Issue Date: August 09, 2004

The Lore of the Corps
Corps helped win key Civil War fight

By Keith A. Milks
Special to the Times


By January 1865, the Confederacy was in its death throes. Union armies were slashing their way through South Carolina and Georgia with abandon, and the only port through which the struggling Confederate army could move arms, ammunition and supplies was at Wilmington, N.C.
Protecting these vital port facilities was Fort Fisher, which lay at the seaward neck of the Cape Fear River and dominated the waterway passage to Wilmington.

More than 2,000 Confederate troops with 60 heavy cannons and mortars garrisoned the fort, which was the last major stronghold of the Confederacy.

While Union Army forces advanced from the landward side just after dawn on Jan. 13, a landing force of 1,600 sailors and Marines approached from the sea. The 365-man Marine contingent was commanded by Capt. Lucian L. Dawson.

As the landing force drew closer to Fort Fisher, Navy ships ceased fire, and 1,600 Marines and sailors charged the fort. With the bombardment lifted, Confederate sharpshooters remounted the fort’s walls and opened fire with their muskets. Most of the sailors hit the ground, and the Marines surged past to continue the attack.

Struggling through the sand in the face of intense cannon and rifle fire, the Marine attack was doomed to fail. Very few Marines reached Fort Fisher’s wooden palisade, and those who did retreated after seeing the attack’s futility.

Pvt. Henry Wasmuth was among those charging forward. In the midst of the fighting, he pulled a young naval officer hit by one of the Confederate sharpshooters to safety. He put the ensign, Robley D. Evans, in a shell hole on the beach but was himself cut down by a sharpshooter’s round.

Eventually, the Army pressed its attack. Dawson, meanwhile, despite his force’s horrible casualties, scraped together a force of nearly 200 Marines to support the Army’s attack.

By 10 p.m., the Army breached the fort’s walls, and the fight was over.

The loss of Fort Fisher was a severe blow for the Confederacy. With supplies cut off, and with Union forces pushing toward the Confederate capital at Richmond, Va., from all directions, the South fell April 8 and the Civil War came to an end.

Though Wasmuth was not among the six Marines to receive the Medal of Honor that day, the ensign he saved, Adm. “Fighting Bob” Evans, later recalled him as “an honor to his uniform.” The Navy would name a destroyer for the Marine.

Keith A. Milks is a gunnery sergeant deployed with the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit.

http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/stor...PER-272543.php


Ellie