[Doug64]

December 27, Tuesday

This morning the last of the 700 Federal soldiers left behind in front of Fort Fisher, North Carolina, by General Butler are evacuated under the fleet’s umbrella of fire. By now the fleet has lobbed so many shells into the fort that a Confederate lieutenant will testify that anyone inspecting the works can “walk on nothing but iron.” Gradually, so as not to give the impression that he has been repulsed, a furious Porter sends his ships to Beaufort to be refitted and take on more ammunition. The first attack on Fort Fisher has ended. Jubilantly, Colonel Lamb wires his superiors in Richmond: “This morning, December 27, the foiled and frightened enemy left our shore.”

Admiral Porter has cause to be furious with the general. Butler demanded so little of his attackers that they sustained just sixteen casualties, including one death by drowning. “If this temporary failure succeeds in sending General Butler into private life, it is not to be regretted,” he writes to Secretary Welles. General Grant, agreeing that the expedition was “a gross and culpable failure,” wires Porter to stay put in Beaufort, “and I will endeavor to be back again with an increased force and without the former commander.”


The Army of Tennessee completes crossing the Tennessee River at Bainbridge, Tennessee, and heads toward Tupelo, Mississippi. Skirmishes break out at Decatur, Alabama; and Okolona, Mississippi; while scouting continues around Pine Bluff, Arkansas.

[Doug64]

December 28, Wednesday

Skirmishing near Decatur, Alabama, and a fight at Egypt, Mississippi, marks the winter day.

In Washington, President Lincoln asks Grant “what you now understand of the Wilmington expedition, present & prospective.” Grant replies that “The Wilmington expedition has proven a gross and culpable failure.... Who is to blame I hope will be known.”

[Doug64]

December 29, Thursday

In the fading Franklin-Nashville Campaign light skirmishing occurs at Hillsborough and Pond Springs, Alabama.

[Doug64]

December 30, Friday

The Wilmington fiasco is causing repercussions in Washington; at the Cabinet meeting President Lincoln indicates Butler will be removed from command of the Army of the James. Not only is Grant more willing to take risks since Lincoln’s re-election, but he is less tolerant of lackluster performance.

Francis Preston Blair, Sr., a powerful Maryland political figure, writes President Davis that he wishes to visit Richmond “to explain the views I entertain in reference to the state of affairs of our Country.” Although his visit would be unofficial, he indicates that he wants to explore the possibilities of peace.

There is skirmishing near Caruthersville, Missouri, and Leighton, Alabama.

[Doug64]

December 31, Saturday

The year comes uneventfully to an end with skirmishing at Sharpsburg, Kentucky, and affairs at Paint Rock Bridge and Russellville, Alabama.

[Doug64]

January 1865

The attention and thoughts of both nations for the moment are more on civil than military affairs, except, of course, on the now somewhat stationary fronts. Both Congresses are in session. In Richmond, Congress expresses increasing dissatisfaction with the Davis administration and talks of restoring Joseph E. Johnston to command, of making Lee General-in-Chief, rehashing whether to use slaves as soldiers, and discussing the possibility of peace overtures.

In the North, constitutional abolition of slavery and reconstruction are paramount subjects. Political victors in the election again bombard Washington for the spoils. General Butler’s failure at Fort Fisher is a subject of controversy. The more willing peace factions are talking negotiations, and several parties are endeavoring unofficially to get something started with Richmond. Generally, the Northern economy is in good shape, and thoughts turn to postwar Western expansion and business opportunities.

January 1, Sunday

The year opens quietly, with only a skirmish at Bentonville, Arkansas. Throughout most of the month Federals will operate against guerrillas in Arkansas. On the James River, General Butler has ordered a canal cut to bypass a large bend in the river at Dutch Gap, Virginia. On the first day of the year the project culminates with a powder blast for the final excavation. The explosion comes; the dirt and gravel fall back into the ditch. The project is dropped. In the cold trenches of Petersburg, on the streets of Savannah, in central Tennessee, the Union troops remain largely inactive. Confederates attempt to consolidate, to somehow put together a major fighting force. Their only remaining sizable fighting army is that of Northern Virginia, pinned down at Petersburg and Richmond.

As the last year came to a close, a welcome report circulated among the tattered Confederates shivering in the trenches outside Petersburg and Richmond. The ladies of the Southern capital are preparing a holiday feast for their defenders. Farmers have been asked to contribute something, and the women themselves plan to carry the food up to the lines on New Year’s Day. The very thought of this treat sets mouths to watering—the daily ration of meat amounts to three or four ounces, scarcely more than a mouthful per man. Food boxes from home, long a supplement to the meager rations, now routinely disappear in the collapsing Confederate transportation system. The starvation weakens men so that minor scratches often result in infection and even death. Enfeebled and dejected, the usually high-spirited Confederates have sunk into apathy. And not only the enlisted men are going hungry. An Irish member of Parliament who visits General Lee is invited to dinner. “He had two biscuits, and he gave me one.”

But now the Southern troops anticipate some real food. They have heard that sides of beef, mutton, venison, and pork have been collected and prepared under the direction of Richmond’s leading caterer. Loaves of bread—a luxury—were being contributed by a local bakery. Excitement mounted. News of the event has spread to the Federal ranks as well. Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, the general in chief, has learned of the impending feast across the lines and ordered his men to hold their fire all day. The Confederates had extended the same courtesy during a Federal celebration last Thanksgiving.

So today, the men in the Confederate lines awaken early. Their wait is a long one because of a shortage of transport. Noon comes, and evening, and midnight; still the men wait, refusing to east their rations. It is past 3 am when a Georgia regiment gets its share of the feast. After the food is delivered, the men stare. The labors of the Richmond women have produced, for each soldier, “one small sandwich made up of two tiny slices of bread and a thin piece of ham.” Other units receive similarly scant servings. Nonetheless, murmurs of disappointment are hushed, and the Georgians eat their food thoughtfully; whatever the quantity, it is better than what they have been getting. When they are finished, a middle-aged corporal lights his pipe. “God bless our noble women,” he says quietly. “It was all they could do; it was all they had.”

For many of the women, in fact, it may have been more than they have for themselves. Food is as scarce in the capital as it is in the trenches. War Department clerk John B. Jones records in his diary that he has enough food—“flour, meal and beans (black)”—to sustain his family of seven for two weeks. A few days later he reports that he is out of wood and that he has to do his “little cooking in the parlor with the coal in the grate. This is famine!” Yet the Jones family is better off than some, who are said to be eating rats. In the midst of this indigence, with guns rumbling continuously in the background, Richmond’s citizens strive to distract themselves. With the men wearing patched, ill-fitting coats, and the women in aged or makeshift gowns, they grimly parody their former social life. Some give “starvation parties”—soon called, simply, “starvations”—at which the only refreshment served is James River water.

However bravely the socialites skirt the fact, the South is in dire straits. Since 1861, the Confederacy has kept the war going by improvisation, by determination, and by the discipline, courage, and élan of its fighting men. Now, after almost four years of combat, exhaustion has set in. the Confederate war effort is sagging visibly, and many people are openly defeatist. The most obvious manifestation of the collapsing system is the swift, destructive inflation of the Confederate dollar. In 1861, one gold dollar was the equivalent to $1.03 in Confederate money; as this year begins, a dollar in gold equals almost $60 Confederate—and the figure is climbing rapidly. In Richmond, all prices are high and the prices of commodities in short supply are staggering. Richmonders are paying $45 Confederate for a pound of coffee, $100 for a pound of tea—when those items are available at all. The price of flour is $1,250 a barrel and rising. Inflation has struck the army, too. Tobacco, which costs from $20 to $25 a plug, has to be issued free to privates, because they are paid only $17 a month.

The sense that the Confederacy is in trouble is shared by Southerners everywhere, but the privations don’t affect all regions alike. There is food in some areas, especially where there has been little fighting and therefore no hungry armies to feed. Lieutenant John S. Wise, assigned to southwestern Virginia last fall, says he found it “a land of milk and honey.” Dairy products are plentiful, and the butter that costs $25 a pound in Richmond when it is available is selling near the Tennessee border for $8. In an obscure central Virginia village named Appomattox Court House, flour is selling for half the Richmond price. The main problem is one of distribution. The South’s railroads, few and in poor condition before 1861, have deteriorated steadily during the war. By now, a number of the most critical rail lines have been cut by Federal armies, and the supplies the trains had carried are denied to the immobilized Army of Northern Virginia. The Confederate Commissary Department, notorious for its inefficiency, has been forced to import meat and other foodstuffs from abroad. The job is extremely difficult, because Federal land and naval forces have closed all but one port—Wilmington, on the Cape Fear River in North Carolina. Late last year the Federals severed the Weldon Railroad, which connects Petersburg and Wilmington—thus making necessary a long trek by wagon train to get supplies around the Federal lines.

The strategic situation is deteriorating hand in hand with the logistical as the winter progresses. Lee’s hungry and poorly clad 65,000-man army faces Grant’s 115,000 men along 37 miles of entrenchments, from White Oak Swamp (northeast of Richmond near Cold Harbor) to Hatcher’s Run (southwest of Petersburg). Lieutenant General James Longstreet, still suffering from the crippling wound he sustained in the Wilderness, holds the line north of the James River with two divisions of his I Corps. South of the river II Corps, under the temporary command of General Gordon, holds the center with Lieutenant General Richard H. Anderson’s understrength corps. The Confederate right, stretching westward below Petersburg to where the Boydton Plank Road crosses Hatcher’s Run, is the responsibility of the ailing Lieutenant General Ambrose Powell Hill and his III Corps. Manning the Richmond forts and the lines facing Major General Edward O.C. Ord’s 40,000-man Army of the James are the 5,300 men of Lieutenant General Richard Ewell’s corps.

Of all the problems besetting the South as the year begins, perhaps the one that most worries Lee is a shortage of troops. His army is running out of soldiers, and the Confederate States have few men to replace them. The Confederate Congress is starting to seriously consider the extreme step of recruiting slaves as soldiers, possibly in return for their emancipation. As a further measure, teenagers and men in their sixties are being enrolled in reserve units. Lieutenant Wise, assigned to such a unit, says it presents “every stage of manhood from immature boyhood to decrepit old age”; the battle line of one company, he continues, looks “as irregular as a pile of barrel-hoops.” A Federal general reports taking into his lines 13-year-old deserters. But there is no real solution to the problem of troop strength. Since the first year of the war, the Confederacy has put about 750,000 soldiers in the field; in all theaters there are now fewer than 160,000 on duty. The rest have been “worn out and killed out and starved out.”

[Doug64]

January 2, Monday

Union troops operating against the Mobile & Ohio Railroad fight Confederates at Franklin and Lexington, Mississippi. There is scouting for bushwhackers by Federals in Shannon County, Missouri, as well as a Federal scout from Benvard’s Mills to South Quay, Virginia.

A group of Kentuckians apply to have Butler assigned to their state and the President says, “You howled when Butler went to New Orleans. Others howled when he was removed from that command. Somebody has been howling ever since at his assignment to military command. How long will it be before you, who are howling for his assignment to rule Kentucky, will be howling for me to remove him?”

The regular New Year’s reception is held at the Washington White House for the diplomatic corps with Cabinet officers, judges, and military officers attending. There are complaints that congressmen weren’t invited.

President Davis tells Beauregard that if it becomes necessary he should remove Hood as commander of the Army of Tennessee and name Richard Taylor to command.

[Doug64]

January 3, Tuesday

A Federal expedition is readying for another attempt on Fort Fisher and Wilmington, North Carolina. Preparations are underway at Bermuda Hundred and at Fort Monroe for the combined army-navy operations. In Georgia Sherman, planning for the move northward into South Carolina, begins transferring part of Howard’s Army of the Tennessee from Savannah to Beaufort, South Carolina. A skirmish breaks out near Hardeeville, South Carolina. To the west, Federals operating along the Mobile & Ohio Railroad fight a skirmish near Mechanicsburg, Mississippi.

[Doug64]

January 4, Wednesday

In the course of the first failed attack on Fort Fisher, the strategic picture changed for the Federal cause. With General Sherman having captured Savannah and ranging north through the Carolinas, capturing or demolishing objectives at will, Wilmington has now become a prospective supply depot for Sherman’s army. Its capture is imperative, and Grant is prepared to devote to the effort whatever manpower and matériel are required. Today, more than 8,000 Federal troops, many of them veterans of the Butler expedition, embark from Bermuda Hundred on the James River, Virginia, bound for a second strike at Fort Fisher. They rendezvous off Beaufort, North Carolina, with the huge naval fleet under Rear Admiral Porter. To replace Butler as commander of the Army’s contingent, Grant has appointed 37-year-old Major General Alfred H. Terry, who served in the previous assault and earlier distinguished himself on Morris Island during the attack on Charleston. Trained as a lawyer at Yale, Terry is one of those rare volunteer officers who, by innate ability, has risen through the ranks to high command. He is experienced in Army-Navy operations and has the equanimity to work closely with Porter without rubbing the temperamental admiral the wrong way. The two leaders will plan every detail of the coming attack in harmony.


At Thorn Hill, Alabama, these is a brief skirmish, part of the aftermath of the December Franklin-Nashville Campaign. On the Mobile & Ohio a skirmish flares at The Ponds, Mississippi. A Union expedition from Bloomfield to Poplar Bluff, Missouri, lasts until the 16th. Until the 27th Federals operate from Brownsville to Augusta, Arkansas.

[Doug64]

January 5, Thursday

President Davis continues to be concerned and frustrated by the increasing dissension, controversy over the draft, manpower problems, and the war itself.

In Washington, Lincoln, bothered by job seekers seeking election rewards, tries to concentrate on trade in recovered areas and domestic affairs. The President issues a pass to go through the lines to James W. Singleton, one of the several unofficial and self-named envoys seeking a possible settlement of the war. Secretary of War Stanton heads to Savannah to consult with Sherman; Lincoln writes Stanton that “time, now that the enemy is wavering, is more important than ever before. Being on the down-hill, & some what [sic] confused, keeping [keep] him going....”

[Doug64]

January 6, Friday

In the United States House of Representatives, Republican J.M. Ashley of Ohio again brings up the proposed 13th Amendment to abolish slavery. The amendment has passed the Senate, where Republicans and unionists have the requisite two thirds, but has failed in the House. President Lincoln, the Administration, and of course the Radicals, as well as some non-Radical Republicans, are putting pressure on certain Democrats to change their votes. Republicans undoubtedly would be able to pass the measure in the next Congress, but that doesn’t meet until December, and many, including the President, are anxious to see the amendment in effect as soon as possible. For the rest of the month the debate will take up much of the time of the House.

General Grant at Petersburg wires President Lincoln asking that General Butler be removed from command of the Army of the James. Grant feels there is a lack of confidence in his military ability, “making him an unsafe commander for a large army.” By rank Butler would have commanded in Grant’s absence. There is probably no more controversial figure in the North than Butler, and since the Fort Fisher fiasco agitation for his removal has increased.

President Davis writes a lengthy and contentious letter to Vice-President Alexander H. Stephens, who has long been critical of Davis. He objects mainly to Stephens’ alleging that Davis had preferred Lincoln over McClellan in the Union election: “I am aware that I was unfortunate to incur your disapproval of my policy.... I assure you that it would be to me a source of the sincerest pleasure to see you devoting your great and admitted ability exclusively to upholding the confidence and animating the spirit of the people to unconquerable resistance against their foes.” Meanwhile, Davis is trying still to find troops to defend the Carolinas.

Military action is confined to a skirmish at Huntsville, Arkansas.

[Doug64]

January 7, Saturday

Though Major General Benjamin F. Butler has often been attacked for his military shortcomings, his many friends and allies have always saved him. But this time men in high places are no longer willing to rally round him. Orders are issued by the Secretary of War removing Butler from command of the Department of Virginia and North Carolina. His replacement is Major General E.O.C. Ord. For a long time Butler has held high military posts, possibly because Lincoln felt he was less a thorn in the side that way; but there had to be an end. The mess of Fort Fisher brought matters to a head, and now Butler has to go regardless of political implications. He is instructed to report home to Massachusetts to await reassignment. Instead, he makes his way to Washington, there to plead his case in vain among his disillusioned supporters.

More Federal troops are pulled out of the Shenandoah Valley, now static, and sent elsewhere. Military action remains light, with skirmishing in Johnson County, Arkansas, and with Amerinds as Valley Station and Julesburg, Colorado Territory. Union scouts operate from Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and from Fort Ellsworth, Kansas.

Danish ironclad Sphinx leaves Copenhagen for Quiberon Bay, France. She has been secretly purchased by the Confederates and will become CSS Stonewall.

[Doug64]

January 8, Sunday

The huge naval fleet under Rear Admiral David D. Porter, plus the transport fleet containing Terry’s expeditionary force, arrives at rendezvous off Beaufort, North Carolina, ready to again attempt to take Fort Fisher.

At Savannah with Sherman, Major General John A. Logan resumes command of the Union XV Corps, relieving Major General Peter J. Osterhaus.

Skirmishing occurs only near Ivey’s Ford, Arkansas, and at Dove Creek, Concho River, Texas.

[Doug64]

January 9, Monday

The Constitutional Convention of Tennessee adopts an amendment abolishing slavery in the state and putting it to the vote of the people.

John Bell Hood moves his discouraged and greatly diminished Army of Tennessee to Tupelo, Mississippi. There will have to be an effort to pick up the pieces of the Confederate army in the West, for it is desperately needed in the Carolinas. Fighting breaks out in Texas County of Missouri, and near Disputanta Station, Virginia. Federals carry out a reconnaissance from Eastport to Iuka, Mississippi.

In the US House of Representatives, Democrat Moses Odell of New York indicates his change of position regarding abolition of slavery: “The South by rebellion has absolved the Democratic party at the North from all obligation to stand up longer for the defense of its ‘cornerstone’.” Odell will later receive an important political job from Lincoln. In opposition, Robert Mallory of Kentucky says, “the Constitution does not authorize an amendment to be made by which any State or citizen shall be divested of acquired rights of property or of established political franchises.”

[Doug64]

January 10, Tuesday

The debate in the US House of Representatives over slavery continues heatedly. John A. Kasson of Iowa: “you will never, never, have reliable peace in this country while that institution exists, the perpetual occasion of moral, intellectual, and physical warfare.” Fernando Wood of New York: “The Almighty has fixed the distinction of the races; the Almighty has made the black man inferior, and, so, by no legislation, by no partisan success, by no revolution, by no military power, can you wipe out this distinction. You may make the black man free, but when you have done that what have you done?”

A skirmish near Glasgow, Missouri, is the only fighting. The one major operation now under way, the second expedition to Fort Fisher, is being held up by raging seas and stormy weather off Beaufort, North Carolina.

[Doug64]

January 11, Wednesday

The Constitutional Convention of Missouri, meeting in St. Louis, adopts an ordinance abolishing slavery.

Thomas Lafayette Rosser, with a small band of about 300 Confederates, is raiding in West Virginia. This time he falls on Beverly in bad weather, capturing 580 Federals and causing some 28 casualties, and seizing considerable rations. Union investigators call it a disaster due to Federal carelessness and lack of discipline. There is a skirmish near Lexington, Missouri; a Union expedition from Helena, Arkansas, to Harbert’s Plantation, Mississippi; and a Federal scout until the 21st from Fort Wingate to Sierra del Datil and vicinity, New Mexico Territory.

In Richmond President Davis is still trying to build up an army to face Sherman in South Carolina. He plans to bring the Army of Tennessee, or most of what is left, to the east coast, and to gather all available reserves, militia, and recruits.

[Doug64]

January 12, Thursday

At Fort Fisher, North Carolina, Colonel Lamb’s men have quickly repaired the damage of the first attack last month. but Lamb’s superior—the stubborn, irascible General Braxton Bragg—refuses to send reinforcements from Hoke’s nearby division, feeling that he needs those 6,000 troops to defend Wilmington. Besides, Bragg believe that there won’t be another seaborne assault soon. Thus, when in the early evening the massive Federal fleet appears with the Army transports off Confederate Point, Lamb’s fortifications are manned by only 700 to 800 men to face the sixty vessels of the Navy war fleet and the 8,000 soldiers on the Army troop transports. The seas are calmer now and Admiral Porter’s fleet and General Terry’s expeditionary force are anxious to erase the stain of the first failure to take the vital fort that has kept Wilmington partially open to blockade runners. Landings, however, have to be put off until tomorrow. Onshore, Colonel William Lamb at Fort Fisher learns of the expedition’s arrival and notifies General Bragg.

Elsewhere, an affair takes place near Sugar Loaf Prairie, Arkansas. Union operations include a four-day expedition from Morganza, Louisiana, with skirmishes; a four-day scout from Camp Grover to Texas Prairie, Missouri; and a six-day scout from Warrensburg to Miami, Missouri.

Considering how fraught the Confederacy’s position has become, it isn’t surprising that when a peace feeler arrives from the North—even though it is proffered by a private citizen and based on a preposterous plan—the South grasps at it. The scheme has been conceived by the 74-year-old editor and politician Francis P. Blair; one of his sons has served as Lincoln’s first Postmaster General and another is a corps commander in Sherman’s army. It is Blair’s notion that the North and the South might be persuaded to stop fighting each other and instead join in attacking the French-supported government of the Emperor Maximilian in Mexico. Blair thinks Jefferson Davis might serve as dictator of Mexico after the Emperor’s ouster. Although both Davis and Lincoln may consider Blair’s proposal absurd, it does offer something neither President is willing to discourage out-of-hand: an opportunity for the two sides to talk to each other on the subject of peace. Lincoln accordingly gives Blair a pass through the Federal lines (he is careful not to endorse Blair’s plan—or even listen to it); and today Davis gives Blair an audience in Richmond. Blair explains his proposal and suggests that Davis might appoint a commission to carry on further discussions. After some hesitation Davis agrees, giving Blair a letter to be shown to Lincoln which indicates Davis is willing to enter into peace negotiations and that he will appoint an agent “to enter into conference, with a view to secure peace to the two countries.” That is the rub—Davis isn’t willing to give up independence for the South and the North’s entire policy is that “of one common country.” But at least there has been talk between the two contending sides.

The abolition debate continues in the US House as Democrat Samuel S. Cox of Ohio says, “Whatever it may be termed, I am opposed to compounding powers in the Federal Government.” Republican James A. Garfield of Ohio says, “Mr. Speaker, we shall never know why slavery dies so hard in the Republic and in this Hall, till we know why sin outlives disaster, and Satan is immortal....” Thaddeus Stevens, Radical leader from Pennsylvania, states that slavery is “the worst institution upon earth, one which is a disgrace to man and would be an annoyance to the infernal spirits.”

President Davis writes Lieutenant General Richard Taylor, son of President Zachary Taylor, “Sherman’s campaign has produced bad effect on our people, success against his future operations is needful to reanimate public confidence. Hardee requires more aid than Lee can give him, and Hood’s army is the only source to which we can now look.” Davis says some troops should be kept by Taylor in the West to hold Thomas in check, but the main part of what is left of the Army of Tennessee should be sent “to look after Sherman.”

[Doug64]

January 13, Friday

Just after dawn on the coast of North Carolina, Porter’s flotilla opens fire on Fort Fisher. During the day’s action, Colonel Lamb receives modest Confederate reinforcements, bringing his total force to about 1,500 men. Also joining him is the district commander, Major General W.H.C. Whiting, a talented military engineer who spent the better part of two years in planning and building the intricate fort. Whiting finds Lamb directing the defense from one of its ramparts. “Lamb, my boy,” the general says, “I have come to share your fate. You and your garrison are to be sacrificed.” Appalled, Lamb replies, “Don’t say so, General; we shall surely whip the enemy again.” Whiting has no intention of giving up, but he is embittered by Bragg’s unwillingness to send Hoke’s force.

In contrast to Porter’s wild cannonading during his December attack, the admiral’s fire this time, as Lamb will observe, “was concentrated, and the defined object of the fleet was the destruction of the land defenses by enfilade and direct fire.” Each squadron of the fleet takes up its assigned bombardment station, and each ship aims at a specific target. The frailer and smaller vessels are used to supply the warships with additional ammunition or bring in coal from Beaufort.

Suffering under the Federals’ heavy and accurate fire, Colonel Lamb and his men are hard-pressed to carry on. The Navy continues its ceaseless torment into the night, scattering shrapnel making it impossible to repair damage on the land-face under cover of darkness.

Meanwhile, General Terry’s troops have entered the fray. Beginning at about 8 am, some 200 small boats hauled by tugs bring ashore the 8,000 men on the beach five miles north of Fort Fisher. Each soldier carries forty rounds and rations for three days. But Terry is determined to capture the fort whether it takes three days or two weeks. Indeed, his first act ashore is to order defensive works dug across the half-mile-wide peninsula, to be manned by a large part of his command—two brigades of United States Colored Troops under Brigadier General Charles J. Pine. This force is to guard against any attack from Confederates to the north. Unknown to Terry, Hoke is also assuming a defensive position on orders from Bragg.


John Bell Hood resigns as commander of the Army of Tennessee, ending the flamboyant career of a gallant, hard-fighting, but often losing general. Lieutenant General Richard Taylor is named to succeed him under the supervision of P.G.T. Beauregard.

[Doug64]

January 14, Saturday

This morning, even as the Navy continues its bombardment of Fort Fisher, a Federal column is sent out to probe the land face of the fort. Taking the lead himself, General Terry moves up to within 700 yards of the parapet, makes a quick survey of the territory, and decides to launch a full-scale assault tomorrow.

Come evening Terry repairs to Porter’s flagship, where the two commanders plan their joint attack. Besides Paine’s two brigades and a reserve brigade, Terry has 3,300 troops available to storm the fort’s land face—a division of three brigades commanded by a talented young West Pointer, Brigadier General Adelbert Ames. Porter, always eager to win glory for the Navy, suggests that a contingent of 1,600 sailors and 400 Marines, led by Lieutenant Commander K.R. Breese, simultaneously charge the fort at the so-called Crescent Battery, where the land and sea faces meet. The scheme is a bit harebrained: Sailors fighting on land are always an unknown quantity. But Porter persuades Terry that his tars are equal to the task; they will advance in three columns, scale the fort’s steep parapet, and engage the enemy hand to hand with cutlasses and revolvers even as General Ames and his infantrymen are carrying out a similar operation to the west.


To the south some of Sherman’s forces move out to a new position from Beaufort to Pocotaligo, South Carolina, with skirmishing. For the rest of the month Federal troops operate against Amerind depredations on the Overland Stage Road between Julesburg and Denver, Colorado Territory, with intermittent fighting.

Beauregard temporarily takes command of the Army of Tennessee at Tupelo, Mississippi, but Richard Taylor is to take command on the 23rd.

[Doug64]

January 15, Sunday

General Bragg assures General Lee that the Federals’ assault on Fort Fisher is bound to fail because the fort hasn’t been surrounded—and cannot be unless or until the Federal fleet forces its way into the Cape Fear River.

At Fort Fisher, Admiral Porter assembles a volunteer force and instructs them to “board the fort on the run in a seaman-like way.” To the Navy Department and some of his subordinate officers, the admiral confidently suggests that if the Army fails again, he will take Fort Fisher with his own bluejackets. The sailors and Marines manage to land and dig protective rifle pits without being observed from the fort, most of whose defenders are in the bombproofs seeking shelter from the fleet’s relentless cannonading. The Navy men under Commander Breese are to charge when all the guns on the ships suddenly fall silent at 2 pm. Once the attacking columns have scaled the parapet, Porter’s guns will commence firing again, but only on the sea face, where no Federal troops will be engaged. The sailors wait anxiously for the silence that will be their attack signal. But the time comes, and the ships are still firing. Breese is hard put to keep his men in order. The Marines, who are supposed to bring up the rear, providing backup fire with their muskets, suddenly pull back toward the beach; their trenches are needed by Ames’s infantry, and they are trying to reestablish themselves in a safe shelf on the oceanfront. But some of the sailors, seeing the Marines pass to their rear, assume that a retreat has begun and trot after them.

At 2:30 pm, the silence that signals the attack finally settles over the fleet. “Charge! Charge!” shouts an officer onshore. Sailors and Marines rush forward, yelling and cheering—not in three waves according to plan, but in a jumbled mass to which no orders can be passed. By this time, a Confederate sentinel has spotted the hectic assault and spreads the alarm. Immediately, Confederate infantrymen rush to the parapet, urged on by General Whiting. He stands up on the parapet clapping his hands, singing out to his men to kill the “Yankee sons of bitches.” To support the guns that haven’t been dismounted from the fort’s land face, Colonel Lamb brings up all the small artillery that can be moved, and soon the bluejackets are being showered with grapeshot and canister. The sailors are packed like sheep in a pen, while the Confederates are crowding the ramparts not forty yards away and shooting into them as fast as they can fire. The Navy men, totally untrained for fighting on land, turn and flee, leaving 300 of their comrades dead or wounded on the beach; some of the wounded will drown in the incoming tide.

A cry of triumph goes up from the defenders. But suddenly Lamb catches sight of three Union flags fluttering from the fort’s western salient. He had thought the invaders repelled, but a larger and better-prepared force—General Ames’s division—has gained a footing at the other end of the land face. Ames and his troops have had their troubles. While they were waiting on a road by the Cape Fear River for the attacks to begin, the Confederate gunboat Chickamauga spotted them from the river and fired into their ranks. The soldiers were forced to take cover among the scrub trees and sand hills. Once they formed up again, they were late for their scheduled assault on the fort; they attacked after the Navy men did. As Admiral Porter will be quick to point out afterward, these mischances may have been fortunate, for the Confederates have been distracted from the main attack and persuaded to concentrate their artillery in the east angle. In response, Ames’s three brigades swept one after the other toward the less heavily fortified western salient. Soon they merge chaotically into a cheering mass crowned with glistening bayonets. They burst through the palisade in the teeth of cannon fire, scale the parapet, and fight the Confederates in vicious hand-to-hand battles from one gun emplacement to the next.

The conquest of the three westernmost traverses and the guns around them cost the Federals dearly. A round of canister cuts down the entire color guard of a Pennsylvania regiment. All three brigade commanders—Colonels Newton M. Curtis, Galusha Pennypacker, and Louis Bell—are severely wounded, Bell mortally. (Both Curtis and Pennypacker will be appointed brigadier generals for their actions today, making the 20-year-old Pennypacker the youngest general in the Federal army.) The fighting then shifts eastward to the fourth traverse, where Colonel John W. Moore is killed as he leads his Pennsylvania regiment forward waving the regimental flag. At the fifth traverse, Lieutenant Colonel Jonas Lyman of the same regiment kills a Confederate in hand-to-hand combat, only to be shot dead a moment later. The Confederates also lose some prominent officers in the struggle. General Whiting, among the first to reach the contested western salient, is confronted by a score of Federals demanding his surrender; he refuses, and they shoot him down. Colonel Lamb, who arrives on the scene soon after with the main body of defenders, fights long and hard to stem the Federal tide. He even rounds up wounded men from the fort’s improvised hospital and leads them back into the fight. But he too falls, severely wounded in the hip, as he leads a final desperate charge.

During this struggle for the northern wall of the fort, Admiral Porter’s gunners, under his personal direction, perform a feat that compensates in some degree for the ill-conceived land attack by his sailors. With astonishing precision, the rifled pivot guns of the New Ironsides and several smaller vessels clear the enemy out of each successive gun platform just ahead of the advancing Federal troops. The gunners are rarely off target, and only a handful of Federal troops are killed or wounded by stray shots. Such sharpshooter accuracy helps the Army take emplacement after emplacement with fewer casualties than they have reason to expect. Once the land face is in Federal hands, the rest of the stronghold is doomed to fall. Major James Reilly, commander of a North Carolina regiment and next in command to Colonel Lamb, hopes to hold out in Battery Buchanan to the south, but when he finds this last bastion abandoned by its defenders and the guns spiked he knows the fight is over. At 10 pm Reilly strides onto the beach in front of the fort, holding a white flag. As a Federal officer approaches, the major says curtly, “We surrender.”

This evening, Porter’s ships stage a victory celebration: The coast is lit by “battle lanterns, calcium lights, magnificent rockets, blue lights and every description of fireworks.” There is revelry, too, among the victors in the fort, though many are aghast at the human wreckage of the battle. The battle, one of the war’s fiercest fights, has cost the Federal Army and Navy 266 killed, 1,018 wounded, and 57 missing for 1,341 casualties. The Confederates have lost about 500 killed or wounded, and well over 1,000 of Fort Fisher’s defenders have been taken prisoner.

To the north, the remainder of the Federal army, 4,700 strong, man the defensive works against R.F. Hoke’s men of Bragg’s command, 6,000 strong, but are never seriously attacked. The Southern officers at the fort will violently assail Bragg for failing to relieve the pressure. Bragg will claim the defensive line was too strong. The result, though belated, is significant: Wilmington is cut off as a blockade-running port, so even though the city itself remains in Confederate hands it is now of little importance. The coastal war is over. From Virginia down to Florida and westward along the Gulf to the Mississippi, not a single important port remains open to sustain the faltering Confederate cause.

Up to now, blockade runners have continued to scurry in and out of Southern ports, evading and outwitting the Union squadrons—even this late, two out of every three blockade-running attempts along the entire Confederate coast were successful. Wilmington alone exported $65 million (2020 ~$1.071 billion) worth of cotton over the last year. In exchange for Southern cotton, the Confederacy received from blockade runners a continuous if inadequate supply of rifles, artillery pieces, and munitions, to say nothing of perfume, satins, and corset stays. All told, about 8,500 successful trips were made through the Federal blockade, whereas approximately 1,500 blockade-running vessels were captured or destroyed. Obviously the United States Navy has never come close to its objective of making the blockade 100 percent effective, and up to the closing months of the war a runner stood at least a 50-50 chance of slipping through the Union cordon. For all that, the impact of the blockade on the course of the war has been enormous. It has greatly constricted the South’s commerce, permitting her to export only small quantities of cotton and forcing her to buy supplies dear. This has drained the Confederacy of its limited supplies of specie, inaugurating spectacular inflation at home and undermining its credit overseas. And once the Confederacy lifted its voluntary and ill-advised embargo of cotton, it discovered that the blockade severely limited exports of this precious commodity. In dramatic contrast to the 10 million bales that were shipped in the last three antebellum years, only one million bales have shipped in the last years of the war. All told, the Federal blockade has reduced the South’s foreign trade by more than two thirds, just at the time when a vast increase in this exchange was needed to carry on the war effort. In short it has been succor only, not sustenance, that has filtered through the blockade to the beleaguered Confederacy. And even though the war will be decided on the battlefield, not on the blockade line, it surely would have been a different war had the US Navy not stood silent guard along the Southern coast and the crushing results of their assaults on the Confederates’ coastal strongholds.


Federal monitors at Charleston, South Carolina, have been demonstrating nightly near the forts at the entrance of the harbor. The Confederates therefore have placed torpedoes somewhat farther out. USS monitor Patapsco, dragging for torpedoes, strikes one herself. In some fifteen seconds the ironclad goes down with the loss of 62 men. A number on deck do escape.

Grant is making massive preparations to ensure the success of Sherman’s march into the Carolinas. A division from XIX Corps is sent by sea to garrison Savannah, so that Sherman can take all of his veterans with him. Meanwhile, at Clifton, Tennessee, Schofield’s XXIII Corps is detached from the Army of the Cumberland—which has just administered a smashing defeat at Nashville to General Hood and the Confederate Army of Tennessee. Schofield’s new assignment is to occupy the North Carolina port of Wilmington, then move inland to Goldsborough, which is roughly halfway between Savannah and Richmond. After repairing the railroad to Goldsborough and establishing a supply base there for Federal forces, he and his more than 20,000 men are to join Sherman for the push through North Carolina and into Virginia.

There is a skirmish in Madison County, Arkansas. Federal expeditions of several days each move from New Orleans to Mandeville, Louisiana, and from Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Through the 21st a Union scout operates from Fort Larned to Pawnee Fork, Walnut Creek, and Smoky Hill River, Kansas.

Edward Everett, clergyman, teacher, congressman, writer, and famous orator who spoke at Gettysburg with President Lincoln, and who was the 1860 vice-presidential candidate for the Constitutional Union party, dies at 71 in Boston.

President Lincoln writes Major General Grenville M. Dodge in St. Louis of his concern over “so much irregular violence in Northern Missouri as to be driving away the people and almost depopulating it.” The President tells Dodge to appeal to the people to “let one another alone.”

In Richmond, President Davis writes General Hardee in South Carolina, “I hope you will be able to check the advance of the enemy,” and adds that he is seeking all possible reinforcements to oppose Sherman. He writes the intransigent Governor Joseph E. Brown of Georgia asking for troops.