Via Brother Henry
By late 1864, the
anaconda strategy devised by Gen. Winfield Scott at the start of the war
was reaching its lethal conclusion. The implacable, relentless naval
blockade had crippled the South’s cotton economy, and drained the rebel
army of its ability to wage battle.
Still, daring blockade
runners helped maintain a supply of goods that were as vital as they
were meager. Their preferred port had always been Wilmington, N.C., but
after federal forces captured Mobile, Ala., in August 1864, it was also
their last. With its railroad connections to Virginia, Wilmington was
the last vein through which the South received goods from the outside
world, and the last artery to its army. Now federal forces focused on
severing that link.
Wilmington is 28 miles
up the Cape Fear River from the Atlantic Ocean. One of several but by
far the most formidable of the confederate positions guarding
Wilmington was Fort Fisher, located right at the mouth of the river.
Fort Fisher was built at the end of a narrow peninsula that is shaped
like an inverted triangle; on the east side is the Atlantic, on the
west, the river. Anything entering the river had to pass under the guns
of what had come to be called the Gibraltar of the South.
