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Savannah was far more major than Charleston. And I'd drop Norfolk in favor of Galveston.
Ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
Wilmington lacked water depth and railroad access. It's also several miles from the open sea. Richmond could carry some traffic, probably more than Wilmington. Morehead probably received some blockade runners. Water depth problem there as well. Charleston and Norfolk were the most practical aside from New Orleans and Mobile.
Wilmington was rife with inlets which gave blockade runners protection. Fort Fisher (actually a series of sandworks and difficult to bombard) was a tough nut to crack. In April of 1862, Fort Pulaski fell. This sealed off Savannah pretty well. After that Wilmington and Charleston were the only two major Atlantic coast ports available to the Confederacy. I agree with Mobile, New Orleans and Galveston
Calicoboy
__________________ My dear mother:- I have come safely through two more terrible engagements with the enemy, that at South Mountain and the great battle of yesterday (Antietam). Our splendid regiment is almost destroyed. We have had nearly 400 men killed and wounded in the battles. Seven of our officers were shot and three killed in yesterday's battle and nearly 150 men killed and wounded. All from less than 300 engaged. The men have stood like iron....Maj. Rufus Dawes, 6th Wisconsin Volunteers
Wilmington was rife with inlets which gave blockade runners protection.
Calicoboy
Maybe down by Ft. Caswell and Southport. Water is still very shallow because of the coastal shelf. Even if they made it by shallow craft to the head of the Cape Fear, still a serious long walk to town.
Maybe down by Ft. Caswell and Southport. Water is still very shallow because of the coastal shelf. Even if they made it by shallow craft to the head of the Cape Fear, still a serious long walk to town.
Could they have used wagons?
Calicoboy
__________________ My dear mother:- I have come safely through two more terrible engagements with the enemy, that at South Mountain and the great battle of yesterday (Antietam). Our splendid regiment is almost destroyed. We have had nearly 400 men killed and wounded in the battles. Seven of our officers were shot and three killed in yesterday's battle and nearly 150 men killed and wounded. All from less than 300 engaged. The men have stood like iron....Maj. Rufus Dawes, 6th Wisconsin Volunteers
Good morning. I ain't knockin' Wilmington as as port, I'm all for it. As you know that is now a beautiful little city. Going back to the 1860s, you have to remember that the town wasn't there to any extent? To the southwest toward the center of South Carolina is one of America's finest swamps. Beautiful Spanish moss hanging from cypress trees, the real thing, hence Francis Marion's appelation from an earlier war. They could have taken wagons north and south along the coast except for some river inlets without bridges and way to the north the Pamlico Sound with no towns either way except for Charleston, a Confederate town with a much better port and Norfolk, too far away. I think Morehead or rather Beaufort, NC was probably a better choice with it's relative proximity to New Bern. Road from New Bern was possible and may have existed, but lots of loose sand, loam and dense undergrowth where the pines weren't thick. Axe vendors would have loved the place. When did J.M. Morehead build his railroad from Morehead City inland? That would have helped the Confederates for much of the war, but I can't recall if it was there. Time for Google? I'm ramblin' here, in case you hadn't noticed. Please supply a few facts if you have them? I can live with defeat.
__________________ My dear mother:- I have come safely through two more terrible engagements with the enemy, that at South Mountain and the great battle of yesterday (Antietam). Our splendid regiment is almost destroyed. We have had nearly 400 men killed and wounded in the battles. Seven of our officers were shot and three killed in yesterday's battle and nearly 150 men killed and wounded. All from less than 300 engaged. The men have stood like iron....Maj. Rufus Dawes, 6th Wisconsin Volunteers
Thanks to Calicoboy's efforts, I stand before you educated! This is a clip from the website he referenced in his previous post concerning Wilmington, NC. This is not my geographic area of civil war research, so I was quite surprised to learn that Wilmington was that developed during the war. I slept through several hours of history instruction back in the 1950s and 60s, so I'm just reading this stuff! This is the clip:
Wilmington was on the Cape Fear river, which angled down to the ocean behind a sandy peninsula that was riddled with inlets through which a blockade-runner could slip. The Confederates had set up a system of spotters to tell the captains of the vessels when (literally) the coast was clear of Federal blockaders, so the blockade runners could make a run for the open sea. At the end of the peninsula was Fort Fisher, a seemingly much cruder fortification than Fort Pulaski. Fort Fisher was simply an extended series of earthworks, or more accurately sandworks, that hardly looked like a real fort at all. Appearances were deceiving in a way the complete opposite of how they had been at Fort Pulaski: Fort Fisher was well laid-out and ingeniously designed, and could stand almost any bombardment the Federals could throw at it. For the moment the Yankees didn't even try.
As a result of these two factors, Wilmington became a boomtown. With the Confederacy increasingly starved of manufactured goods it could not realistically hope to make for itself, even a small cargo that slipped through the blockade was worth a fortune. Wilmington became a wealthy and wild place, unsafe on the streets at night, but soldiers on sick leave who passed through the place on their way home found the local women's committees provided them with luxuries unheard-of elsewhere in the Confederacy. The blockade runners brought more than luxuries. That previous fall, the blockade runner FINGAL had steamed into Wilmington carrying 13,000 Enfield rifles, a million cartridges, two million percussion caps, 400 barrels of powder, miscellaneous artillery and other weapons, and a large quantity of British-spun Confederate uniforms.
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What were the five major ports of the Confederacy? 
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