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for target practice in a month anyhow, and he says he expended fifty thousand shells on the fort, and had supplied himself with as many more.
Porter says over and over again that in the second attack he had the most cordial co-operation of General Terry, whom he denominates his beau-ideal of a soldier, and that they had consultation on board his ship, and elsewhere, as to the manner of making the attack, and that he aided Terry with two thousand of his sailors and marines in making the land attack, which Colonel Lamb says he thought was to be the principal assault of the fort.
Upon this whole subject of the condition of Fort Fisher at the time of both attacks of the defences, and of the probable results of an assault, taking the circumstances in view, I call a witness for whose statements I claim the utmost credence.
When the expedition to Fort Fisher was under investigation by the Committee on the Conduct of the War, I sent, by a gentleman of my staff, certain questions to be answered by Maj.-Gen. W. H. C. Whiting of the Confederate army, under whose supervision as an engineer during two years Fort Fisher was built.
I did not take his deposition in form, because he was lying a prisoner of war in one of our hospitals on his dying bed, from wounds received in the second attack on Fort Fisher.
He died immediately after his communication with me. I apologized to him, saying that I would not add to his sufferings by having a formal deposition taken, but I wished that he would answer as he would under the sanction of an oath, and he gave me his dying declarations, which are received in law in cases of murder as effective as testimony given on the stand.1 General Whiting desired that the questions might be put, and that he might answer them separately in his own way, which, of course, he was permitted to do, and every one of his answers directly contradicts Porter where they speak of the same matter.
I submit the testimony with great confidence to the judgment of the reader.2
The Committee on the Conduct of the War investigated this subject in February, 1865, calling all the witnesses who they deemed could give material testimony in regard to it, and having all the papers furnished to them.
That testimony was taken under oath.
General
1 General Whiting's statement was received as testimony by the Committtee on the Conduct of the War
2 See Appendix No. 124.
A. M. Thayer and Co. 1892.
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