Admiral Porter (for age and ill-health had come upon Farragut) was ready at sea to co-operate with Sherman.  Thomas’ army in Tennessee had not been allowed by Grant to go into winter quarters.  A part of it under Schofield was brought to Washington and there shipped for North Carolina, where, ever since Burnside’s successful expedition in 1862, the Union Government had held the ports north of Wilmington.  Wilmington itself was the only port left to the South, and Richmond had now come to depend largely on the precarious and costly supplies which could still, notwithstanding the blockade, be run into that harbour.  At the end of December, Butler, acting in flagrant disobedience to Grant, had achieved his crowning failure in a joint expedition with Porter against Wilmington.  But Porter was not discouraged, nor was Grant, who from beginning to end of his career had worked well together with the Navy.  On February 8, Porter, this time supported by an energetic general, Terry, effected a brilliant capture of Fort Fisher at the mouth of Wilmington harbour.  The port was closed to the South.  On the 22nd, the city itself fell to Schofield, and Sherman had now this sea base at hand if he needed it.

Meanwhile Grant’s entrenchments on the east of Richmond and Petersburg were still extending southward, and Lee’s defences had been stretched till they covered nearly forty miles.  Grant’s lines now cut the principal railway southward from the huge fortress, and he was able effectually to interrupt communication by road to the southwest.  There could be little doubt that Richmond would fall soon, and the real question was coming to be whether Lee and his army could escape from Richmond and still carry on the war.

The appointment of Lee as General-in-Chief was not too late to bear one consequence which may have prolonged the war a little.  Joseph Johnston, whose ability in a campaign of constant retirement before overwhelming force had been respected and redoubted by Sherman, had been discarded by Davis in the previous July.  He was now put in command of the forces which it was hoped to concentrate against Sherman, with a view to holding up his northward advance and preventing him from joining hands with Grant before Richmond.  There were altogether about 89,000 Confederate troops scattered in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida, and there would be about the same number under Sherman when Schofield in North Carolina could join him, but the number which Johnston could now collect together seems never to have exceeded 33,000.  It was Sherman’s task by the rapidity of his movements to prevent a very formidable concentration against him.  Johnston on the other hand must hinder if he could Sherman’s junction with Schofield.  Just before that junction took place he narrowly missed dealing a considerable blow to Sherman’s army at the battle of Bentonville in the heart of North Carolina, but had in the end to withdraw within an entrenched position where Sherman would not attack