Fort Fisher Presents “Glory Enough For All” as Part of Civil War 150th

“Glory Enough for All,” a day-long event commemorating the kickoff for the sesquicentennial commemoration of the Civil War in North Carolina , will be held Saturday, Jan. 15, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Fort Fisher State Historic Site in Kure Beach . The program will focus on post-war reunions and efforts to memorialize the battle.

“Glory Enough for All” will include a new temporary exhibit featuring a United Confederate Veterans uniform and a blue-and-grey reunion button from 1907. Visitors will enjoy speakers, artillery demonstrations, infantry demonstrations and thematic tours. Offered only during this event will be a special tour of Battle Acre and the United Daughters of the Confederacy monument that was placed at that location in the 1930s. The program is free and open to the public.

At the dawn of the American Civil War, the Confederacy took control of a neck of land in southern North Carolina near the mouth of the Cape Fear River and constructed what was to become the largest and most important earthwork fort in the South. Two major battles were fought there, and many Union soldiers received the Congressional Medal of Honor for their gallant participation in that fighting. Today only a few of the mounds remain, since much of the fort has been eroded by the ocean.

Until the last few months of the Civil War, Fort Fisher kept North Carolina 's port of open to blockade runners supplying necessary goods to Confederate armies inland. By 1865, the supply line through Wilmington was the last remaining supply route open to Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. When Fort Fisher fell after a massive Federal amphibious assault on Jan.15, 1865, its defeat helped seal the fate of the Confederacy.

Visitors are invited to tour the remains of the fort's land face featuring an impressive reconstruction of a 32-pounder seacoast gun at Shepherd's Battery . Shaded by gnarled live oaks, a scenic trail leads tourists from the visitor center past the gigantic earthworks and around to the rear of the fort. Guided tours and wayside exhibits provide historical orientation. Other exhibits include items recovered from sunken blockade runners.

The commemoration of North Carolina ’s Civil War 150th is sponsored in part by the North Carolina Office of Archives and History, within the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources, the state agency with the mission to enrich lives and communities, and the vision to harness the state’s cultural resources to build North Carolina ’s social, cultural and economic future. For more info rmation, visit www.ncculture.com.