Second Battle of Fort Fisher

Wilmington is the Confederacy’s last working seaport, and Fort Fisher guards its river mouth. Butler (North) botches the first attack with a powder ship; Grant relieves him and sends Terry (North) back.

Porter (North) returns with 58 ships, the largest U.S. fleet yet assembled. Bragg (South) keeps Hoke’s (South) division idle a few miles off while the garrison is left to hold alone.

Three days of careful, aimed naval fire dismount the fort’s guns one by one, blinding the land face and grinding the garrison down before a single soldier charges.

Some 2,000 sailors and marines storm the sea-face corner with cutlasses and revolvers and are slaughtered, but the doomed rush pulls the defenders to the wrong side of the fort.

The army goes over the land face and fights mound by mound into the dark. Whiting and Lamb (South) both fall wounded; the fort surrenders near ten o’clock, and the last door shuts.