January 15, 1865---The Second Battle of Fort Fisher (Day Three)

JANUARY 15, 1865:           

After a long, difficult trip through the lines, Francis Preston Blair meets with Confederate President Jefferson Davis bearing his own peace proposals. Blair insists that Lincoln has already approved them in essence, which is untrue. He convinces Davis to dispatch Peace Commissioners to meet with Union representatives.

Part of Blair’s offer to Davis concerns an alliance between North and South against French-dominated Mexico, and the expansion of slavery southward into territories to be acquired from Latin America, including Cuba. Blair, like Seward at the beginning of the war, believes that an American alliance will end in reunification of the States of America and the furtherance of Manifest Destiny. Blair conveniently ignores the slavery debates raging on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line, deciding that peace between Euro-Americans can be bought cheaply, at the price of the freedom of African-Americans.

The Assault on Fort Fisher  (Day Three):           

The main assault on Fort Fisher commences at daybreak as the Union flotilla blasts the seawall of the fort. The sand and earthen wall partially collapses by noon, silencing all but four of the fort’s 22 seaward facing cannons. Thirteen Union brigades attack the fort. Confederate troops on the point attempt to turn back the massed attack, but only 400 Confederates are able to engage with the Union troops, and they are quickly overrun. 

In desperation, the Confederates turn the landward-facing guns and the guns of Fort Buchanan (a subfort of the Fort Fisher complex) against Fort Fisher itself, trying to blast the Yankees away from the walls. Many men in blue are already topping the walls and hacking with axes at the defensive palisade of sharpened spikes and abatis. Although the Confederate cannonade temporarily stops the Union advance, the Union naval flotilla soon zeroes in on the Southron guns, putting them out of commission.  

The battle degenerates into hand-to-hand combat. General Whiting, the overall Confederate commander and designer of the fort, is severely wounded, and later dies of his wounds. His subordinate, Colonel Lamb spends the next seven years on crutches. 

Losses on the Union side are even more severe. The Confederates within the fort viciously defend themselves, shooting down most of the Union regimental officers and all of the Brigade-level officers. Without a command structure to manage the battle, a suggestion is made to entrench the Federal line until morning. Brigadier General Newton M. Curtis U.S.A. laughs it off --- “Entrench?” he says, holding up a spade. “Here, Johnnies, dig deep, because I’m coming for you!”

Shells scream in exploding in deadly bouquets of shrapnel as the very air vibrates and the stench of cordite, blood and entrails fills men’s nostrils. The nearly leaderless Union forces seem possessed --- without officers, in blue mobs, they attack the fort, screaming like banshees, terrifying their enemies with their own Union Yawp. Unable to take the time to reload in the chaos, they bayonet or club to death any Rebel who stands in their way. The men in gray are no longer fighting for the fort, they are fighting for their lives. Even after the sun goes down the fight continues in the lurid light of shellfire and flame and powder-flash that punctuates the pungent darkness. 

Around 9:30 P.M. General Whiting sends an urgent message to General Braxton Bragg C.S.A., headquartered further up the coast, asking for reinforcements. Bragg, assuming the fort is impregnable, does nothing. By the time he reconsiders, Fort Fisher is gone. 

But more than Fort Fisher is gone.  Wilmington, the Confederacy’s last remaining port facility is closed off to the blockade-runners. The loss of Wilmington is, in its way, as devastating a loss as the loss of Atlanta in September. For Fort Fisher’s mighty guns have kept the Union blockade at bay, farther out to sea, allowing runners nearly free access to Wilmington. Nowhere else in the South has this been true. 

Hated Charleston, the “Cradle of Secession” is the only other east coast port that has not been taken or blocked off by occupation of its sea frontage. But Charleston, so despised, has been the most heavily blockaded port in the Confederacy since 1861. Virtually nothing comes in through Charleston. But despite everything, much has been coming in.

Wilmington has been the ultimate supply line for the Army of Northern Virginia: In the last two months of 1864 alone, Wilmington’s wharves have handled 8.6 million pounds of beef, 1.9 million pounds of saltpeter, 1.5 million pounds of lead, half a million pairs of shoes, half a million pounds of coffee, 300,000 blankets, 70,000 rifles, 2,600 medical shipments, 100 crates of revolvers, and 43 cannons for the army, in addition to a plethora of civilian supplies, most of it from Europe or European New World dependencies. Now all that will be gone. Robert E. Lee’s starving army will starve the more.  The end of the Civil War is less than 90 days away.

Fort Fisher has been an expensive prize. Of the 10,000 Federals engaged in the battle, 1,400 are casualties (400 killed). Of the 8,500 Confederates engaged, both inside and outside the fort, 600 are casualties (500 killed).  

    

January 14, 1865---The Second Battle of Fort Fisher (Day Two)

JANUARY 14, 1865:           

The Assault on Fort Fisher (Day Two):   

As Confederate troops advance in a counterattack, 9,000 Union infantry take and hold the south end of  Confederate (formerly and later Federal) Point at the mouth of the Cape Fear River. The Confederates, outnumbered, call off their assault.  The 800 men inside the fort hold out, though many are being driven mad by the relentless bombardment. The sand walls of the fort are beginning to give way. By the end of the battle, 1.6 million tons of Union ordnance will be fired at the fort.

January 13, 1865---The Second Battle of Fort Fisher (Day One)

JANUARY 13, 1865:          

The Assault on Fort Fisher (Day One):     

The largest amphibious assault in history (to that time) is launched against Fort Fisher, outside of Wilmington, North Carolina. The fort, which was unsuccessfully assaulted by troops and ships under General Benjamin “Beast” Butler U.S.A. in December, is today hit by a flotilla of 60 warships and 10,000 soldiers, sailors, and marines. On this day, under cover of a brutal bombardment of 100 shells per minute and against heavy resistance, 2,000 U.S. Marines establish a beachhead under the seawall of the fort. 

 

January 12, 1865---Activist Generals

JANUARY 12, 1865:          

A group of African-American community leaders meet with Union Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton and General William Tecumseh Sherman U.S.A. to discuss the fate of the Freedmen. It is from this meeting that Sherman and Stanton devise the plan to grant each freed family forty acres of expropriated plantation lands. Sherman subsequently, and upon reflection, includes the gift of farming implements and draught animals in the plan, leading to the famed “Forty Acres and a Mule” plan. It is the first attempt at American social engineering.

January 11, 1865---"Whatever measures are to be adopted should be adopted at once."

JANUARY 11, 1865:           

 Missouri abolishes slavery.

Realizing that moral force will be needed to resolve the issue of emancipating and arming slaves for the Confederacy, General Robert E. Lee writes a “private” letter to his friend, Virginia State Senator Andrew Hunter, fully intending that Hunter will make Lee’s opinions known. Although the text of the letter is not published until 1885, its contents re-form the 1865 debate on Confederate emancipation. Lee writes several other subsequent similar letters to other Confederate leaders as well:

Headquarters  Army of Northern Virginia

January 11, 1865

Hon. Andrew Hunter

Richmond, Va.

Dear Sir:

I have received your letter of the 7th instant, and without confining myself to the order of your interrogatories, will endeavor to answer them by a statement of my views on the subject.  I shall be most happy if I can contribute to the solution of a question in which I feel an interest commensurate with my desire for the welfare and happiness of our people.

Considering the relation of master and slave, controlled by humane laws and influenced by Christianity and an enlightened public sentiment, as the best that can exist between the white and black races while intermingled as at present in this country, I would deprecate any sudden disturbance of that relation unless it be necessary to avert a greater calamity to both.  I should therefore prefer to rely upon our white population to preserve the ratio between our forces and those of the enemy, which experience has shown to be safe.  But in view of the preparations of our enemies, it is our duty to provide for continued war and not for a battle or a campaign, and I fear that we cannot accomplish this without overtaxing the capacity of our white population.

Should the war continue under the existing circumstances, the enemy may in course of time penetrate our country and get access to a large part of our negro population.  It is his avowed policy to convert the able-bodied men among them into soldiers, and to emancipate all.  The success of the Federal arms in the South was followed by a proclamation of President Lincoln for 280,000 men, the effect of which will be to stimulate the Northern States to procure as substitutes for their own people negroes thus brought within their reach.  Many have already been obtained in Virginia, and should the fortune of war expose more of her territory, the enemy would gain a large accession to his strength.  His progress will thus add to his numbers, and at the same time destroy slavery in a manner most pernicious to the welfare of our people.  Their negroes will be used to hold them in subjection, leaving the remaining force of the enemy free to extend his conquest.  Whatever may be the effect of our employing negro troops, it cannot be as mischievous as this.  If it end in subverting slavery it will be accomplished by ourselves, and we can devise the means of alleviating the evil consequences to both races.  I think, therefore, we must decide whether slavery shall be extinguished by our enemies and the slaves be used against us, or use them ourselves at the risk of the effects which must be produced upon our social institutions.  My opinion is that we should employ them without delay.  I believe that with proper regulations they can be made efficient soldiers.  They possess the physical qualifications in an eminent degree.  Long habits of obedience and subordination, coupled with the moral influence which in our country the white man possesses over the black, furnish an excellent foundation for that discipline which is the best guaranty of military efficiency.  Our chief aim should be to secure their fidelity.

There have been formidable armies composed of men having no interest in the cause for which they fought beyond their pay or the hope of plunder.  But it is certain that the surest foundation upon which the fidelity of an army can rest, especially in a service which imposes peculiar hardships and privations, is the personal interest of the soldier in the issue of the contest.  Such an interest we can give our negroes by giving immediate freedom to all who enlist, and freedom at the end of the war to the families of those who discharge their duties faithfully (whether they survive or not), together with the privilege of residing at the South.  To this might be added a bounty for faithful service.

We should not expect slaves to fight for prospective freedom when they can secure it at once by going to the enemy, in whose service they will incur no greater risk than in ours.  The reasons that induce me to recommend the employment of negro troops at all render the effect of the measures I have suggested upon slavery immaterial, and in my opinion the best means of securing the efficiency and fidelity of this auxiliary force would be to accompany the measure with a well-digested plan of gradual and general emancipation.  As that will be the result of the continuance of the war, and will certainly occur if the enemy succeed, it seems to me most advisable to adopt it at once, and thereby obtain all the benefits that will accrue to our cause.

The employment of negro troops under regulations similar in principle to those above indicated would, in my opinion, greatly increase our military strength and enable us to relieve our white population to some extent.  I think we could dispense with the reserve forces except in cases of necessity.

It would disappoint the hopes which our enemies base upon our exhaustion, deprive them in a great measure of the aid they now derive from black troops, and thus throw the burden of the war upon their own people.  In addition to the great political advantages that would result to our cause from the adoption of a system of emancipation, it would exercise a salutary influence upon our whole negro population, by rendering more secure the fidelity of those who become soldiers, and diminishing the inducements to the rest to abscond.

I can only say in conclusion that whatever measures are to be adopted should be adopted at once.  Every day's delay increases the difficulty.  Much time will be required to organize and discipline the men, and action may be deferred until it is too late.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

R.E. Lee,

General

Within days, Lee’s letter becomes the talk of the South:

Many non-slaveholding Southern whites begin to rail against “the Planter class” in Letters To The Editor. Even the privileged and the slaveholding begin to criticize those who will not support Lee or support the Cause:

A Georgia Congressman says of critics of the policy, "[Our people] give up their sons, husbands, [and] brothers [ ] often without murmuring, to the army; but let one of their negroes be taken, and what a howl you will hear."

“If the negroes are armed and do their duty, you may confidently count on the South taking possession of European sympathy in this quarrel,” one overseas correspondent writes. 

The Richmond Enquirer endorses Lee’s position, and other newspaper editors in smaller towns agree. The editor of the Mobile Register writes,  “Such men cling to the Negro with the tenacity of death because, forsooth, he may be worth a few hundred dollars to them.”

Captain S.T. Foster C.S.A. writes, ". . . [M]en who have not only been taught from their infancy that the institution of slavery was right; but men who actually owned and held slaves up to this time --- have now changed in their opinions regarding slavery, so as to be able to see the other side of the question --- to see that for man to have property in man was wrong, and that the Declaration of Independence meant more than they had ever been able to see before. That all men are, and of right ought to be free has a meaning different from the definition they had been taught from their infancy up ----and to see that the institution (though perhaps wise) had been abused, and perhaps this terrible war with its results, was brought upon us as a punishment. These ideas come not from the Yanks or northern people but come from reflection, and reasoning among ourselves.” 

Although opposition to the arming and emancipating of blacks has receded somewhat since the beginning of the debate in November, the opposition is still very strong, very vocal, and very influential:

Catherine Edmondston, the wife of a Planter, exclaims that the arming of slaves would, “. . . destroy at one blow the highest jewel in the crown.”

“If slavery is to be abolished then I take no more interest in our fight,” warns General Clement H. Stevens.

“All the abolitionists are not in the North!” thunders North Carolina Senator Josiah Turner, Jr.

“There is nothing in the present aspect of our military affairs to justify the hazardous experiment,” Florida Congressman Samuel St. George Rogers asserts.

“There was a time that there was a danger that the Southern Confederacy would be overpowered . . . but that time is passed,” The Richmond Examiner opines in response to the debate.

“[T]his country without slave labor would be completely worthless . . . If the negroes are freed [then] the country . . . is not worth fighting for . . . We can only live & exist by that species of labor: and hence I am willing to continue to fight to the last," writes William Nugent C.S.A. to his wife at home.

"I do not think I love my country well enough to fight with black soldiers," writes Private Joseph Maides C.S.A. in a letter home.

"Independence without slavery, would be valueless . . . the South without slavery would not be worth a mess of pottage," declares Caleb Cutwell of Texas.

Even after Appomattox, some Southerners refuse to face reality. “Subjugation is an impossibility!”  a Georgian writes in mid-April even as Joe Johnston is surrendering.    

And so, the debate, for the moment, goes on.