Men of Fort Fisher
First in a series of three arlieies on
the Confederacy's gr<katest naval
battle.
Rij MANIA WADE WELLMAN
I. Wilmington Wide Open
Now falls in billows deep the welcome
night
Upon white sands below;
While signal lamps aglow
Seek out Fort Fisher's distant, an¬
swering gleams,
The blockade runner's keen, supreme
delight —
Dear Dixie Land, the haven of our
dreams !
— James Si-runt.
U. S. Highway 421 will take you
there, and what do you find? Dune-
like banks grown up in grass, where
once Yankee shells splattered like rain
and the sand was sown with blue-
coated bodies; a monument to the
men, southern and northern, who
died on both sides of those breast¬
works; and the vast, immemorial sea
and sky, that once reeled to twenty-six
days of battle as terrible as any in
American history — Fort Fisher, twen¬
ty miles down Federal Point Peninsula
from Wilmington, between the Cape
Fear River and the Atlantic Ocean.
Still the waves find skulls of brave
men, buried in the sand they reddened
with blood. Still an idling beach¬
comber scatters the garrison of fiddler
crabs to grub out a rust-caked can¬
non ball that once hurled death on
death. Still, in imagination, sound the
shrill bugles, the murderous drums,
the incessant roar of artillery, all the
way from North Carolina’s dourest
holiday season, from December 20.
1864, to January 15, 1865.
Fort Fisher is almost forgotten.
Wind and waves have washed out the
footprints, and quiet decades the
memories, of General Hen Hutler and
Rear-Admiral David Porter; of Lieu¬
tenant W. B. Cushing, trying to top his
peerless feat of destroying the "Albe¬
marle"; of General William H. Whit¬
ing. resisting to the last and surrender¬
ing only when he was ready to die; of
Colonel William Lamb, stout builder
and stouter warrior, whose name
should have been Tiger; of the beard¬
less Junior Reserves, of the Federal
sailors who launched and fought his¬
tory's first amphibious action; of all
the glory and gore, the triumph and
tears, that gallantly streamed over the
ramparts they watched.
Wild Port
Wilmington, always a lively port,
was never so wild before or since as
during the War Between the States.
The Yankees began their blockade
The monument at site of Ft. Fisher,
near Carolina Reach
within months of secession, and kept
a triple cordon of vessels at the mouth
of the Cape Fear River, but they could
not send any respectable ship of war
through the shoals and over the bars
to right and left of Smith Island, with
the cape's anvil point thrust seaward.
Fort Holmes, Fort Campbell, Fort
Shaw, Fort Caswell. Fort Pender were
the snarling defenses at the river's
mouth. And through the screen of
hovering Federal craft and over the
shallow water danced in and out the
blockade-running craft of the South,
mostly on cloudy or stormy nights,
reckless and lightless, to keep in touch
with foreign ports.
Robert
П.
Lee had noticed Wil¬
mington. had sent word that if the port
was not kept open he could not sub¬
sist his army. Equal notice was paid
Wilmington up north, where Secretary
of the Navy Gideon Welles urged
President Lincoln to concentrate both
army and navy forces in an effort to
close this defiant rebel outlet. New Or¬
leans. Norfolk, Mobile had fallen. Still
Wilmington stood wide open, in every
sense of the word.
"1 he staid old town of Wilmington
was turned topsy-turvev during the
war," wrote Captain John Wilkinson
of the Confederate navy. It was true.
Streets and docks were lounged by
rogues and swindlers and speculators
and patriots. In 1864, staid citizens
kept their womenfolk in gardens be¬
hind the houses. Some moved inland,
renting their homes to agents of the
blockade-running firms. Still others
seemed to pay no attention to the
rowdy throngs — notably Mrs. Louis
de Rossct's group of gentle ladies who
carried food, bandages and medicines
to meet the long trains of wounded
arriving from Virginia on the Wilming¬
ton and Weldon Railroad. The
THE STATE. Vol. XX; No. 18. Entered at »rcond-cIat* matter, June 1. 1913, at the PoMofhre at Kalrlch. North Carolina, under the art of
March 3, 18*9. PubUihcd by Sharpe Publishing Co., Inc., Lawyer» Bid*., Raleigh, N.
С.
Copyright, 1912, by the Sharpe Publishing Co,. Inc.
