W. H. C. Whiting: Builder of Fort Fisher

William Henry Chase Whiting graduated from West Point in eighteen forty-five with the highest scholastic record in the academy's history to that point, a record not surpassed until Douglas MacArthur sixty years later. As a Confederate major general, he was given command of the Cape Fear military district in eighteen sixty-two and set about transforming a modest earthwork on a sandy peninsula into Fort Fisher, the strongest Confederate fort on the Atlantic coast. When Union forces launched a massive assault on January fifteenth, eighteen sixty-five, Whiting rushed in to help defend the fort and was shot twice in the thigh. Captured and taken to a Union hospital, he died of illness two months later, after recovering from his wounds.