The Crimean War Connection

The Malakoff-Sebastopol

"I heard to night [sic] by the evening paper, that Sebastopol had fallen, that the French had lost 15,000, the English 2,000, and the Russians about 15,000. What wholesale slaughter. And all for what? . . . . Sebastopol is taken. At last the press groan to day [sic] with this (to my Russian sympathising heart) bad news."
— William Lamb, age 20; diary entries from Newark, New Jersey, and New York City, September 1855.

Nearly seven years later, at the age of 26, William Lamb would gain inspiration for the construction of Fort Fisher from famed Russian engineer Frants E. I. Todleben's defensive works at Sebastopol.

At 29, Lamb would command his fort — the South's most powerful bastion — in defense of the largest combined operation in United States military history (a distinction that would stand until World War II).

Source
Moore, Mark A. "William Lamb, the Malakoff, and the Viability of Fort Fisher: A Comparative Analysis of the Capture of the South's Largest Earthen Fortification, and the Fall of Sebastopol during the Crimean War." In The Wilmington Campaign and the Battles for Fort Fisher. (Da Capo Press, 1999), pp. 136-155.