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

[816] follow that they would not have paid dearly for their temerity if they had made the attempt.

In the second attack, when my torpedoes were destroyed, my palisades so torn up and cut down that they furnished a protection rather than an impediment to the assailants, when all the heavy guns, save one, bearing on the land approach had been disabled, and the killed and wounded had reduced my available force to about my strength on Christmas night, it took more than three times the number which General Weitzel had, of the very flower of the army and navy, five hours to capture the fort; and so desperate was the resistance of those same men who were with me Christmas night and so doubtful the result in the work, that I have heard that General Terry, naturally fearing an attack from Bragg in the rear, sent word to General Ames to make one more effort, and if he failed, to stop and intrench. Reinforced by additional troops the effort was made, and resistance became less effective until with thin ranks and ammunition exhausted the garrison surrendered.

William Lamb. Norfolk, Va., Jan. 20, 1890.

Let us now see how the fort appeared to General Weitzel at the time he reconnoitred it from a knoll a short distance from the fort. In his testimony before the Committee on the Conduct of the War,¹ he says:--

I pushed a skirmish line too, I think, within about one hundred and fifty yards of the work. I had about three hundred men left in the main body, about eight hundred yards from the work. There was a knoll that had evidently been built for a magazine, an artificial knoll on which I stood, and which gave me a full view of the work and the ground in front of it. I saw that the work, as a defensive work, was not injured at all, except that one gun about midway of the land face was dismounted. I counted sixteen guns all in proper position, which made it evident to me that they had not been injured; because when a gun is injured, you can generally see it from the way in which it stands. The grass slopes of the traverses and of the parapets did not appear broken in the least. The regular shapes of the slopes of the traverses and slopes of the parapets were not disturbed. I did not see a single opening in the row of palisades that was in front of the ditch, it seemed to me perfectly intact.

From all the information which I gained on my first visit to New Inlet, as from what I saw on this reconnoissance, together with the information that I had obtained from naval officers who had been on the