Fort Fisher Part 2
Shepherd's Battery Looking Toward the Ocean
When the Union advance continued, fighting raged at the fifth traverse, then the seventh but the attack stalled again. Abbott's brigade was now committed to the fight and the eleventh traverse was taken. Soon, the Northeast Bastion near the beach was taken and resistance slackened. The surviving defenders withdrew to the end the peninsula to await evacuation. The boats had already fled and as darkness fell, the men surrendered to advancing Federals.
The Confederates lost 400 to 500 men killed and wounded and 2,000 captured to Union losses of over 1,000 men. The next day Union soldiers accidentally set off a powder magazine, killing and wounding 130 to 265 men. Although it had previously been thought impossible, the Union fleet sailed past the peninsula tip into the river. The whole fort could have been made untenable by such a move a few days before had it been attempted.
Cape Fear River From Fort Anderson
The port of Wilmington was now closed. Braxton Bragg had done little to help the defenders of Fort Fisher and he had prevented Hoke's division from attacking the Union force covering the assault. With the fort taken, Bragg ordered the evacuation of all the forts guarding the entrance to the Cape Fear.
In February, Schofield arrived with two divisions of his corps with orders to take Wilmington. Jacob Cox commanding 8,000 men crossed the river on February 16th while the Union navy sailed up the river and silenced all twelve guns at Fort Anderson on the western bank of the river.
Interior of Fort Anderson
As the Union troops approached Fort Anderson, it became increasingly obvious that the fort could not be held. On the night of February 18-19th, the fort was abandoned, and Union troops entered it the next day. A Confederate position nearer Wilmington was turned on the 19th, and the city was evacuated on the night of the 21-22nd. Union forces from Wilmington joined Sherman as he marched north from Savannah, and the port helped supply the Union army which Johnston surrendered to that spring.
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