On February 20-21, 1865, Confederate Gen. Robert F. Hoke’s troops made a stand at Forks Road, then three miles south of Wilmington, in an effort to halt the Union army’s advance on Wilmington, the Confederacy’s principal seaport. Wilmington and the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad had formed a supply lifeline essential to the survival of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, but that lifeline had been disrupted when Fort Fisher fell on January 15 to Union army and navy forces. Four weeks later, Union forces moved toward Wilmington to take control of the Cape Fear River and the railroads to supply Gen. William T. Sherman’s army as it marched northward through the Carolinas to join Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s forces in Virginia. As Hoke withdrew up the east side of the Cape Fear River, he fought delaying actions while pursued by Union Gen. Alfred H. Terry’s troops. On the afternoon of February 20, Terry’s forces engaged Hoke’s rear guard, Gen. Thomas L. Clingman’s brigade and the Wilmington Horse Artillery, at Forks Road. The entrenched Confederates repulsed Col. Elias Wright’s brigade of U.S. Colored Troops, including the 5th U.S.C.T., inflicting more than fifty casualties with rifle and cannon fire. The Federals then retreated a short distance south, dug in, and exchanged fire for about thirty-four hours. Before dawn on February 22, Hoke’s men retreated, and Union forces occupied Wilmington. Wilmington’s fall weakened the Confederate supply line and hastened the Confederacy’s downfall; six weeks later, Lee evacuated Richmond and Petersburg and surrendered on April 9. At Forks Road, the war also literally set brother against brother, as Confederate Corp. Hosea Lewis Horne of the Wilmington Horse Artillery fought against his brother, Corp. Jacob Horne of the 2nd North Carolina Infantry (U.S.); both survived and returned to New Hanover County after the war.