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

In the meantime a deserter from the Sixty-Second North Carolina, whom I had captured once before at Hatteras in 1861, having received good treatment from me, came in. He said that they had marched down from Richmond, and that Kirkland's brigade and one other were already down there; and that Hoke was on his way with large reinforcements and had arrived by land the night before at Wilmington, which was about twenty-one or twenty-two miles off.

At that time our skirmishers advanced upon a small body of men who were between Flag Pond Hill battery and the pond. They could not get away because it was a marsh towards the river; and they could not go by the pond and up the beach because there was an opening from the pond into the sea. They could not get down to the fort because we were between them and the fort. Therefore Major Reece, their commander, five officers, and two hundred and eighteen men surrendered. Major Reece was brought to me, and from him I learned that he had marched from Bellville near the Weldon road, where General Warren of Grant's army had made his attack, after they had heard we were at Wilmington. He said that that morning as many of his regiment had been put into the bomb-proofs as they would hold, in addition to the garrison which was there before. As the bomb-proofs were not capable of accommodating his other two hundred and eighteen men, they had marched up the beach out of the way of the fire of the navy. I also learned from him that he had been in the fort that morning, and that it had lost but two men killed from the bombardment, and that there was but one gun on the land face dismounted. Reece seemed to be very communicative, and willing to tell us all he knew.

I then inquired of him where he was the night before last. He said he was lying two miles and a half up the beach. I asked him if he had heard the powder vessel explode. He said he did not know what it was, but supposed a boat had blown up; that it jumped him and his men who were lying on the ground about like pop-corn in a popper, to use his expression.

I then determined upon my course of action, bearing in mind the fact that a storm was coming on, and knowing that, if it became necessary to effect a landing again, we could do it any day, in a smooth sea, in two hours without the loss of a man. I thought it a greatly less risk waiting with the men on board the transports than