Robert Hoke

Wilmington is the last major port open to the Confederacy on the Atlantic seacoast.

Ships leaving Wilmington via the Cape Fear River and setting sail for the Bahamas, Bermuda or Nova Scotia to trade cotton and tobacco for needed supplies from the British are protected by the fort.

Based on the design of the Malakoff Tower in Sevastopol, Ukraine, Fort Fisher had been constructed mostly of earth and sand.

This makes absorbing the pounding of heavy fire from Union ships more effective than older fortifications constructed of mortar and bricks.

Twenty-two guns face the ocean, while twenty-five face the land.

The sea face guns are mounted on twelve-foot- (three point seven meter-) high batteries with larger, fofty-five-and-sixty-foot -(fourteen and eighteen meter-) batteries at the southern end of the fort.

Underground passageways and bombproof rooms exist below the giant earthen mounds of the fort.

The fortifications have kept Union ships from attacking the port of Wilmington and the Cape Fear River.

On December 24, 1864, Union forces under Major General Benjamin F. Butler and Rear Admiral David D. Porter had launched a two-day attack, but were beaten back.

The Union Army returns in January, this time under Major General Alfred Terry, chosen by Grant to lead a Provisional Corps of nine thousand troops from the Army of the James.

Porter returns with almost sixty vessels of the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron to the North Carolina coast after the failed December attempt.

Confederate Major General Williiam H.C. Whiting, who commands the District of Cape Fear, pleads with the department commander, General Braxton Bragg, to send reinforcements.

Bragg is unwilling to reduce his forces, which he feels are necessary to defend Wilmington.

He finally sends reinforcements to Colonel William Lamb's garrison, bringing the total at Fort Fisher to nineteen hundred.

A division of sixty-four troops under Major General Robert Hoke is stationed on the peninsula north of the fort.

Whiting personally arrives at the fort and tells the commander: "Lamb my boy, I have come to share your fate. You and your garrison are to be sacrificed." (Gragg, Rod (1994), Confederate Goliath: The Battle of Fort Fisher, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, p. 121)

Alfred Terry had previously commanded troops during the Second Battle of Charleston Harbor and understands the importance of coordinating with the Union Navy.

He and Admiral Porter make well laid plans for the joint attack.

Terry will send one division of United States Colored Troops under Charles J. Paine to hold off Hoke's division on the peninsula.

Terry's other division under Adelbert Ames, supported by an independent brigade under Colonel Joseph Carter Abbott, will move down the peninsula and attack the fort from the land face, striking the landward wall on the river side of the peninsula.

Porter organizes a landing force of two thousand sailors and marines to land and attack the fort's sea face, on the seaward end of the same wall.

On January 13, Terry lands his troops in between Hoke and Fort Fisher.

Hoke is unwilling to risk opening the route to Wilmington and remains unengaged while the entire Union force lands safely ashore.

General Lee orders Joseph E. Johnston to take command of the Army of Tennessee and other Confederate units in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida, on February 23, and to "concentrate all available forces and drive back Sherman." (Hughes, Nathaniel Cheairs, Jr. Bentonville: The Final Battle of Sherman and Johnston Chapel Hill, North Caronlia: University of North Carolina Press, 1996, p. 21-22)

Johnston manages to concentrate in North Carolina the Army of Tennessee commanded by Stewart, Major General Robert Hoke's division from the Army of Northern Virginia, troops from the Department of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida commanded by Hardee, and cavalry under the command of Hampton, calling the united force the Army of the South.