By late 1864 the Confederacy had been strangled by General Ulysses S. Grant’s strategy of total war. The Confederate capitol of Richmond was cut off from most of the rest of the Confederacy, due to Grant’s capture of Vicksburg, Mississippi, Sherman’s capture of Atlanta and Savannah, and the occupations of other important cities such as Memphis and New Orleans by Union troops. Railroads had been destroyed. Telegraph lines torn down. The Confederacy was limping into its last days, supplied for the most part by the one town that the Union had thus far found impossible to take – Wilmington, North Carolina.

Wilmington, a port city on the Cape Fear inlet of the Atlantic, was an important trading center for the Confederacy. Southern cotton, tobacco, rice and other exports were traded to European ships, called blockade runners for their ability to get past Union blockades, for items that the Confederacy needed. After Norfolk, Virginia, fell into Union hands in 1862, and with Charleston, South Carolina continually besieged throughout the war, Wilmington became doubly essential to the Confederacy, as it then became the primary port of entry into the foundling nation.

Naturally protected by the fact that the Cape Fear was divided [ad#adsense]by Smith’s Island, which made passage from the Atlantic into Wilmington possible only by the navigation of two narrow channels, channels the Confederacy had made hazardous by planting wreckage and aquatic mines called torpedoes, Wilmington was further supported by several Confederate positions on the small islands which lay at the confluence of the Cape Fear and the Atlantic. None of these barricades was more crucial to protecting Wilmington than Fort Fisher.

The Confederacy had recognized the strategic importance of Wilmington early on, and by 1861 had begun building artillery batteries on the grounds. While artillery batteries were crucial, the building of soil mounds on Fort Fisher, an undertaking that required over 1000 laborers, among them slaves and Lumbee Indians native to the area, were what accounted for the strength of the fortification. Over 30 feet high, the Mound Battery, as it became known, used a locomotive to move the soil into place. The soil construction of Mound Battery made it impervious to Federal salvos, which were easily absorbed into the fortifications.

The Mound Battery was the cornerstone, as it were, of Fort Fisher, but natural aspects of the location also contributed to its strength. The tall pine trees that comprised most of the vegetation on the island provided built-in lookouts that also served to spot blockade runners, who could then be navigated through the treacherous channels that led to Wilmington. It’s location in relation to the Atlantic made it impossible for Federal ships to near it without being spotted and turned away by the artillery on the batteries. Fort Fisher was a formidable presence in the Atlantic, and before long, it was the largest fort in the Confederacy.

By late 1864, however, Fort Fisher’s days as a Confederate stronghold were numbered. With other Southern cities falling to Union forces like dominoes, defeated and occupied by Federal troops, it was only a matter of time before attention was turned to Wilmington and Fort Fisher.

The first attempt to capture Fort Fisher occurred in December of 1864. On December 24, General Benjamin Butler mounted an amphibious attack on the fort, beginning with naval bombardment. The bombardment managed to destroy some of the Confederate artillery on shore, and thinking victory was theirs, Union infantry landed on the fort. The Union forces were met by the skeleton crew left by this time at Fort Fisher, aided by General Robert Hoke’s troops. Butler, against orders of commanding general Grant, who demanded the fort be sieged if assault failed, withdrew his troops. This resulted in Butler’s being relieved of his duties.

Regrouping, Grant waited until January 12 to mount another attack. Under the command of Major General Alfred Terry, 56 ships bombarded Fort Fisher for two and a half days, on both fronts.. On January 15, 8,000 Federal soldiers landed on the soil, and facing siege from both land and water, the Confederate soldiers guarding the fort were forced to retreat, and after 6 hours of fighting, most if it during the night, Commander of the District of Cape Fear General Whiting, who had been injured during the battle, surrendered.

Both Fort Fisher and Wilmington were occupied by Federal installations throughout the remainder of the War. However, due to Fort Fisher’s ability to hold off Union forces for the majority of the war, the Cape Fear region was spared the destruction that Sherman and Grant had dealt to other regions in the South during the last year of the war.