lieutenant-general ordered the enterprise to be renewed by General Terry, who, on the 2nd of January, was placed in command of the same troops, with a re-enforcement that made the whole number about 8.000. On the morning of the 13th of January the troops were disembarked, under cover of a heavy effective fire from the fleet. An assault was made in the afternoon of the 15th of January, and, after desperate hand-to-hand fighting for several hours, the works were carried, the enemy driven out, and about midnight the whole garrison, which its commander, General Whiting, surrendered. The fall of Fort Fisher carried with it the other defenses of Cape Fear River. Fort Caswell and the works on Smith's Island fell into our hands on the 16th and 17th, Fort Andreson on the 19th, and, General Schofield advancing, the enemy were driven from Wilmington on the 21st of February.

Early in the month of January Major-General Sherman, having refitted his army, entered upon his campaign from Savannah through the States of South Carolina and North Carolina, the incidents of which are detailed in his accompanying report.* Its result is thus stated in his Special Field Orders, Numbers 76:

Waiting at Savannah only long enough to fill our wagons, we again began a march, which, for peril, labor, and results, will compare with any ever made by an organized army. The floods of the Savannah, the swamps of the Combahee and Edisto, the "high hills" and rocks of the Santee, the flat quagmires of the Pedee and Cape Fear Rivers, were all passed in midwinter, with its floods and rains, in the face of an accumulating enemy; and, after the battles of Averasborough and Bentonville, we once more came out of the wilderness to meet our friends at Goldsborough. Even then we paused only long enough to get new clothing, to reload our wagons, and again pushed on to Raleigh and beyond, until we met our enemy suing for peace instead of war, and offering to submit to the injured laws of his and our country.

The operations in General Canby's military division also exercised an important influence at this juncture. After the disaster upon the Red River a change of the military organization west of the Mississippi was made to meet the emergency. The Departments of Arkansas and the Gulf, including Louisiana and Texas, were united in one military division-West Mississippi, under command of Major-General Canby. His efforts were directed to the organization and concentration of the forces and material within his division, and in measures to prevent the rebel troops west of the Mississippi from re-enforcing the armies operating east of that river. In the month of July [August] Fort Gaines, Fort Powell, and Fort Morgan, constituting important defenses of Mobile Bay, were reduced by a combined movement of land forces under General Gordon Granger, detached by General Canby and co- operating with a naval force under Admiral Farragut. Early in the spring of 1865 a large force under Generals A. J. Smith, Gordon Granger, and F. Steele was directed against the city of Mobile. The enemy were driven out of Spanish Fort by bombardment, Fort Blakely was taken by assault, and the city of Mobile was evacuated by the enemy on the 12th of April. The brilliance of these achievements has been overshadowed by the grander scale of operations in other quarters, but their skill and success are worthy of high admiration. After the fall of Savannah, Charleston, and Wilmington the enemy had placed his last hopes on retaining a foothold in the cotton States at Mobile. It was strongly fortified and garrisoned, and orders were issued to hold it at every hazard.

---------------

*See Series I, Vol. XLVII, Part, I, p. 17.

---------------