648 NortH Carouina Troops, 1861-’65.

inch guns and a 24-pounder, and in close proximity to the
battery a commodious wharf where transports could have
come in safety at night to carry us off.

We expected with this battery to cover the retreat of our
troops, but we found the guns spiked and every means of
transportation taken by Captain R. F. Chapman of our navy,
who, following the example of General Bragg, had aban-
doned us to our fate. The enemy threw out a heavy skirmish
line and sent their fourth brigade to battery Buchanan, where
it arrived about 10 o’clock p. m. and received the surrender of
the garrison from Major James H. Hill and Lieutenant
George D. Parker. Some fifteen minutes before the surren-
der, while lying on a stretcher near General Whiting outside
of the battery witnessing the grand pyrotechnic display of the
fleet over the capture of Fort Fisher, I was accosted by Gen-
eral A. H. Colquitt, who had been ordered to the fort to take
command, I had a few minutes hurried conversation with
him, informed him of the assault, of the early loss of a por-
tion of the works and garrison, and that when I fell it had
for a time demoralized the men, but that the enemy was
equally demoralized by our unexpected resistance, and I as-
sured him if Bragg would even then attack, a fresh brigade
landed at Battery Buchanan could retake the work. It was
suggested that the general should take me with him as I was
probably fatally wounded, but I refused to leave, wishing to
share the fate of my garrison, and, desiring that my precious
wife, anxiously awaiting tidings across the river, should not
be alarmed, spoke lightly of my wound. I asked him to
carry General Whiting to a place of safety as he came a vol-
unteer to the fort. Just then the near approach of the en-
emy was reported and Colquitt made a precipitate retreat,
leaving our beloved Whiting a captive, to die in a Northern
prison.

One more distressing scene remains to be chronicled. The
next morning after sunrise a frightful explosion occurred.
My large reserve magazine which my ordnance officer, Cap-
tain J. C. Little, informed me contained some 13,000 pounds
of powder, blew up, killing and wounding more than a hun-
dred of the enemy and some of my own wounded officers and

THIRTY-SIXTH REGIMENT. 649

men. It was an artificial mound, covered with luxuriant
turf, a most inviting bivouac for wearied soldiers. Upon it
were resting Colonel Alden’s One Hundred and Sixty-ninth
New York regiment, and in its galleries were some of my suf-
fering soldiers. Two sailors from the fleet, stupefied with
liquor, looking for plunder, were seen to enter the structure
with lights and a few moments after an explosion occurred.
The telegraph wires, between a bomb proof near this maga-
zine across the river to Battery Lamb, gave rise to the impres-
sion that the Confederates had caused the explosion, but an
official investigation traced it to these drunken soldiers.

So stoutly did our works resist the 50,000 shot and shell
thrown against them in the two bombardments that not a mag-
azine or a bomb proof was injured, and after the land arma-
ment with palisades and torpedoes had been destroyed, no
assault could have succeeded in the presence of Bragg’s force,
had it been under a competent officer. Had there been no
fleet to assist the army at Fort Fisher the Federal infantry
could not have assaulted it until its land defences had been
destroyed by gradual approaches.

For the first time in the history of sieges, the land defences
of the work were destroyed, not by an act of the besieging
party, which looked on in safety, but by the concentrated fire,
direct and enfilading, of an immense fleet, poured upon them
for three days and two nights without intermission until the
guns were dismounted, torpedo wires cut, palisades breached,
so that they afforded cover for the assailants and the slopes
of the work renderéd practicable for assault.

[ had half a mile of land face and one mile of sea face

to defend with 1,900 men, for that is all I had from first to

Jast in the last battle. I have in my possession papers to

prove this statement; I knew every company present and its
strength. This number included the killed, wounded and
sick. If the Federal reports claim that our killed, wounded
and prisoners showed more, it is because they counted as a
part of the garrison those captured outside of the works who
were never in Fort Fisher or estimated them from inaccurate
reports. I have challenged the correctness of the absurd

claim of their having taken over 2,000 prisoners, and the