The Importance Of Fort Fisher

Early in the war, the U.S.Navy faced a twofold task. First it had to enforce the blockade. This actually proved less difficult than had been anticipated, for there were comparatively few ports which combined adequate harbors, harbor defenses, and connections with the interior. The most important were Norfolk (James River), Roanoke Island, New Bern (Neuse River), Beaufort, Wilmington (Cape Fear River), Charleston, Beaufort (South Carolina), Savannah, and, on the Gulf, Pensacola, Mobile, New Orleans, and Galveston. Obviously it was easier to capture these ports, once and for all, than to blockade them throughout the war. Therefore, it was to this task that the Federal Army-Navy team first addressed itself.

One after another the ports fell: first Hilton Head, Port Royal, and Beaufort (South Carolina); then Roanoke Island, controlling Albemarle Sound; then - after the Monitor had forced the Merrimac to withdraw - Norfolk at the mouth of the James; and then James Island, outside Charleston. The great prize was, however, New Orleans, greatest city in the Confederacy and key to the Gulf and the Mis- sissippi. After that the Confederacy had only a few good ports to which the swift blockade-runners could sail: Charleston, Wilmington, Mobile, and Galveston. It took longer to capture these, and Charleston was never captured from the sea, but it is no exaggeration to say that by the end of 1862 the Confederacy was pretty well bottled up.

With the fall of Mobile and the effective bottling up of Charleston, Wilmington, on the Cape Fear River, was the only major port still in Confederate hands, and throughout 1864 it was the chief haven of blockade-runners.

With the advance of Sherman northward through the Carolinas it became important to capture the Cape Fear entrance and Wilmington in order to afford a supply base for the Union armies. The mouth of the Cape Fear was controlled by Fort Fisher, whose ramparts faced both the land and the sea.

General Lee had informed the defenders of Fort Fisher that they must hold it at all costs; otherwise he could not continue to subsist his army. For the same reason Grant was determined to reduce it.