXIII Corps when it arrived in February 1865. Command of the joined forces then passed to Maj. Gen. John M. Schofield, who began his advance on the city by mid-February.

Battles of Sugar Loaf & Ft. Anderson

The fighting for Wilmington unfolded as three separate clashes strung along the Cape Fear River. North of Fort Fisher, Major General Robert Hoke's Confederate division held its ground along what was known as the Sugar Loaf Line.

The action opened on February 11, when Schofield sent Alfred Terry's corps against Hoke's position. Union gunboats opened the fighting that morning, pounding the Atlantic-facing fortifications with a heavy bombardment. Terry's men moved forward roughly thirty minutes later, though a swamp running along the riverbank slowed the progress of his left flank. As afternoon wore on, Union forces managed to break through the Confederate skirmish line, but Schofield and Terry judged the main defensive works too formidable for a direct assault to succeed. This left Schofield convinced that taking Wilmington required striking from the river's western side instead. Accordingly, Major General Jacob D. Cox's 3rd Division of the XXIII Corps crossed the Cape Fear to confront Fort Anderson, the stronghold protecting the city.

Rear Admiral David D. Porter brought his gunboats upriver and unleashed a barrage on Fort Anderson that quieted all twelve of its guns. To aid the effort, Lieutenant Commander William B. Cushing oversaw the building of a Quaker monitor, a decoy vessel meant to lure the Confederates into setting off their underwater mines prematurely and clearing a path for Porter's ships. Both men considered the ruse a triumph. Confederate accounts written afterward told a different story, insisting the garrison had already anticipated a fake vessel and was ready for it.

While this played out, Cox pushed up the western bank toward the fort with support from General Adelbert Ames' division. He directed the brigades under Colonel Thomas J. Henderson and Colonel Orlando Moore straight at the garrison, while Brigadier General John S. Casement and Colonel Oscar Sterhl looped through the surrounding swampland to strike the Confederate flank. That flanking force ran into Confederate cavalry along the way and drove it off after a brief clash. Sensing the danger of encirclement, the fort's commander, General Johnson Hagood, asked Hoke for permission to withdraw toward a stronger position at Town Creek to the north, and Hoke granted it. Hagood's men had only just begun pulling out when Henderson's brigade struck, allowing Union forces to seize the fort with little resistance and capture a handful of prisoners in the process.

Fall of Town’s Creek

After driving Hagood away from Fort Anderson, Cox closed in on the Town Creek Line by February 19, just as Hoke's division pulled back to a spot three miles below Wilmington, facing Hagood's men from across the river. Terry trailed Hoke with caution, fearing a sudden ambush or a strike against his right flank. His wariness was well founded, since Hoke's force actually held a numerical edge over him at this point, given that Ames' division had joined Cox on the western bank. To correct this, Ames was shipped back across the water while Terry, alongside Porter's fleet, worked to clear torpedoes from the river channel. The advance picked up again the following day, and by afternoon Terry's men had run into Hoke's freshly established lines. Satisfied that Hoke intended to hold his ground, Terry had his soldiers begin digging in, while Union gunboats probed the Confederate gun positions along the riverbank just west of Hoke's line.

Meanwhile, Hagood had set fire to the sole bridge spanning Town Creek in hopes of slowing Cox down, and had dug in along the northern shore. Cox, for his part, was determined to finally pull off the flanking maneuver that Hagood's earlier withdrawal from Fort Anderson had left unfinished. Since the creek could not be crossed on foot, Cox's men located a lone flat bottomed boat on February 20 and used it to shuttle three brigades over the water, while the remaining brigade kept Hagood occupied with a skirmish meant purely as a distraction. Hagood caught wind of the maneuver around his flank and, recognizing his position had become impossible to hold, chose to fall back toward Wilmington, leaving behind two regiments to screen the withdrawal. Union troops then pushed through the swamp and struck the exposed flank, scattering both regiments and capturing 375 men along with a pair of cannon. By the next day, Cox had the ruined bridge rebuilt, allowing Schofield's artillery to cross, and together with Porter's gunboats, both now had the city itself within striking distance. Recognizing that further resistance was futile, Bragg gave the order to abandon Wilmington. On February 21, Cox's division kept moving toward the city but was slowed

Battle of Forks Road

On February 20 and 21, in the area that today holds Halyburton Park and the Cameron Art Museum in Wilmington, North Carolina, Confederate troops under Robert Hoke, numbering close to 3000, tried to stall an advancing Union force of about 8000, made up largely of United States Colored Troops. Unable to hold their ground, Hoke's men withdrew toward Wilmington, where commanders intended to defend every block and wage combat street by street. Union officers then issued an ultimatum, warning that the city would meet the same fiery fate as Richmond and Atlanta if it did not yield. Wilmington gave up the fight, and with its capture, the Confederacy lost the last port it still held open along the eastern coast.

Aftermath

With the fall of Wilmington, the Confederacy lost the final significant harbor it still held on the Atlantic coast. For years the city had functioned as a haven for blockade-runners, shipping tobacco, cotton, and various goods out to destinations like Great Britain, Bermuda, and the Bahamas, and a great deal of what sustained the Army of Northern Virginia had traveled through this port. Its loss meant the Union naval blockade now had no gaps left along the seaboard, since no other harbor remained available to the Confederates as a substitute. Newspapers heaped harsh criticism on Bragg for allowing the defeat in the campaign for Wilmington, and within the Confederate Congress a number of members turned their anger toward President Jefferson Davis, some going so far as to demand he step down. Meanwhile Bragg's troops withdrew from the city toward Goldsboro, North Carolina, linking up there with General Joseph E. Johnston's forces.

Taking Wilmington proved valuable to Sherman, granting his army both a supply base and a route inland from the coast. Schofield, however, had to divert time and effort toward repairing rail lines that Confederate forces had wrecked near the city. He also found himself diverting provisions meant for Sherman's troops in order to assist paroled prisoners arriving in Wilmington as well as the civilian population still residing there. After his command was restructured into the Army of the Ohio, Schofield set out from Wilmington on an overland march to rendezvous with Sherman's men near Fayetteville.

In the years of Reconstruction that followed, Wilmington emerged as a center of opportunity, both social and economic, for Black Americans. In contrast to what was typical across most Southern cities of that era, Black residents there could exercise their rights of citizenship, equal protection, and the vote without obstruction, and several Black men went on to serve in local government positions. That progress, however, would not last: in 1898 a coup orchestrated by white supremacists brought it to a violent end, an event now remembered as the Wilmington Massacre.