complished officers of the navy, Commander Alex. CHAP. III. C. Rhind and Lieutenant S. W. Preston, both of them volunteers. Every contingency was provided for; it was even arranged between those two de- Dec., 1864. voted sailors that if she were boarded by the enemy and in danger of capture, Preston, at a signal given by Rhind, was to stick a lighted candle into a bag of powder. All this devotion, however, was to go for nothing; there is even a touch of the comic about this daring deed of two of the most heroic men our navy has known. They lighted their fuses, and kindled a fire of pine knots in the cabin of the Louisiana, and then jumped into their boats and pulled for the Wilderness.

The fuses were set for an hour and a half; the Wilderness steamed out to sea. The whole fleet waited with breathless apprehension for the result. The explosion took place at forty-five minutes past one; there was a blaze on the horizon, a dull detonation, and nothing more. There was little or no concussion felt on ship or shore. It was General Butler's opinion that the ignition was imperfect; in fact, that not more than one-tenth of the powder was burned.

At daylight, the admiral got his fleet under way and stood in towards the fort in line of battle. He attacked in fine style and soon silenced the guns of the fortress, to all appearance; though, as it turned out, little damage was done. At evening General Butler arrived with some of the transports, but as it was too late to land the fleet retired to a safe anchorage. The next day was Christmas; the transports were all on hand, and under cover of the guns of the fleet, which kept up an annoying

CHAP. III. fire all the morning, the troops began to land about five miles north of the fort. Weitzel took the first

five hundred as a reconnoitering party and pushed Dec. 25,1864. rapidly towards the fort, capturing on the way the small garrison of an outlying earthwork. On questioning the prisoners, he found they belonged to Hoke's division, which he had left at Richmond; and that the rest of the brigade to which they belonged was a mile and a half to the rear. This convinced him that the garrison of Fort Fisher had been newly strengthened, and this impression was deepened by the fact that the next squad he captured said they were outside the fort because the bomb-proofs were full. This was not encouraging information, but he pushed on, advancing his skirmish line to within 150 yards of the fort, and from a knoll had a good view of the interior of the work. What he saw powerfully impressed him; the fort was practically uninjured, and seemed to him, with its thick parapets, its bastions in high relief, its bomb-proof traverses, the strongest work he had seen during the war. Weitzel was a brave and intelligent soldier, but he had been engaged in five assaults of intrenchments, three times attacking, twice defending the works. On all five occasions, the party attacking was repulsed; and Weitzel decided naturally on Conduct enough that he would not advise an attack upon a work stronger than any he had ever attacked

Weitzel, Testimony. Report Committee

of the War,

1864-65. Part II.,

pp. 72, 73. in vain or defended successfully.

Weitzel reported to Butler the result of his reconnaissance, which was confirmed by General C. B. Comstock of Grant's staff, who had also reconnoitered the work. Upon this report, General Butler

made the capital mistake of the expedition. Grant's CHAP. III. orders were clear and explicit; the landing itself was to be regarded as a success; if the work did not fall at once, the troops were to stay there and intrench themselves, and, with the help of the navy, reduce and capture the place. General Butler chose to assume that he had not effected a landing, because all of his troops had not yet got ashore; the weather began to look unfavorable; he therefore resolved to abandon the enterprise and return to Fort Monroe. Even then he did not show his orders to Weitzel, who said afterwards that if he had known of their existence he would have advised differently.

While the generals afloat were coming to this unfortunate conclusion, one of the officers ashore had made up his mind in the opposite sense. General N. M. Curtis, a man of unusual physical strength, courage, and energy, had pushed his advance almost to the parapet of the fort. The fire of the navy had been so severe as to confine the garrison in great part to the bomb-proof, so that Curtis's men were hardly molested in their approach. They came so near that they captured a mounted courier; one man climbed the parapet and brought away a flag which had been shot away. Curtis was burning with eagerness to assault; his men shared his enthusiasm. Of course it cannot be said whether he would have succeeded or not, though his spirit so infected General Comstock that he changed his mind, and now believed the movement practicable. But the orders were given to reëmbark, and slowly and reluctantly Curtis drew away his men from the coveted prize

committee conduct of

Report

on

the War, 1864-65.

Part II.,

p. 80.

CHAP. III. he believed was in his hands. The reëmbarkation of the 2500 who had landed took as much time as would have been required to put the whole force on shore. The weather grew worse the next day, and a portion of Curtis's brigade remained on shore until the 27th without molestation by the Confederates.

On the evening of that day General Butler arrived at Fort Monroe and sent a brief telegram to General Grant announcing his return and the failure of the expedition. On the 3d of January he made a more detailed report, throwing the blame of the failure upon Admiral Porter, saying that the first delay of three days of good weather, was due to the navy not being on hand when the army arrived; that the powder boat was prematurely exploded; that Porter should have run by the fort.and thus blockaded Wilmington; that Hoke's division was in front of him, making the enemy's force greater than his own; that the experience of Port Hudson and Fort Wagner convinced him that so strong a work as Fisher could not be taken by assault. Upon this General Grant made a merciless indorsement to the effect that he had never intended that Butler should go with the expedition, and that he was in error in stating that he came back in "obedience to his instructions." Grant immediately relieved General Butler from command, which closed his military career. He was summoned before the Committee on the Conduct of the War a few days later, and defended himself with his usual vigor and adroitness, and the Committee in their report, after hearing Grant and Porter, fully justified the action of Butler.