Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

[798] soon as the fire from our vessels ceased there were plenty of men with which to repel an attack on the fort, is confirmed by the following sentence which I take from General Whiting's report above referred to: “The garrison, however, at the proper moment when the fire of the navy slackened to allow the approach of the enemy's land force, drove them off with artillery fire and musketry.”

General Whiting shows exactly what my report¹ shows, and what the report of General Weitzel shows, that our troops were met with grape and musketry the moment the fire of the navy slackened. General Whiting also says: “A heavy storm set in and the garrisons were much exposed, as they were under arms all night.”

At eleven o'clock the next day I informed Admiral Porter that in my judgment there was nothing to be done but to go to Fortress Monroe, and I went there. Before I got away from the coast of North Carolina I passed all the heavier vessels of the squadron, such as the Wabash, the Colorado, and the Ironsides, going up to Beaufort to get ammunition.

Upon my arrival at Fortress Monroe I telegraphed² to General Grant a report of what had been done.

The considerations that determined my mind against remaining on the beach near Fort Fisher were these: I was by no means unmindful of the instructions of the lieutenant-general. He had directed me that if I had fully got my men ashore, not if I had gotten only a portion of them, I was to remain. But a landing requires something more than to have twenty-five hundred men out of sixty-five hundred on a beach with nothing but forty rounds of ammunition in the cartridge boxes, and with all their supplies driven off in the storm. I did not think that that was “landing” within my instructions, and, therefore, I deemed it much better for the country that I should withdraw as I did; it was much less risk, and much better for the future. Porter had informed me that he could not get up the river inside because there was but six feet of water. But the rebels could come down in that depth of water and thence operate against Fort Fisher; and they could come prepared to remain there if I withdrew my forces — and the fact that the fleet had returned to Beaufort to stay a week to replenish would have shown the enemy that the expedition had been abandoned. If I