Newton Martin Curtis

Medal of Honor Hero of Fort Fisher

Four wounds could not stop Newton Martin Curtis.

At Fort Fisher on 15 January 1865, the Union brigadier general did something almost unimaginable for an officer of his rank. He took a weapon, moved to the front of his brigade and personally led repeated assaults against one of the Confederacy’s strongest coastal fortifications. Shot again and again, Curtis refused to leave the fight until his men had broken through the defenses. His courage earned him the Medal of Honor and secured his place among the most remarkable battlefield commanders of the American Civil War.

Newton Martin Curtis was born on 21 May 1835 in De Peyster, St. Lawrence County, New York. He attended local schools and Gouverneur Wesleyan Seminary before briefly studying law in Ogdensburg. After returning to his family’s farm, he remained there until the attack on Fort Sumter transformed the nation and his life. Responding to President Abraham Lincoln’s call for troops, Curtis helped organize a company of volunteers from his home region.

On 15 May 1861, Curtis entered Union service as captain of Company G, 16th New York Infantry. He quickly established himself as an energetic and courageous officer. His wartime service included operations at Harrison’s Landing, Crampton’s Pass and Antietam, and he suffered his first battle wound at West Point, Virginia.

Curtis later joined the 142nd New York Infantry as lieutenant colonel on 23 October 1862 and became its colonel on 21 January 1863. He continued rising through the ranks as the war entered its bloodiest years, receiving the brevet rank of brigadier general of volunteers in October 1864. By then, he had developed from a local company commander into an experienced brigade leader trusted with men’s lives during major combat operations.

His regiment and brigade participated in operations that carried Union forces from Virginia to the Atlantic coast. Curtis fought in the Petersburg campaign and at New Market Heights before joining the expedition against Fort Fisher, North Carolina. The massive earthwork guarded the approaches to Wilmington, the last major Atlantic port still open to Confederate blockade runners. Capturing it would sever one of the Confederacy’s final routes for receiving weapons, supplies and equipment from overseas.

A Union attempt to capture Fort Fisher in December 1864 had failed. A second operation followed in January 1865 under Major General Alfred Terry and Rear Admiral David Porter. Naval guns subjected the fort to an intense bombardment while thousands of Union soldiers prepared to attack from the landward side. The Confederate garrison remained protected behind stockades, traverses, artillery positions and formidable earthworks.

Curtis commanded the First Brigade of the Second Division, Twenty-Fourth Army Corps. When the assault began on 15 January, he did not direct the attack from a protected command position. He moved forward with his soldiers, took up a musket and personally led them across the exposed approach to the fort. A general officer at the front immediately became a conspicuous target for Confederate defenders.

Curtis was wounded during the first assault, but he continued. He was wounded again during the second attack and once more during the third. Still unwilling to abandon his men, he led a fourth charge that carried the Union troops through the stockade and into Fort Fisher. The fighting inside the earthworks became a brutal struggle for successive traverses, with soldiers contesting the fort section by section.

Only after Curtis suffered a fourth wound, severe enough to prevent him from continuing, was he carried from the battlefield. While receiving treatment, he learned that Fort Fisher had fallen. The victory closed the Confederate stronghold and helped seal Wilmington’s fate, cutting off the last major seaborne supply route available to the Army of Northern Virginia.

Curtis’s official Medal of Honor citation captures the essential facts of his leadership:

“The first man to pass through the stockade, he personally led each assault on the traverses and was four times wounded.”

He received the Medal of Honor on 28 November 1891. The official record identifies his rank at the action as brigadier general, United States Volunteers. He later received the brevet rank of major general of volunteers on 13 March 1865, the highest military rank of his career.

Curtis’s modern reconstructed entitlement also includes the Civil War Campaign Medal. Unlike the Medal of Honor, the campaign medal carried no individual gallantry citation. It recognized qualifying Army service during the Civil War and was established by the War Department in 1907, decades after Curtis first entered the Union Army. It represents the wider span of his wartime service, while the Medal of Honor commemorates his extraordinary actions at Fort Fisher.

Curtis’s service did not end when the Civil War ended. In 1866, he was appointed collector of customs for the District of Oswegatchie. The following year, he became a special agent of the United States Treasury Department, remaining in that position until 1880. He later worked for the Department of Justice and served in the New York State Assembly from 1884 to 1890.

In 1891, Curtis entered the United States House of Representatives as a Republican from New York. He served through the Fifty-Second, Fifty-Third and Fifty-Fourth Congresses, remaining in office until March 1897. During his final term, he chaired the Committee on the Election of the President, Vice President and Representatives in Congress. His public career reflected the same sense of duty that had taken him from a northern New York farm to the walls of Fort Fisher.

Curtis also worked to preserve the history of the soldiers with whom he had served. In 1906, he published From Bull Run to Chancellorsville, an account of the 16th New York Infantry combined with his personal wartime recollections. His papers, correspondence and military records survive in historical collections, providing researchers with valuable material on his military and political careers.

Newton Martin Curtis died in New York City on 8 January 1910 and was buried in Ogdensburg Cemetery, New York. He was seventy-four years old. His life had encompassed the roles of farmer, soldier, brigade commander, Medal of Honor recipient, government official, state legislator, congressman and military historian.

Yet Curtis is remembered most vividly for a single afternoon at Fort Fisher. Faced with stockades, artillery, rifle fire and repeated wounds, he refused to ask his soldiers to advance where he would not go himself. He crossed the defenses first, led every assault and remained in the battle until his body could carry him no farther.

Newton Martin Curtis did not lead from safety. He led from the front.