Intro
The amphibious tradition of the United States military is one that dates back to the founding of the United States. The American Civil War is no exception to this tradition. When Union troops struggled ashore at Hatteras Inlet in 1861, soaked, undersupplied, and nearly unsupported, no one imagined the operation would help shape how America fought wars from the sea. Yet four years later, at Fort Fisher, the Union executed the most successful joint amphibious assault of the Civil War, and in doing so, they learned lessons that would echo into the 20th century.
Hatteras
The Hatteras Inlet Operation (also known as the Battle of the Hatteras Inlet Batteries) was the first true joint amphibious operation to occur during the Civil War. It began when Major General Benjamin Butler received reports that Confederates were fortifying Hatteras Inlet along the North Carolina coast. The reports mentioned how the Confederates were in the process of constructing two earthen forts—Fort Hatteras and Fort Clark.
Butler forwarded this intelligence to the War Department, noting “that works were being built at the Hatteras and… suggested that a small expedition be sent to the inlet to break it up.”[1] By early August, both the War and Navy Departments acknowledged the wisdom of Butler's recommendation and named him the Army commander of the small expedition. Flag Officer Silas Stringham was named as the Navy commander of the fleet that was to accompany Butler’s army to the Hatteras.
The two commanders were also instructed to cooperate and to “drive the enemy from their fortifications and sink stone-laden vessels in the channel leading into Hatteras Inlet, thereby making it unavailable for use by privateers.”[2] To accomplish this objective, the Union Army committed roughly 900 troops under Butler’s overall command, with tactical control entrusted to Colonel Rush Hawkins of the 9th New York Volunteers, while the Navy assembled a squadron of seven warships mounting 158 guns, supported by four troop transports and a steam tug.
The expedition departed Hampton Roads on August 26, 1861. The amphibious landing began on the morning of August 28 and continued into the following day, when Confederate forces surrendered both forts aboard Stringham’s flagship. Despite its success, the operation proved a hollow victory, as multiple deficiencies nearly doomed the Union’s first joint amphibious effort.
For one thing, the commanders did little in terms of planning and coordination between themselves. As historian Kevin Dougherty observed, “Butler’s troops received neither special training nor did Butler or Stringham plan for an orderly landing of said troops.”[3] When the troops boarded their transports, they were loaded with little regard for terrain or supply needs and disembarked nearly three miles north of the forts.
Logistical preparation was equally poor. Little forethought had been given to logistics or weather conditions. Supplies were improperly loaded, ammunition was ruined by surf, and worsening seas allowed only about 300 men and two guns to reach shore before resupply became impossible.
Because of this poor execution and the Army’s limited role ashore, the lessons drawn from Hatteras were deeply flawed. Prior to the operation, as Timothy Hanley noted, “it was a military maxim that ships cannot fight forts,” a belief that justified joint participation.[4] Yet the ease with which naval firepower subdued the unfinished Confederate defenses led the Navy to conclude that shore batteries could be defeated by bombardment alone.
This conclusion proved dangerously misleading. The forts at Hatteras were incomplete, lightly armed, and thinly manned—conditions absent from later operations. Compared to subsequent landings, the resistance faced at Hatteras was minimal. The Charleston Campaign of 1863 would soon demonstrate how well-constructed coastal defenses could withstand naval assault and expose the limits of the lessons learned at Hatteras.
Charleston
The Charleston Campaign of 1863 consisted of two amphibious assaults against Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, conducted on April 7 and again from September 6–8. The Union targeted Charleston for both political and military reasons. The harbor was home to Fort Sumter, where the war’s opening shots had been fired, and its loss in 1861 had dealt the Federals a significant symbolic blow. By 1863, Charleston also remained one of only two major Atlantic ports still open to blockade runners, making it a persistent operational threat.
The first joint amphibious assault on Charleston Harbor occurred on April 7th under the command of Rear Admiral Samuel F. DuPont and Major General David Hunter. The plan called for “DuPont’s fleet to approach Fort Sumter, subdue the fort, remove any obstructions, and then either enter the inner harbor or assist the Army in crossing to Morris Island and capturing its fortifications.”[5] Union leaders hoped that a successful naval breakthrough would trigger a Confederate collapse at the sight of Federal warships deep within the harbor. To execute this plan, DuPont had 2 ironclads and 7 monitors.
The naval attack began at 12:10 p.m. but quickly encountered difficulties. DuPont’s flagship became entangled in obstructions strung across the channel, delaying the advance. At approximately 3:15 p.m., the fleet opened fire, and for more than two hours, the “Confederates and Federals exchanged fire at ranges between 550 and 800 yards.”[6] By the end of the engagement, Confederate batteries had fired approximately 2,229 rounds to the Union’s 139, while DuPont’s monitors sustained nearly 400 hits, several suffering severe damage.
The assault was decisively repulsed. Hunter’s Army forces were never committed, and the failure reversed the mistaken lesson drawn from Hatteras—that naval bombardment alone could subdue fortified coastal defenses.
In the aftermath, DuPont was briefly replaced by Rear Admiral Andrew Foote, who died before assuming command. Rear Admiral John Dahlgren subsequently took command of naval operations, while Major General Quincy Adams Gillmore replaced Hunter on land. For the next sixty days, Gillmore and Dahlgren worked together as they laid siege to Charleston Harbor.
However, by the time the second joint assault occurred on September 6th through the 8th, the cooperation between the pair broke down as both commanders wanted the credit for the recapture of Fort Sumter, and as Hanley noted, this “led them to openly refuse to cooperate in any meaningful way.”[7] Both Gillmore and Dahlgren developed independent plans to retake Fort Sumter, but Dahlgren moved first, landing approximately 400 sailors and Marines beneath the fort’s guns. The assault failed, resulting in the capture of roughly 100 Union sailors and Marines.
The Charleston Campaign underscored the realities of attacking well-prepared coastal defenses. As David J. Murphy observed, “successful joint amphibious operations required overwhelming and systematic bombardment, along with constant coordination between land and sea forces.”[8] These hard lessons forced both the Army and, especially, the Navy to reevaluate their approach to amphibious warfare—lessons that would only be fully applied during the Fort Fisher Campaign of 1864–1865.
Fort Fisher
The Fort Fisher Campaign of 1864–1865 consisted of two joint amphibious assaults, the first conducted from December 24–27, 1864, and the second from January 12–15, 1865. The Union targeted Fort Fisher because it guarded Wilmington Harbor, North Carolina—the last Atlantic port open to blockade runners. Command of the initial operation fell to Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter and Major General Benjamin Butler.
The plan called for Butler’s Army force to sail from Bermuda Hundred to a rendezvous point off the North Carolina coast, where it would link up with Porter’s fleet. Porter’s force was to then explode a powder boat near the fort and conduct an extensive bombardment of the fort’s defensive structures. Then, “when the defenders appeared sufficiently weakened, the landing force would go ashore and assault Fort Fisher from the north.”[9] To execute the plan, Butler had two divisions of about 6,500 men on board several troop transport ships, and Porter had a combined fleet of 57 ironclads, frigates, and gunboats.
The first assault ended in failure. Coordination between the two commanders was poor, the naval bombardment was unfocused, and Butler’s commitment ashore was hesitant. Rather than pressing the attack, Butler withdrew, bringing the operation to an inconclusive and frustrating end.
The second assault corrected these deficiencies. Butler was relieved and replaced by Major General Alfred Terry, one of Butler’s former staff officers who possessed firsthand knowledge of what had gone wrong. Porter retained command of the naval forces. Both commanders were explicitly instructed by their superiors, Secretary Gideon Welles and Assistant Secretary Gustavus Fox for Porter, and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and General Ulysses S. Grant for Terry, that the previous working relationship displayed by Butler and Porter in the first assault was not to be replicated and that as Michael Reed noted, “both commanders must defer to the each other’s respective areas of expertise.”[10] Because of this mandate, both Terry and Porter worked in close coordination in the lead-up to the next assault.
This directive shaped the planning for the second assault. Terry and Porter worked closely to improve coordination between land and sea forces. Porter also refined his approach to naval gunfire. Rather than maneuvering his ships without regard to their relative positions, he assigned each vessel a specific target along the fort’s defenses, maximizing both offensive firepower and defensive positioning.
These changes dramatically improved the effectiveness of the bombardment. Not only did this allow the naval gunfire to increase in its effectiveness, but the improved coordination in communication between land and sea forces allowed Porter’s ships to learn in real-time the effectiveness of their bombardment.
Also, where Butler was timid, Terry was aggressive. Where Butler had only landed a fraction of his force ashore, Terry and Porter had “landed approximately 8,000 troops in five hours, complete with equipment and twelve days’ worth of supplies.”[11] Also, unlike Butler, Terry had also landed ashore with his troops and established a command post that not only allowed him to improve his situational awareness of the battlefield but also allowed for an easier flow of communications with both his subordinates and Porter’s fleet.[12]
The second assault succeeded because it replaced caution with commitment and rivalry with cooperation. The capture of Fort Fisher represented the Union Army and Navy’s most effective joint amphibious operation of the Civil War. Coming only months before the war’s end, it also marked the final such operation of the conflict—and the culmination of a hard-learned evolution in American amphibious warfare.
Conclusion
Overall, the lessons learned from the Union Army and Navy’s experience in conducting joint operations were numerous. By the end of the Civil War, the Union Army and Navy had learned, often painfully, that successful amphibious warfare required more than ships, troops, or firepower alone. At Hatteras Inlet, poor planning and limited coordination nearly turned success into disaster. At Charleston, interservice rivalry and overconfidence in naval power exposed the limits of bombardment without effective joint cooperation. Only at Fort Fisher did the Union finally bring together mass, communication, and unified command in a way that translated firepower into decisive results.
Fort Fisher did not succeed because of new technology or revolutionary doctrine, but because the Army and Navy at last learned how to fight together. The operation demonstrated that amphibious warfare demanded careful planning, sustained coordination between land and sea forces, and commanders willing to subordinate personal ambition to operational success. These hard-won lessons would later be studied by military thinkers in the early twentieth century and used to develop their own theories, doctrines, and war plans, which were applied on a far larger scale and with greater success in the amphibious campaigns of World War II.
In the end, the lessons learned from the Union Army and Navy’s modest start with the Hatteras Inlet Operation to their brilliantly executed combined arms assault on Fort Fisher were valuable contributions to the amphibious tradition of the United States military and the historical record. Their stories mark the moment when the United States began to understand how wars could be fought from the sea. A lesson that would later shape American military power for generations.
[1] U.S. Congress, The Hatteras Inlet Expedition: Report of the Joint Committee of the Conduct of the War, 37th Congress, 3rd Session (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1863), 282, accessed April 19, 2022, https://archive.org/details/reportjointcomm00unkngoog/page/n5/mode/1up?q=hatteras.
[2] Timothy R. Hanley, “Factors Affecting Joint Cooperation During the Civil War,” (master’s thesis, Army Command and General Staff College, 1991), 42, accessed March 22, 2022, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA241172.
[3] Kevin Dougherty, Strangling the Confederacy: Coastal Operations in the American Civil War (Havertown: Casemate Publishers & Book Distributors, 2010), 41, accessed March 22, 2022, ProQuest Ebook Central.
[4] Hanley, “Factors Affecting,” 42.
[5] Ibid, 86.
[6] Dougherty, Strangling the Confederacy, 152.
[7] Hanley, “Factors Affecting,” 87.
[8] David J. Murphy, “Naval Strategy During the American Civil War,” (research report, Air War College, 1999), 12, accessed March 22, 2022, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA395177.
[9] Gary J. Ohls, “Fort Fisher: Amphibious Victory in the American Civil War,” Naval War College Review 59, no. 4 (2006): 86, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26396771.
[10] Michael A. Reed, “The Evolution of Joint Operations During the Civil War,” (master’s thesis, Army Command and General Staff College, 2009), 68, accessed March 22, 2022, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA510943.
[11] Ohls, “Fort Fisher,” 94.
[12] Michael A. Reed, “The Evolution of Joint Operations During the Civil War,” (master’s thesis, Army Command and General Staff College, 2009), 98, accessed March 22, 2022, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA510943.
Bibliography
Congress, U.S. The Hatteras Inlet Expedition: Report of the Joint Committee of the Conduct of the War, 37th Congress, 3rd Session. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1863. Accessed April 19, 2022, https://archive.org/details/reportjointcomm00unkngoog/page/n5/mode/1up?q=hatteras.
Dougherty, Kevin. Strangling the Confederacy: Coastal Operations in the American Civil War. Havertown: Casemate Publishers & Book Distributors, 2010. Accessed March 22, 2022. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Hanley, Timothy R. “Factors Affecting Joint Cooperation During the Civil War.” Master’s thesis, Army Command and General Staff College, 1991. Accessed March 22, 2022. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA241172.
Murphy, David J. “Naval Strategy During the American Civil War.” Research Report, Air War College, 1999. Accessed March 22, 2022. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA395177.
Ohls, Gary J. “Fort Fisher: Amphibious Victory in the American Civil War.” Naval War College Review 59, no. 4 (2006): 81–99. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26396771.
Reed, Michael A. “The Evolution of Joint Operations During the Civil War.” Master’s thesis, Army Command and General Staff College, 2009. Accessed March 22, 2022. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA510943.
Reed, Rowena. Combined Operations in the Civil War. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1978.
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