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Collection: WILLIAM HENRY CHASE WHITING PAPERS
Wilmington, North Carolina
Charleston, South Carolina
1861-1880
Physical Description: 26 items: letter press book, . correspondence, report,
orders, pass, newspaper clippings.
Acquisition: N. C. Historical Commission, Daily Records, 1910-1919: By
purchase from J. K. Smith, Grand Rapids, Michigan,
1916-1917»
letters (6)
from Whiting to Colonel Archer Anderson, General Braxton Bragg, and
Secretary of War Seddon. A letter to Flag Officer W. F. Lynch, Confed¬
erate Navy, was loaned (n.d.) by J. Alves Walker of Wilmington.'
| Description: William Henry Chase Whiting, bom 1824 on Mississippi array
J post, son of Colonel Levi A. Whiting of Massachusetts; educated Boston,
g. Georgetown, D. C., West Point (1845). Engineered river and harbor
fi improvements, fortifications in the South and California until 1861,
. two years (1856-1857) on Cape Fear River; married Kate D. Walker,
5 daughter of Major John Walker of Smithville [Southport] and Wilmington, 4'
| 1857. Resigned U. S. Army to enter Confederate service. Planned defenses
Charleston Harbor (l86l); with General Johnston in Shenandoah Valley,
General Beauregard at Manassas, and General Stonewall Jackson in Shenan¬
doah Valley and Richmond. Command of military district of Wilmington,
November, 1862; made haven for blockade runners and developed defenses
of Fort Fisher. Called to Petersburg, 1864; failed to accomplish his
part of Beauregard's plan at Drewry's Bluff; at own request returned to
Wilmington. Wounded at second bombardment of Fort Fisher, January, 1865;
died March, 1865, at Governor's Island, New York; reinterred at Wilming¬
ton, 1900.
The collection consists of ten (10) items in the letter press book;
six (6) of which pertain to defenses on Morris Island in Charleston
Harbor, including a full report to General Beauregard. There is also a
copy of a letter dated February 23, 1861 [illegible in part;], from
Jefferson Davis in Montgomery, Alabama, ordering Whiting to duty in .
Charleston. \ ..
