February 21, 1865---The Battle of Forks Road

FEBRUARY 21, 1865:      

The Battle of Forks Road:      

With the fall of Fort Anderson, the retreating Confederate troops, numbering about 3,000, dig in at Forks Road just outside Wilmington, and defend the city against 8,500 Union troops led by Jacob Horne, “a local man who betrayed his State, family and his brother  --- the latter was among [the] defenders.” 

The Union assault is led by the vaunted 54^th Massachusetts (U.S.C.T.) of Battery Wagner fame. 

The defense of Wilmington is tenacious, and the Confederate commander Major General Robert Frederick Hoke, advises his superior General Hardee that the city can be saved. Hardee passes this gladsome news on to General Braxton Bragg, in overall Southern command of the theatre, who orders that Hoke hold only long enough to allow the city to be evacuated. Bragg also orders that Hoke is to “set fire to all tobacco, cotton and naval stores that could be used by the enemy. Hoke is further ordered to scuttle the completed but unlaunched ironclad C.S.S. WILMINGTON. 

Hoke, later, and perhaps hyperbolically, called “Lee’s best General” dutifully follows orders, although it galls him to do so. He withdraws his men, setting fire to the city’s stores as he goes, and sets up a defensive position further north at Weldon --- the southmost terminus of the Weldon Railroad, Robert E. Lee’s last supply line into the enclave of Petersburg and Richmond. For his defense of Wilmington, Hoke is later lionized by proponents of The Lost Cause as “The Stonewall of Forks Road” though he refuses such approbations.