380 Chronicles of the Cape Fear Rwer

The defenses of Oak Island during the War between the
States were composed of Forts Caswell and Campbell, the latter
a large earth fort situated about one mile down the beach from
Fort Caswell, and Battery Shaw, with some other small works,
all at the close of the war under the command of Col. Charles H.
Simonton. With Colonel Simonton were the following members
of his staff: Capt. E. S. Martin, chief of ordnance and artillery ;
Capt. Booker Jones, commissary ; Capt. H. C. Whiting, quarter-
master, and Captain Booker, assistant adjutant general.

Fort Fisher fell about nine o’clock Sunday night, January 15,
1865, and by midnight orders had been received at Fort Caswell
to send the garrisons of that fort and Fort Campbell down the
beach and into the woods before daylight in order to conceal
them from the Federal fleet. The troops were immediately with-
drawn from the forts, and under cover of darkness marched
away. Orders were also received to spike the guns in those two
forts and destroy the ammunition as far as possible. Accord-
ingly, during Monday, the 16th of January, the chief of ord-
nance and artillery, Capt. E. S. Martin, was employed with the
ordnance force of the forts in carrying out this order, preparing
to burn the barracks—large wooden structures built outside and
around Fort Caswell—and to blow up the magazines.

About one o’clock on the morning of Tuesday, January 17,
the order came to evacuate and blow up the magazines. There-
upon Col. C. H. Simonton, Lieut. Col. John D. Taylor, and
Capt. Booker Jones, who had remained up to this time, de-
parted, leaving Captain Martin to destroy the barracks and
forts. The buildings without the fort and the citadel within
were at once set on fire and were soon blazing from bottom to
top. ‘Trains had been laid during the day to each of the seven
magazines at Iort Caswell and the five magazines at Fort Camp-
bell, and under the lurid glare of the burning buildings the
match -was applied to the trains, and magazine after magazine
exploded with terrific report. One of the magazines in Fort
Caswell contained nearly one hundred thousand pounds of pow-
der, and when it exploded the volume of sound seemed to rend
the very heavens, while the earth trembled, the violence of the
shock being felt in Wilmington, thirty miles distant, and even
at Fayetteville, more than one hundred miles away. The sight
was grand beyond description. Amidst this sublime and im-
pressive scene the flag at Fort Caswell was for the last time
hauled down. It was carried away by Captain Martin, who,

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The War Between the States 381

with his men, silently departed, the last to leave the old fort,
which for four long years of war had so effectually guarded the
main entrance to the river.

FORT FISHER.

: Col. William Lamb, who was in command of Fort Fisher, in
his admirable report of its defense, says:

“The indentation of the Atlantic Ocean in the Carolina coast
known as Onslow Bay and the Cape Fear River, running south
from Wilmington, form the peninsula known as Federal Point,
which during the Civil War was called Confederate Point.
Not quite seven miles north of the end of this peninsula stood
a high sandhill called the ‘Sugar Loaf.’ Here there was an
intrenched camp for the army of Wilmington under Gen. Brax-
ton Bragg, the department commander, that was hid from the
sea by forest and sandhills. From this intrenched camp the

river bank, with a neighboring ridge of sand-dunes, formed a
covered way for troops to within a hundred yards of the left
salient of Fort Fisher. Between the road and the ocean beach
was an arm of Masonboro Sound, and where it ended, three
miles north of the fort, were occasional fresh-water swamps,
generally wooded with scrub growth and in many cases quite
impassable. Along the ocean shore was an occasional battery
formed from a natural sandhill, behind which Whitworth guns
were carried from the fort to cover belated blockade runners or
to protect more unfortunate ones that had been chased ashore.

“About half a mile north of the fort there was a rise in the
plain, forming a hill some twenty feet above the tide on the
river side, and on this was a redoubt commanding the approach
to the fort by the river road. Thus nature, assisted by some
slight engineering work, had given a defense to Confederate
Point which would have enabled an efficient commander at the
intrenched camp, codperating with the garrison of Fort Fisher,
to render the point untenable for a largely superior force at
night, when the covering fire of the Federal Navy could not
distinguish between friend and foe.”

The plans of Fort Fisher were Colonel Lamb’s, and as the
work progressed they were approved by Generals French,
Raines, Longstreet, Beauregard, and Whiting. It was styled by
Federal engineers the “Malakoff of the South.” It was built