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There exists, I think, much misapprehension in the public mind concerning the first attack on
Fort Fisher, at the mouth of the
Cape Fear by National land and naval forces, late in December, 1864.
I was an eye and ear witness of that event, and several months afterwards I visited the ruined for with a citizen of
Wilmington, who was familiar with the facts on the
Confederate side.
Wilmington, on the
Cape Fear river, almost thirty miles from the sea, was, for a long time, the chief goal of the British blockade-runners, which brought supplies for the
Confederates.
These were swift-moving steam-vessels, of medium size, with raking smoke-stacks, and painted a pale gray, or fog-color.
They were almost invisible, even in a slight mist on the ocean, and they continually eluded the vigilance and the power of the active and watchful blockading squadron on the coast of
North Carolina.
To protect these supply-ships, and to prevent National vessels from entering the
Cape Fear river, forts and batteries had been constructed by the
Confederates on the borders of the sea, at the mouth of that stream.
The chief of these defenses was
Fort Fisher, a formidable earthwork of an irregular quadrilateral trace, with exterior sides, of an average of about two hundred and fifty yards. Its northeastern angle, which was nearest the sea, approached high-water mark within one hundred yards. From that salient to the water was a strong stockade, or wooden palisade.
The land-face of the fort occupied the whole width of the cape, known as
Federal Point.
It mounted twenty-six guns, nineteen of which were in a position
