Columbus is a consolidated city-county located on the west-central border of the U.S. state of Georgia. Columbus lies on the Chattahoochee River directly across from Phenix City, Alabama. It is the county seat of Muscogee County, with which it officially merged in 1970. Columbus is the second most populous city in Georgia, and fields the state's fourth-largest metropolitan area. At the 2020 census, Columbus had a population of 206,922, with 328,883 in the Columbus metropolitan area. The metro area joins the nearby Alabama cities of Auburn and Opelika to form the Columbus–Auburn–Opelika Combined Statistical Area, which had an estimated population of 486,645 in 2019.
Wilmington is a port city in and the county seat of New Hanover County in coastal southeastern North Carolina, United States. With a population of 115,451 in the 2020 census, it is the eighth-most populous city in the state. Wilmington is the principal city of the Wilmington, NC Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes New Hanover, Pender, and Brunswick counties in southeastern North Carolina, which had a population of 285,905 in 2020.
The Second Battle of Fort Fisher was a successful assault by the Union Army, Navy and Marine Corps against Fort Fisher, south of Wilmington, North Carolina, near the end of the American Civil War in January 1865. Sometimes referred to as the "Gibraltar of the South" and the last major coastal stronghold of the Confederacy, Fort Fisher had tremendous strategic value during the war, providing a port for blockade runners supplying the Army of Northern Virginia.
Fort Fisher State Recreation Area is a 287-acre (1.16 km2) North Carolina state park in New Hanover County, North Carolina in the United States. Located near Kure Beach, North Carolina, it includes Fort Fisher, site of a major naval engagement during the American Civil War. The recreation area also served as a home for the Fort Fisher Hermit, Robert Harrill. Harrill lived in a bunker and shared his beliefs about "common sense" with thousands of visitors every year while surviving on what he could gather from the surrounding salt marsh and oyster beds.
The American Civil War Museum is a multi-site museum in the Greater Richmond Region of central Virginia, dedicated to the history of the American Civil War. The museum operates three sites: The White House of the Confederacy, American Civil War Museum at Historic Tredegar in Richmond, and American Civil War Museum at Appomattox. It maintains a comprehensive collection of artifacts, manuscripts, Confederate books and pamphlets, and photographs.
The Battle of Wilmington was fought February 11–22, 1865, during the American Civil War, mostly outside the city of Wilmington, North Carolina, between the opposing Union and Confederate Departments of North Carolina. The Union victory in January in the Second Battle of Fort Fisher meant that Wilmington, 30 miles upriver, could no longer be used by the Confederacy as a port. It fell to Union troops after they overcame Confederate defenses along the Cape Fear River south of the city. The Confederate General Braxton Bragg burned stores of tobacco and cotton, among other supplies and equipment, before leaving the city, to prevent the Union from seizing them.
Fort Fisher was a Confederate fort during the American Civil War. It protected the vital trading routes of the port at Wilmington, North Carolina, from 1861 until its capture by the Union in 1865. The fort was located on one of Cape Fear River's two outlets to the Atlantic Ocean on what was then known as Federal Point or Confederate Point and today is known as Pleasure Island. The strength of Fort Fisher led to its being called the Southern Gibraltar and the "Malakoff Tower of the South". The battle of Fort Fisher was the most decisive battle of the Civil War fought in North Carolina.
The second USS Louisiana was a propeller-driven iron-hull steamer in the United States Navy during the American Civil War.
The Carolinas campaign, also known as the campaign of the Carolinas, was the final campaign conducted by the Union Army against the Confederate Army in the Western Theater of the American Civil War. On January 1, Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman advanced north from Savannah, Georgia, through the Carolinas, with the intention of linking up with Union forces in Virginia. The campaign culminated in the defeat of Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's army at the Battle of Bentonville, and its unconditional surrender to Union forces on April 26, 1865. Coming just two weeks after the defeat of Robert E. Lee's army at the Battle of Appomattox Court House, it signaled that the war was effectively over.
William Henry Chase Whiting was a United States Army officer who resigned after 16 years of service in the Army Corps of Engineers to serve in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. He was wounded at the Second Battle of Fort Fisher by a musket ball to his leg, and died in prison camp on March 10, 1865, of dysentery.
The Bruce Museum is a regionally-based museum located in Greenwich, Connecticut with a multi-disciplinary collection and exhibition program bringing together art, science, and natural history. The Bruce's main building sits on a hill in a downtown park, and its tower can be easily seen by drivers passing by on Interstate 95. Permanent exhibits include minerals, area Native American history and culture, changes in the area landscape and environment by human activity, and dioramas of Connecticut woodland wildlife and birds. The museum hosts changing exhibitions of art, photography, natural history, science, history and culture.
Wilmington, North Carolina, was a major port for the Confederacy during the American Civil War. It was the last port to fall to the Union Army, completing its blockade of the Atlantic coast.
William Lamb was an American newspaper editor, politician, businessman, and soldier, noted for his role as a Confederate States Army officer in commanding the Confederate garrison at Fort Fisher at the mouth of the Cape Fear River during the Civil War.
Robert E. Harrill, or Harrell, was an American man also known as the Fort Fisher Hermit. He became a hermit in 1955, at the age of 62, having hitchhiked to Fort Fisher on the North Carolina coast from Morganton, North Carolina. He had previously been committed to a mental hospital in Morganton, after his marriage failed. Harrill settled in an abandoned World War II bunker set in a salt marsh beside the Cape Fear River in the Fort Fisher State Recreation Area.
U.S. Route 421 (US 421) is part of the United States Numbered Highway System that runs from Fort Fisher, North Carolina to Michigan City, Indiana. In the U.S. state of North Carolina, US 421 travels 328 miles (528 km) from its southern terminus at Fort Fisher to the Tennessee state line near the community of Zionville, North Carolina. US 421 traverses the state from east to west travelling from the coastal plains to Appalachian Mountains. It provides an important connection between the cities of Wilmington, Sanford, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, and Boone. Despite being signed as north–south, much of the routing of US 421 in North Carolina runs in an east–west direction, particularly between Greensboro and the Tennessee state line. Portions of US 421 have been upgraded to freeway standards including the majority of its routing between Sanford and North Wilkesboro.
Confederate monuments and memorials in the United States include public displays and symbols of the Confederate States of America (CSA), Confederate leaders, or Confederate soldiers of the American Civil War. Many monuments and memorials have been or will be removed under great controversy. Part of the commemoration of the American Civil War, these symbols include monuments and statues, flags, holidays and other observances, and the names of schools, roads, parks, bridges, buildings, counties, cities, lakes, dams, military bases, and other public structures. In a December 2018 special report, Smithsonian Magazine stated, "over the past ten years, taxpayers have directed at least $40 million to Confederate monuments—statues, homes, parks, museums, libraries, and cemeteries—and to Confederate heritage organizations."
The Wilmington campaigns were part of a Union effort to take Wilmington, North Carolina, from the Confederates. Wilmington was the last major port on the Atlantic seacoast available to the Confederacy. Fort Fisher guarded the Cape Fear River and in order to capture Wilmington, Fort Fisher had to fall.
The Civil War Trust's Civil War Discovery Trail is a heritage tourism program that links more than 600 U.S. Civil War sites in more than 30 states. The program is one of the White House Millennium Council's sixteen flagship National Millennium Trails. Sites on the trail include battlefields, museums, historic sites, forts and cemeteries.
More than 160 monuments and memorials to the Confederate States of America and associated figures have been removed from public spaces in the United States, all but five since 2015. Some have been removed by state and local governments; others have been torn down by protestors.
