Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 4.djvu/294

276 retirement of this great armament without accomplishing anything was a great disappointment to the Federal authorities. Captain Selfridge says: &quot;Words cannot express the bitter feeling and chagrin of the navy.&quot; When it became evident to the Confederate government that Fisher was to be attacked, General Hoke s division was ordered to its relief, reaching Wilmington on the 24th of December, and the advanced regiments arrived at Fisher on the same day. Butler, having landed a force on the ocean side, the Seventeenth North Carolina was withdrawn from the fort on the 25th and ordered to attack. As General Butler withdrew his men, only a skirmish occurred. General Bragg was in chief command in the State. Evidently not expecting a second attack, he withdrew Hoke from Sugar Loaf, and the division went into camp near Wilmington, sixteen miles from Fisher.

But General Terry, with about the same force that General Butler had commanded, except that it was rein forced by two negro brigades, was ordered to retrieve the first reverse. On the i4th of January, Terry landed 8,500 men without opposition, and that night, moving across the peninsula, constructed a line of field works from the ocean to Cape Fear river, thereby cutting off all land communication between the fort and General Bragg s command. No effort of any importance seems to have been made by the commanding general to assist the doomed fort. After the first bombardment, five companies of the Thirty-sixth regiment (artillery) returned from Georgia and took their old place in the garrison. The total force there, after the return of these men, was about 1,900.

&quot;All day and all night on the i3th and i4th [of January],&quot; says Colonel Lamb, &quot;the fleet kept up a ceaseless and terrific bombardment. ... It was impossible to repair damage at night. No meals could be prepared for the exhausted garrison ; the dead could not be buried