Myth of Saving the Union, Southern Heroism, Southern Patriots 
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The commander of North Carolina’s Fort Fisher, Colonel William Lamb of Virginia, spoke postwar of his men defending the fortress in early 1865: “When I recall this magnificent struggle, unsurpassed in ancient or modern warfare, and remember the devoted patriotism and heroic courage of my garrison, I feel proud to know that I have North Carolina blood coursing through my veins, and I confidently believe that the time will come with the Old North State, when her people will regard her defence of Forth Fisher as the grandest event in her heroic past.” Gen. William Whiting commanded the Cape Fear District and came to the fort after Gen. Bragg’s reluctance to confront the enemy.
Americans Besieged
“In the midst of the whirling shells, he scarcely removed his pipe from his mouth as he stood on the open rampart spattered from the bursting shells. Lieutenant Hunter, of the 36th North Carolina, wrote of Gen. Whiting:
“I saw him standing with folded arms, smiling upon the 400-hundred-pound shell as it stood smoking and spinning like a billiard ball on the sand, not twenty feet away, until it burst, and then moved away quietly. I saw him fifty times a day – I saw him fight and saw him pray; and he was all that a General should be in battle. He was the best-equipped man in the Confederate States to defend the port of Wilmington, and his relief by Gen. Braxton Bragg brought gloom over the entire command.”
Time fails me to relate the details of the great battle of the 13th, 14th and 15th of January 1865. The enemy fleet arrived the night of the 12th, and early the next day began the rain of projectiles, increasing in fury at times to 160 per minute, and directed by converging fire to the destruction of the guns on the land force of Fort Fisher, and in the pounding of the northeast salient to a shapeless ruin.
Again, General Whiting came to the fort, on the first day’s bombardment, and upon his entrance said to Col. William Lamb: “I have come here to share your fate, my boy. You are to be sacrificed. The last thing I heard Gen. Bragg say was to point out a line to fall back upon, when Fisher fell.”
The firing never ceased – all day and all night long the 11-inch and 15-inch fiery globes rolled along the parapet; the palisades were cut to pieces, the wires to the mines were ploughed up in the deep sands. An English officer who had been at Sebastopol declared it was but child’s play to this terrific shaking of the earth and sea, by a fleet whose broadside could throw 44,000 pounds of iron at a single discharge.
The defenders fought on – their quarters having been burned along with their blankets and clothing – in the depth of winter, for three days, with cornmeal and coffee and uncooked rations – for not even a burial party could put its head out of a bombproof without casualties. On the evening of the 13th, some 8,500 troops landed four miles north, and in the language of their commander, as if at some exciting sport, with no one to molest them. Telegram after telegram besought Gen. Bragg to attack; but his troops had been ordered sixteen miles away for an idle review, and when in position again, he refused to attack the two brigades of colored troops which held the land side, though urged repeatedly by telegraph. The fire suddenly increased to inconceivable fury about 3PM pf the 15th, and the air was hot with bursting shells. All at once there was ominous silence, and the column of the enemy, 1,600 picked sailors and 400 marines, were seen approaching the northeast redan.
Whiting and Lamb rallied their gallant band upon the exposed ramparts – the struggle was terrible, but with twenty-one officers killed and wounded, that enemy column was broken to pieces, and a sight never seen in the world before, of two thousand US Naval troops in full flight, leaving four hundred on the sands and their commander, Breese, simulating death among them to escape capture.
But alas, two battles were going on at the same time! Just as the naval attack was beaten back, Gen. Whiting saw the enemy flags planted on the traverses. Calling on the troops to follow him, they fought hand-to-hand with clubbed muskets, and one traverse was retaken. Just as he was climbing the other to remove the enemy flag, General Whiting fell, receiving two wounds – one very severe through the thigh. Colonel Lamb fell with a desperate hip wound a half hour after Whiting, while the enemy poured into the fortress.
It was the struggle of North Carolina patriots. Lamb, in the fort’s hospital, found voice enough, though faint unto death, to say, “I will not surrender!” And Whiting, lying among the surgeons nearby, responded, “Lamb, if you die, I will assume command and I will never surrender.”
(A Memoir of the Late Major-General William Henry Chase Whiting. C.B. Denson. Edwards & Broughton, 1895, pp. 40-42)