Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

No material damage to the fort as a defensive work had been done.

Seventeen heavy guns bore up the beach, protected from the fire of the navy by traverses eight or ten feet high, which were undoubtedly bombproof shelters for the garrison.

With the garrison kept within their bomb-proofs it was easy to maintain this position; but the shells of the navy, which kept the enemy in their bomb-proofs, would keep my troops out. When those ceased falling the parapet was fully manned.

Lieutenant Walling, of the One Hundred and Forty-Second New York, pressed up to the edge of the ditch, and captured a flag which had been cut down by a shell from the navy. It is a mistake, as was at first reported to me, that any soldier entered the fort. An orderly was killed about a third of a mile from the fort, and his horse taken.

In the meantime the remainder of Ames' division had captured two hundred and eighteen men and ten commissioned officers of the North Carolina reserves, and other prisoners. From them I learned that Kirkland's and Hagood's brigades of Hoke's division had left the front of the Army of the James, near Richmond, and were then within two miles of the rear of my forces, and their skirmishers were then actually engaged, and that the remainder of Hoke's division had come the night before to Wilmington, and were then on the march, if they had not already arrived.

I learned, also, that these troops had left Richmond on Tuesday, the 20th.

Knowing the strength of Hoke's division, I found a force opposed to me outside of the works larger than my own.

In the meantime the weather assumed a threatening aspect. The surf began to roll in so that the landing became difficult. At this time General Weitzel reported to me that to assault the work, in his judgment, and in that of the experienced officers of his command who had been on the skirmish line, with any prospect of success, was impossible.

This opinion coincided with my own, and much as I regretted the necessity of abandoning the attempt, yet the path of duty was plain. Not so strong a work as Fort Fisher had been taken by assault during the war, and I had to guide me the experience of Port Hudson, with its slaughtered thousands in the repulsed assault, and the double assault of Fort Wagner, where thousands were sacrificed in an attempt to take a work less strong than Fisher, after it had been subjected to a more continued and fully as severe fire. And in neither of the instances I have mentioned had the assaulting force in its rear, as I had, an army of the enemy larger than itself.

I therefore ordered that no assault should be made, and that the troops should re-embark.

While superintending the preparations for this, the fire of the navy ceased. Instantly the guns of the fort were fully manned, and a sharp fire of musketry, grape, and canister swept the plain over which the column must have advanced, and the skirmish line was returning.

Working with what diligence we could, it was impossible to get the troops again on board before the sea ran so high as to render further