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205pp., 9"x11", hardcover with case binding and dust jacket, 184 B&W and color images, 14 maps, and Order of Battle.
ISBN: 978-0-9834175-0-7
$39.99
plus $6.99 shipping and insurance.
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To Forge a Thunderbolt
Fort Anderson and the Battle for Wilmington
by Chris E. Fonvielle Jr.
Fort Anderson played an important role in the history of North Carolina during the Civil War. It was the Confederacy’s largest interior fortification in the Lower Cape Fear, and guarded the Cape Fear River and western land approaches to Wilmington. Beginning in late March 1862, Confederate engineers built massive earthen defenses at Brunswick Point, the site of the colonial port town of Brunswick, located halfway between Wilmington and the mouth of the river. The works comprised elevated artillery emplacements mounting heavy seacoast cannons and an adjoining line of imposing fieldworks that extended westward for more than a mile, from the Cape Fear River to Orton Pond.
The army initially named the work Fort St. Philip for St. Philip’s Anglican Church, the only standing colonial structure at the site of Old Brunswick. In July 1863, the army renamed it Fort Anderson, in honor of North Carolina Brigadier General George Burgwin Anderson, who had been mortally wounded at the battle of Sharpsburg (Antietam) the previous September. In early November 1863, Confederate President Jefferson Davis visited Fort Anderson.
By early 1865, General Ulysses S. Grant was so determined to capture Wilmington, the Confederacy’s principal seaport and most important city, that he traveled from Virginia to the Cape Fear to finalize plans for an attack by way of Fort Anderson. His forces had recently captured Fort Fisher and sealed the harbor to blockade running. Grant now wanted to take Wilmington as a means of assisting General William T. Sherman’s legion on its march through the Carolinas toward Virginia to help defeat General Robert E. Lee’s beleaguered, but strongly entrenched, army at Petersburg.
A Union combined operation against Fort Anderson lasted for more than two days, February 17-19, 1865. Wilmington fell three days later. Historians have also drawn intriguing connections between Fort Anderson and the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.
Faces of Fort Fisher
1861 – 1864
by Chris E. Fonvielle Jr.
160 pp., 9" x 11", hardcover with case binding and dust jacket, 162 B&W and color images, and 8 maps.
ISBN: 978-0-9792431-9-6
$29.99
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Fort Fisher was was the Confederacy's strongest seacoast fortification. It guarded New Inlet, the northern entryway into the Cape Fear River and the port of Wilmington, North Carolina. By the summer of 1863, Wilmington was the Confederacy's main seaport along the Atlantic seaboard. Commerce vessels brought in essential weapons, equipment, and provisions for its armed forces on the battlefront and civilians on the home front. To do so, they had to evade U.S. Navy ships deployed to blockade the South's coastline and seaports. Strong defenses like Fort Fisher were needed to protect Wilmington for blockade-runners, the inlets they used to access its harbor, the port facilities, and the railroads along which supplies were transported. By late 1864, Wilmington was the lifeline for General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and the Confederacy's most important city. Faces of Fort Fisher, 1861-1864, examines the early history of the fort, nicknamed the Gibraltar of the South, from its construction beginning in 1861 until the eve of it being attacked by Union forces at Christmas 1864. It looks at the officers who planned, designed and commanded the works, and the soldiers who built, garrisoned and defended them. The book also explores events associated with the fort's fascinating history.
New: Revised Second Edition
128 pp., 9" x 11" hard stock paperback
154 B&W and color images, and 4 maps.
ISBN: 978-0-9792431-8-9
$29.95 paperback
plus $6.99 shipping and insurance.
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Fort Fisher 1865
The Photographs of T.H. O'Sullivan
by Chris E. Fonvielle Jr.
Fort Fisher was the largest and strongest seacoast fortification in the Confederacy, and the main guardian of Wilmington, North Carolina. Located near New Inlet, the northern-most entranceway into the Cape Fear River, Fort Fisher's earthen batteries stretched for about one mile and mounted forty-seven heavy seacoast cannon that protected blockade-running ships smuggling vital supplies into the Confederacy by way of Wilmington.
From 1863-1865, Wilmington was the South's principal seaport and considered the lifeline of the Confederacy. Fort Fisher withstood the most intense U.S. naval bombardment of the Civil War at Christmas 1864, before falling to the largest Union combined operation up to that time in mid-January 1865. Federal authorities were so impressed with the size and strength of Fort Fisher that they determined to make a photographic record of the imposing stronghold for posterity.
Alexander Gardner, who did considerable photographic work for the U.S. Army, dispatched one of his best employees, T.H. O'Sullivan, to photograph Fort Fisher. In early February 1865, O'Sullivan made a series of about forty views of Fort Fisher, making it one of the most photographed Confederate fortifications.
In Fort Fisher 1865: The Photographs of T.H. O'Sullivan, Dr. Chris E. Fonvielle Jr. has reassembled the most complete photographic record of T.H. O'Sullivan's wartime images of the mighty fortress known to exist.
Limited edition leather bound
128pp., 9"x11", 154 B&W and color images, and 4 maps.
ISBN: 978-0-9792431-8-9
Signed and numbered by author.
Limited to 100 copies.
$100.00
plus $8.95 shipping and insurance.
Louis Froelich
Arms-Maker to the Confederacy
by John W. McAden Jr. & Chris E. Fonvielle Jr.
96 pp., 9" x 11", hardcover with dust jacket.
136 B&W and color images, and 3 maps.
ISBN: 978-0-9792431-4-1
$29.99
plus $6.99 shipping and insurance.
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Limited edition leather bound
96 pp., 9"x11", 136 B&W and color images, and 3 maps.
Signed and numbered by the authors.
Limited to 100 copies.
$100.00
plus $8.95 shipping and insurance.
