Qualla: Fort Anderson

Fort Anderson: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jonathunder, Public domain. Two cities lie under the grass here, one on top of the other. Walk the trails at Brunswick Town/Fort Anderson State Historic Site and you are walking across a colonial seaport that thrived for most of the 18th century, then across the sand-and-earth ramparts of a Confederate fort built directly on top of those ruins a hundred years later. The Cape Fear River slides past as it always has, indifferent to which century you happen to be standing in. The brick foundation of St. Philip's Anglican Church still stands roofless among the pines, its walls bracketed by the earthen mounds the Confederates raised when they realized the river itself was Wilmington's last lifeline to the world.

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Image: Jonathunder | Public domain

Fort Anderson: Why the River Mattered

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. By 1862, every major Southern port save one had been throttled by the Union blockade. Wilmington, twenty miles upstream from the mouth of the Cape Fear, remained open because the river's shifting inlets and treacherous shoals made it murderous to approach without local knowledge....

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Image: Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided | Public domain

Fort Anderson: Brunswick Town, Erased and Found

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. Before the war, before the fort, this was Brunswick Town, founded in 1726 as a Cape Fear shipping hub for naval stores, rice, and timber. It thrived until the American Revolution, when British forces sacked and burned it. The town never recovered. Pines reclaimed the streets, and...

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Fort Anderson: The Bombardment

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit American Battlefield Protection Program, Public domain. On February 19, 1865, after three days of fighting, Fort Anderson fell to Union forces commanded by Major General John M. Schofield. The map drawn that day, now in the National Archives, shows the fort's saw-toothed earthworks and the line of Union ironclads anchored in the river...

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Image: American Battlefield Protection Program | Public domain

Fort Anderson: What Endures

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. Visit today and the layers are still legible. The grass-covered earthworks roll across the bluff exactly where French's engineers laid them down. The roofless brick walls of St. Philip's, finished around 1768, stand in the middle of the fort like a stone ghost the Confederates bu...

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Image: Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided | Public domain