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THE DEFENSE OF FORT FISHER.
COLONEL WILLIAM LAMB, C. S. A. EllOM A PHOTOGRAPH.
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over 900 veteran troops and 450 junior reserves;reenforced after dark "by 60 sailors and marines.As soon as the fire of the fleet ceased, the parapetswere not only manned, but half the garrison was
stationed outside the work behind thepalisades. There was no fear of anassault in front; what most disturbedthe defenders was a possible landingfrom boats between the Mound Bat-tery and Battery Buchanan. AdmiralPorter was as much to blame as Gen-eral Butler for the repulse. 4
The garrison of Port Fisher wascomposed altogether of North Caro-linians . For two years and a halfthe force had been under my com-mand, and in that time only two com-panies, temporarily there, were fromoutside the State. After the repulseof Butler and Porter, although someimportant guns were destroyed by thebombardment and by explosion, littleor nothing was done to repair damagesor strengthen the armament of thework. Requisitions were made for ad-ditional ammunition, especially forhand-grenades, to repel assault, but itwas impossible to obtain what wasneeded. Application was made for theplacing of marine torpedoes where theiron-clads had anchored, and whitherthey returned, but no notice was takenof it. Although we heard on January8th that the fleet had returned toBeaufort, and we knew that FortFisher was still its objective point, General Brax-ton Bragg [see note, Yol. III., p. 711] with-drew the supporting army from Sugar Loaf andmarched it to a camp sixteen miles distant, north
ing tile Half-moon battery and its men, who were taken offby the boats of the navy. In the meantime the remainder ofAmes’s division had captured 218 men and 10 commissionedofficers of the North Carolina reserves and other prisoners.From them I learned that Kirkland’s and I-Iagood’s brigadesof Hoke’s division had left the front of the Army of theJames, near Richmond, and were then within two miles ofthe rear of my forces, and their skirmishers were then actu-ally engaged, and that the remainder of Hoke’s division hadcome the night before to Wilmington , and were then on themarch, if they had not already arrived. General Weitzelreported to me that to assault the work, in his judgment, andin that of the experienced officers of his command who hadbeen on the skirmisli-line, with any prospect of success, wasimpossible. This opinion coincided with my own, and muchas I regretted the necessity of abandoning the attempt, yetthe path of duty was plain. Not so strong a work as FortFisher had been taken by assault during the war, and Ihad to guide me the experience of Port Hudson, with itsslaughtered thousands in the repulsed assault, and thedouble assault of Fort Wagner, where thousands were sacri-ficed in an attempt to take a work less strong than Fisher,after it had been subjected to a more continued and fully assevere fire. And in neither of the instances I have men-tioned had the assaulting force in its rear, as I had, an armyof the enemy larger than itself. I therefore ordered thatno assault should be made, and that the troops should re-embark.” Editors.
4 - General Butler was blamed by contemporaneouswriters for not capturing the works. For this criticismhe had himself to blame. On the evening of the 25tli,before waiting for official reports, he listened to campgossip and wrote to Admiral Porter:
“General Weitzel advanced his skirmisli-line within fiftyyards of the fort, while the garrison was kept in their bomb-proofs by the fire of the navy, and so closely that three orfour men of the picket-line ventured upon the parapetand through the sally-port of the work, capturing a horse,
which they brought oiF, killing the orderly, who was thebearer of a dispatch from the chief of artillery of GeneralWhiting, to bring a light battery within the fort, and alsobrought away from the parapet the flag of the fort.”
This piece of romance was sent North, and has gottena lodgment in current history, and is actually repeatedby General Grant in his “ Memoirs,” though GeneralButler corrected the error in his official report of Janu-ary 3d, 1865. No Federal soldier entered Fort FisherChristmas day, except as a prisoner. The courier wassent out of the fort without my knowledge, and waskilled and his horse captured within the enemy’s lines.The flag captured was a small company flag, placed onthe extreme left of the work, and which was carriedaway and thrown off the parapet by an enfilading shotfrom the navy. It was during a terrific bombardment ofthe land-face, when I had ordered my men to cover them-selves behind parapet and traverses as well as in thebomb-proofs. Amid the smoke of bursting shells, Cap-tain W. II. Walling, of the 142d New York, gallantlycrawled through the broken palisade and carried off theflag, doing what two or more men could not have donewithout observation. The angle of the work hid himfrom the sharp-shooters on the front, who, from behindtraverses, were watching for an advance.
When Butler’s skirmish-line approached I purposelywithheld the fire of infantry and artillery until an at-tack should be made in force. Only one gnu on the land-face had been seriously disabled [see p. 658], and I could-have opened a fire of grape and canister on the narrowbeach, which no troops could have survived. In thesecond attack by the army, as the reader will see, all myheavy guns on the land-face but one were disabled; mytorpedoes were useless, and my palisades were so tornup and cut down that they furnished a protection to theassailants instead of a formidable impediment.—W.