Wilmington is the last major port open to the Confederacy on the Atlantic seacoast.

Ships leaving Wilmington via the Cape Fear River and setting sail for the Bahamas, Bermuda or Nova Scotia to trade cotton and tobacco for needed supplies from the British are protected by the fort.

Based on the design of the Malakoff Tower in Sevastopol, Ukraine, Fort Fisher had been constructed mostly of earth and sand.

This makes absorbing the pounding of heavy fire from Union ships more effective than older fortifications constructed of mortar and bricks.

Twenty-two guns face the ocean, while twenty-five face the land.

The sea face guns are mounted on twelve-foot- (three point seven meter-) high batteries with larger, fofty-five-and-sixty-foot -(fourteen and eighteen meter-) batteries at the southern end of the fort.

Underground passageways and bombproof rooms exist below the giant earthen mounds of the fort.

The fortifications have kept Union ships from attacking the port of Wilmington and the Cape Fear River.

On December 24, 1864, Union forces under Major General Benjamin F. Butler and Rear Admiral David D. Porter had launched a two-day attack, but were beaten back.

The Union Army returns in January, this time under Major General Alfred Terry, chosen by Grant to lead a Provisional Corps of nine thousand troops from the Army of the James.

Porter returns with almost sixty vessels of the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron to the North Carolina coast after the failed December attempt.

Confederate Major General Williiam H.C. Whiting, who commands the District of Cape Fear, pleads with the department commander, General Braxton Bragg, to send reinforcements.

Bragg is unwilling to reduce his forces, which he feels are necessary to defend Wilmington.

He finally sends reinforcements to Colonel William Lamb's garrison, bringing the total at Fort Fisher to nineteen hundred.

A division of sixty-four troops under Major General Robert Hoke is stationed on the peninsula north of the fort.

Whiting personally arrives at the fort and tells the commander: "Lamb my boy, I have come to share your fate. You and your garrison are to be sacrificed." (Gragg, Rod (1994), Confederate Goliath: The Battle of Fort Fisher, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, p. 121)

Alfred Terry had previously commanded troops during the Second Battle of Charleston Harbor and understands the importance of coordinating with the Union Navy.

He and Admiral Porter make well laid plans for the joint attack.

Terry will send one division of United States Colored Troops under Charles J. Paine to hold off Hoke's division on the peninsula.

Terry's other division under Adelbert Ames, supported by an independent brigade under Colonel Joseph Carter Abbott, will move down the peninsula and attack the fort from the land face, striking the landward wall on the river side of the peninsula.

Porter organizes a landing force of two thousand sailors and marines to land and attack the fort's sea face, on the seaward end of the same wall.

On January 13, Terry lands his troops in between Hoke and Fort Fisher.

Hoke is unwilling to risk opening the route to Wilmington and remains unengaged while the entire Union force lands safely ashore.

General Terry moves south towards the fort the next day to reconnoiter the fort and decides that an infantry assault will succeed.

Admiral Porter's gunboats open fire on the sea face of the fort on January 15, and by noon they succeed in silencing all but four guns.

During this bombardment, Hoke sends about a thousand troops from his line to Fort Fisher; however, only about four hundred are able to land and make it into the defense while the others are forced to turn back.

About this time, the sailors and marines, led by Lieutenant Commander Kidder Breese, land and moved against the point where the fort's land and sea faces meet, a feature known as the Northeast Bastion.

The Union Army’s original plan was for the naval force, armed with revolvers and cutlasses, to attack in three waves with the marines providing covering fire, but instead, the assault goes forward in a single unorganized mass.

General Whiting personally leads he defense and routs the assault, with heavy casualties in the naval force.

The attack, however, draws Confederate attention away from the river gate, where Ames prepares to launch his attack.

At 2:00 in the afternoon, he sends forward his first brigade, under the command of Brevet Brigadier Newton Martin Curtis, as Ames waits with the brigades of Colonels Galusha Pennypacker and Louis Bell.

An advance guard from Curtis's Brigade uses axes to cut through the palisades and abatis.

Curtis's Brigade takes heavy casualties as it overruns the outer works and storms the first traverse.

At this point, Ames orders Pennypacker's Brigade forward, which he accompanies into the fort.

As Ames marches forward, Confederate snipers zero in on his party, and cut down a number of his aides around him.

Pennypacker's men fight their way through the riverside gate, and Ames orders a portion of his men to fortify a position within the interior of the fort.

Meanwhile, the Confederates turn the cannons in Battery Buchanan at the southern tip of the peninsula and fire on the northern wall as it falls into Union hands.

Ames observes that Curtis's lead units have become stalled at the fourth traverse, and he orders forward Bell's Brigade, but Bell is killed by sharpshooters before ever reaching the fort.

Seeing the Union attackers crowd into the breach and interior, General Whiting takes the opportunity to personally lead a counterattack.

Charging into the Union soldiers, Whiting receives multiple demands to surrender, and when he refuses he is shot down, severely wounded.

Porter's gunboats helps maintain the Federal momentum.

His gunners' aim prove to be deadly accurate and begin clearing out the defenders as the Union troops approach the sea wall.

Curtis's troops gain the heavily contested 4th traverse.

Colonel Lamb begins gathering up every last soldier in the fort, including sick and wounded from the hospital, for a last-ditch counterattack.

Just as he is about to order a charge, he falls severely wounded and is brought next to General Whiting in the fort's hospital.

General Ames makes a suggestion for the Union troops to entrench in their current positions.

About an hour into the battle, Curtis falls wounded while going back to confer with Ames.

Colonel Pennypacker also falls wounded before the battle ends.

The grueling battle lasts for hours, long after dark, as shells plunge in from the sea and General Ames struggles with a division that becomes increasingly disorganized as his regimental leaders and all of his brigade commanders fall dead or wounded.

General Terry sends forward Abbott's brigade to reinforce the attack, then joins Ames in the interior of the fortress.

Meanwhile in Fort Fisher's hospital, Colonel Lamb turns over command to Major James Reilly and General Whiting sends one last plea to General Bragg to send reinforcements.

Still believing the situation in Fort Fisher is under control and tired of Whiting's demands, Bragg instead dispatches General Alfred H. Colquitt to relieve Whiting and assume command at Fort Fisher.

At 9:30 p.m. Colquitt lands at the southern base of the fort just as Lamb, Whiting and the Confederate wounded are being evacuated to Battery Buchanan.

At this point, the Confederate hold on Fort Fisher is untenable.

The seaward batteries have been silenced, almost all of the north wall has been captured, and Ames has fortified a bastion within the interior.

Terry, however, has concluded to finish the battle that night.

Ames, ordered to maintain the offensive, organizes a flanking maneuver, sending some of his men to advance outside the land wall, and come up behind the Confederate defenders of the last traverse.

Within a few minutes the Confederate defeat is unmistakable.

Colquitt and his staff rush back to their rowboats just moments before Abbott's men seize the wharf.

Major Reilly holds up a white flag and walks into the Union lines to announce the fort will surrender.

Just before 10 p.m., General Terry rides to Battery Buchanan to receive the official surrender of the fort from General Whiting.

The loss of Fort Fisher seals the fate of the Confederacy's last remaining sea port and the South is cut off from global trade.

Also, many of the military supplies which the Army of Northern Virginia depend upon come through Wilmington; there are no remaining seaports near Virginia that the Confederates can use practically.

It also ends any chance of European recognition.

On January 16, Union celebrations are dampened when the fort's magazine explodes killing and wounding two hundred Union and Confederate soldiers that are sleeping on the roof of the magazine chamber or nearby.

U.S. Navy Ensign Alfred Stow Leighton dies in the explosion while in charge of a squad trying to recover bodies from the fort parapet.

Although several Union soldiers initially thought Confederate prisoners were responsible, an investigation opened by Terry will conclude that unknown Union soldiers (possibly drunken marines) had entered the magazine with torches and ignited the powder.

William Lamb survives the battle but will spend the next seven years on crutches.

Colonel Galusha Pennypacker's wounds are thought to be fatal and General Terry assures the young man he would receive a brevet promotion to brigadier general.

Pennypacker does receive a brevet promotion as Terry had promised, but on February 18, 1865 he will receive a full promotion to brigadier general of volunteers at age 20.

He remains the youngest person to have held the rank of general in the U.S. Army, apart from the Marquis de Lafayette.

Newton Martin Curtis also receives a full promotion to brigadier general and both he and Pennypacker receive the Medal of Honor for their part in the battle.

Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton makes an unexpected visit to Fort Fisher where General Terry presents him with garrison's flag.

General Whiting, shot in the leg with a musket ball, had been captured at Fort Fisher.

From his prison cell he will request investigation of the actions of his superior, General Bragg.

Whiting is angry that Bragg had failed to use Hoke’s division to attack the Federal rear while the fort was under assault.

Taken prisoner with the rest of fort's defenders, and weakened by war service and the leg injury suffered at Fort Fisher, Whiting will die of dysentery at the Union military hospital at Fort Columbus on Governors Island in New York City on March 10, 1865.