The Richmond Enquirer, in the final months of the Civil War, exulted in early January over news that Confederate troops at Fort Fisher near Wilmington, N.C., had successfully rebuffed a Union attack.

According to the Southern paper, initial “apprehensions in the community were that Wilmington our last seaport would succumb to the immense force sent against it.”

But the paper noted that Union forces were turned back, boosting Southern moral. It said “the enemy having expended their utmost strength on Fort Fisher, an outpost of Wilmington, (has) been badly beaten” in a “most gratifying triumph” for the Confederacy in defending its last major seaport.

Nonetheless, that news was tempered in the South by fresh reports about Union troops in Savannah, Ga., which was captured by Maj. Gen. William Sherman.

“Where the next blow will be struck is not developed; but every man in the army talks of a grand and overwhelming march” into South Carolina, reports speculated on Sherman’s next moves.

In the North, meanwhile, some were already seeking to profit from past tales of war, including a veteran of the 1st Regiment of New York Mounted Rifles who promoted sales of a story called “Life in The Saddle” with “most graphic, exciting and thrilling portraiture” of past military campaigns in Virginia.