Nipping Away at Dixie: The Port by Port Campaign to Seal the Confederate Coast

Thus, Lamb was left alone to absorb the merciless naval bombardment. In the December attack, Porter had fired 20,271 projectiles weighing 1,275,000 pounds. This time his demand for more deliberate and accurate fire resulted in 19,682 rounds being fired, a few hundred less than before, but, by using heavier weapons, the total weight was 1,652,638 pounds, a new record for a single naval engagement. Bragg finally acquiesced to Lamb’s pleas for reinforcements and dispatched a scant 1,100 to Fort Fisher. Of these, only 350 arrived, the rest being turned back by the fury of Porter’s fire. ⁵⁹

Porter had instructed his men to aim not at the fort’s flag but at individual guns. ⁶⁰ The results were devastating. Lamb wrote that
In the former bombardment the fire of the fleet had been diffuse, not calculated to effect any particular damage, and so wild that at least one-third of the missiles fell in the river beyond the fort or in the bordering marshes; but now the fire was concentrated, and the definite object of the fleet was the destruction of the land defenses by enfilade and direct fire... All day and night on the 13th and 14th of January the navy continued its ceaseless torment; it was impossible to repair damages at night on the land-face... At least two hundred had been killed and wounded in the two days since the fighting began. Only three or four of my land guns were of any service. ⁶¹

In the midst of this bombardment, Terry had led a probe of the Confederate defenses on the morning of January 14 and advanced to within 700 yards of the parapet. He decided to launch a full-scale assault the next day. That evening, he returned to Porter’s flagship where the two planned the joint attack. ⁶²

Even amid this spirit of cooperation, Porter retained a measure of service pride. He suggested that a contingent of 1,600 sailors and 400 marines participate in the assault with Terry’s soldiers. This naval force was to be commanded by Lieutenant Commander K. R. Breese. Its objective would be the Crescent Battery where the land and sea faces met. ⁶³ Breese’s men succeeded in landing without detection on January 15, and at 2:30 p.m., as the ships ceased firing, Breese launched his assault. Scott Stuckey describes the scheme as “a dubious proposition, consisting of sending sailors ignorant of infantry tactics and armed only with cutlasses and pistols against strong works.” ⁶⁴ As should have been expected, the tactic failed miserably, with Breese taking about 300 casualties before retreating—“ingloriously flying along the beach way from the fort” as one Federal soldier described it. ⁶⁵

This debacle, however, had an unintended benefit. The Confederates were convinced that this effort in the east was the main attack and were thus distracted when the true main attack, a 3,300 man division commanded by Brigadier General Adelbert Ames, moved against the western salient. ⁶⁶

Ames’s three brigades attacked one after another in the type of mass close-in assault that Lamb knew was one of Fort Fisher’s vulnerabilities. At 2:00 p.m., a group of 60 sharpshooters from the 13th Indiana, armed with Sharps repeating rifles, and 40 men from Brigadier General Custis’s brigade rushed forward and dug themselves in within 175 yards of the fort. With the sharpshooters covering the parapet, Custis advanced the rest of the brigade to a position 50 yards behind the sharpshooters. Colonel Galusha Pennypacker’s brigade moved up behind Custis, and Colonel Louis Bell formed up his brigade 200 yards behind Pennypacker.

At 3:25 p.m., Custis’s brigade led the assault with axmen hacking a breach in the palisade and the rest of the brigade gaining the parapet. Pennypacker moved up on Custis’s right, and Bell moved up on the right of Pennypacker. The assault became a desperate hand to hand fight from one traverse to the next. ⁶⁷

In the midst of this struggle, Porter demonstrated just how the accuracy of his fires had improved from the December attack. The New Ironsides and several smaller vessels used their rifled pivot guns to deliver precise fires to clear the Confederates out of each successive gun platform just ahead of the advancing Federal soldiers. ⁶⁸ Rod Gragg writes that “The lethal hail of artillery shells fell with incredible precision, walking around the landface wall, clearing it of Confederate defenders, edging up to within yards of the Federal infantry...” ⁶⁹

Ames had sent more than 3,000 men into the fort, but it still had not fallen. He asked Terry for reinforcements. Terry turned to Colonel Comstock for advice, and Comstock advocated audacity. He recommended committing both Colonel Joseph Abbott’s reserve brigade and Paine’s division. Paine had already repulsed one attack from Hoke, but Terry decided to accept the risk of another. Both Abbott and Paine would attack Fort Fisher. ⁷⁰

The exhausted Confederates had little hope against Abbott’s fresh troops. At Comstock’s advice, Abbott’s brigade was organized into 100 man teams which assaulted each traverse in turn. Losses in one team were immediately reinforced by another. Still, the Confederates refused to surrender, stubbornly expecting Bragg to commit Hoke to attack at any moment. But such help would not come, and, after six hours of incredible fighting, Federal soldiers occupied Fort Fisher from the river to the ocean. ⁷¹

Once the landface was in Federal control, the rest of Fort Fisher was doomed to fall. What resistance that remained was consolidated at Battery Buchanan. Against this objective, Abbott advanced with his brigade on one side and the 27th US Colored Troops under Colonel Albert Blackman on the other. At 10:00 p.m., the Confederates surrendered. The fighting had been horrific. One Federal sailor wrote that “If hell is what it is said to be then the interior of Fort Fisher is a fair comparison.” Federal casualties were 955 for the Army and 383 for the Navy. The Confederates lost about 500 killed or wounded and well over 1,000 were taken prisoner. Both Lamb and Whiting were wounded, the latter mortally. All three of Ames’s brigade commanders were severely wounded, Bell mortally. Even after the fighting ended, casualties continued to come. In an unfortunate tragedy, two celebrating sailors accidentally ignited the fort’s main powder magazine. In the explosion, 104 Federals were killed or wounded. ⁷²

The coastal war was over. From Virginia south to Florida and west along the Gulf of Mexico to the Mississippi, not a single important port remained open to sustain the Confederacy. True, the Civil War would ultimately be decided by the great inland armies rather than in the smaller coastal battles, but the Federal victories on the coast, from their modest beginnings at Hatteras Inlet to the climatic struggle at Fort Fisher, had made valuable contributions. ⁷³ Guiding these efforts had been the pioneering work of the Navy Board at the war’s beginning.
Endnotes

Fort Fisher: The Final Chapter

What the Navy Board had brought to the coastal war was an exemplary display of the operational art—“the application of creative imagination by commanders and staffs… to design strategies, campaigns, and major operations and organize and employ military forces.” ¹ The elements of operational design (formerly known as the facets of operational art) are termination, end states and objectives, effects, center of gravity, decisive points, direct versus indirect, lines of operations, operational reach, simultaneity and depth, timing and tempo, forces and functions, leverage, balance, anticipation, synergy, culmination, and arranging operations. ² Although from a different era, these elements provide a useful framework for discussing the Navy Board and the coastal war.

One clear adherent to this concept in the coastal campaign was Admiral Du Pont. For Du Pont, the most important strategic objective was to maintain and improve the integrity of the blockade. His experience in Mexico had shown him the dangers of deviating from this course. Thus, when Du Pont found himself under increasing pressure to attack Charleston, he considered it “impulsive nonsense,” arguing that the port’s capture would result in mere symbolic importance rather than making a genuine improvement in the strategic situation. ⁵

Du Pont’s assessment is very consistent with the “end states and objectives” element of operational design. Du Pont believed that improving the blockade was his most important mission, because it was this condition that would lead directly to the strategic goal of strangling the Confederacy. Thus, he considered seizing Charleston to be unimportant to the overall blockade campaign. Worse than that in Du Pont’s mind, an operation aimed at Charleston would drain resources away from what was strategically important: tightening the blockade. ⁶ Although unable to make his point in Washington, Du Pont clearly understood that operational objectives must relate to the larger strategic objective.

Effects. An effect is the physical or behavioral state of a system that results from an action, a set of actions, or another effect. A set of desired effects contributes to the conditions necessary to achieve an associated military objective. ⁷ Effects in the coastal campaign include forcing the Confederates to abandon coastal territory and the reduction of blockade running.

The Federal successes on both the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts caused panic among the Confederates. In the Atlantic Campaign, Du Pont’s victory at Port Royal sent Confederates fleeing from the coast, virtually abandoning it to the Federals. Porter wrote that “there seemed to be a stampede along the coast as soon as our naval vessels made appearance.” ⁸ Du Pont agreed, observing that the string of successful Federal operations had the Confederates “flying about like moths around a lamp.” ⁹ The easy seizures of Fernandina, Jacksonville, and St. Augustine were the result. In fact, Du Pont’s Port Royal success caused the Confederates to completely reorganize their coastal defensive system, withdrawing to a few key areas such as Charleston.

Likewise, Farragut’s success at New Orleans had the effect of weakening Confederate morale and sowing panic along the Gulf. A few practice shots at Mobile were all it took to convince the Confederates at Pensacola, some 30 miles away, to evacuate. Again the effect impacted broader Confederate strategy, causing President Davis to begin “abandoning the seaboard in order to defend the Tennessee line which is vital to our safety.” ¹⁰

Another effect of the coastal war was obviously a reduction in blockade running. Historians have long debated the overall effectiveness of the blockade, but David Surdam’s analysis is among the most persuasive. Surdam concludes, “The Union Navy’s control of the American waters had three main effects: denying the Confederacy the badly needed purchasing power that exporting its staple products would have generated; raising the costs, and reducing the volume of imported goods; and deranging intraregional trade.” ¹¹ While not alone decisive, these effects certainly contributed to the overall objective of defeating the Confederacy.

Clausewitz argues that the center of gravity is “the point at which all our energies should be directed.” ¹⁴ The Federal blockade and the coastal campaigns that supported it clearly reflected this Clausewitzian understanding of the center of gravity.