In 1745, the North Carolina Assembly authorized construction of a fort here to protect the Cape Fear River from the Spanish. Named for colonial governor Gabriel Johnston and also called Fort Pender, Fort Johnston later became part of the defenses that guarded the river and Wilmington during the Civil War. On January 9, 1861, as secession fever swept the South, armed civilians overwhelmed the fort’s lone occupant, Ordnance Sgt. James Reilly, demanded the keys, and received them after his quick surrender. Although North Carolina Gov. John W. Ellis ordered Fort Johnston and several other strongholds restored to the Federal government on January 11, Confederates reoccupied the fort on April 16 after the fall of Fort Sumter, again taking possession from Reilly. He soon resigned from the U.S. Army, joined the Confederacy as an artillery officer, and later oversaw the surrender of Fort Fisher to Union forces on January 15, 1865. During the war, blockade-running vessels passed through this inlet between Oak Island and Bald Head Island en route to Canada, Bermuda, the Caribbean islands, and Cuba, then returned to Wilmington with tons of military supplies that railroads carried to Petersburg and Richmond in Virginia for Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. As the Union blockading squadron sealed every Southern port except Wilmington, Fort Fisher, Fort Johnston, and other fortifications on the Cape Fear River protected that remaining gateway. On February 29, 1864, U.S. Navy Lt. William B. Cushing led a night raid ashore to kidnap Confederate General Louis Hébert, the fort’s commanding officer, but Hébert was away, so the raiders seized another officer to show the garrison its security had been breached. Cushing took possession of Fort Johnston and Smithville, present-day Southport, for Federal forces on January 18, 1865, after Fort Fisher fell, and Union troops later assembled nearby for the February assault on Fort Anderson. Fort Johnston remained an active military facility until decommissioning began in 2004.
