[167]
that the time will come with the Old North State, when her people will regard her defence of Fort Fisher as the grandest event in her historic past.
Let us declare to-day that the hour has come when no base slander shall longer deface the fair fame of the Carolinians at
Fisher.
Adjutant-General Towle, of
Terry's (U. S.) Army, in narrating these events, says:
‘Through the whole evening, until long after darkness closed in, they had offered the most stubborn defence.
Never did soldiers display more desperate bravery and brilliant valor.
With their leaders,
Whiting and
Lamb, both disabled with wounds, and sadly reduced in number, well foreseeing, too, the fresh force to be brought against them—under these circumstances, when night fell upon them, with no hope of relief, they gradually abandoned the fort, and retreated about a mile to the extreme point of the peninsula.
No boats had been collected for the emergency.
The strong tidal currents of the
Cape Fear made swimming impossible.
In this
cul de sac, they awaited the captivity closing upon them.
It was 10 o'clock at night when
Abbott's Brigade completed the occupation.’
President Davis, in his ‘Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government,’ says of this event:
The garrison stood bravely to their guns, and, when the assault was made, fought with such determined courage as to repulse the first column, and obstinately contended with another, approaching from the land side, continuing the fight long after they had got into the fort.
Finally, overwhelmed by numbers, and after the fort and its armament had been mainly destroyed, I believe, by a bombardment greater than ever before concentrated upon a fort, the remnant of the garrison surrendered.
The heroic and highly gifted General Whiting was mortally, and the gallant commander of the fort, Colonel Lamb, seriously wounded.
Two days and a night the wounded suffered before they were embarked upon the steamer which conveyed them to their Northern prison.
The distinguished head of the
Norfolk Virginian,
M. Glennan,
Esq., who was one of the brave boys in the fort, and known as
Sergeant Glennan, writes to the speaker as follows:
I never saw a more patient sufferer than General Whiting.
His
