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 54th 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.
