338

THE LAND TROOPS ON THE MISSISSIPPI.

prisoners of war. The battle was now over, and all of Farragut's ships, twelve in number, that had passed the forts joined the Cayuga. Then the dead were carried ashore and buried.

While this desperate battle was raging, the land troops, under General Butler, had been preparing for their part in the drama. They. were in the transports at the Passes, and had distinctly heard the booming of the guns and mortars. The General and his staff, as we have observed, were on the Saxon. She followed close in the rear of Bailey's division, until the plunging of shells from the forts into the water around her warned the commanding General that he had gone far enough. So eager had been his interest in the scenes before him, that he had entered the arena of imminent danger without perceiving it. He ordered the Saxon to drop a little astern, to the great relief of her Captain, to whom a flaming shell would have been specially unwelcome, for his vessel was laden with eight hundred barrels of gunpowder. Almost at the same moment the Manassas, that had been terribly

ing, for she was on fire. In a few minutes her only gun went off, and the flames burst out from her bow-port and stern trap-door. Giving a plunge, like some huge monster, she went hissing to the bottom of the Mississippi.

Farragut had now thirteen of his vessels in safety above the forts, and he prepared to move up to New Orleans, while Porter, with his mortar-fleet, was still below them, and they were yet firmly held by the Confederates. The time for Butler to act had arrived. Half an hour after Farragut had reached the Quarantine, he sent Captain Boggs in a small boat, through shallow bayous in the rear of Fort St. Philip with dispatches for Butler and Porter. The former had already procured the light-draft steamer Miami from Porter, and had hastened to his transports. These were taken to Sable Island, twelve miles in the rear of Fort St. Philip, and from that point the troops made their way in small boats through the narrow and shallow bayous with the greatest fatigue, under the general pilotage of Lieutenant Weitzel. Sometimes the boats were dragged by men waist deep in cold and muddy water; but the work was soon and well accomplished, and on the night of the 27th Butler was at the Quarantine, ready to begin the meditated assault on Fort St. Philip the next day. His troops were landed a short distance above the fort, under cover of the guns of the Mississippi and Kineo. A small force was sent across the river to a position not far above Fort Jackson.

CAPTURE OF FORTS JACKSON AND ST. PHILIP.

339

In the mean time Porter had been pounding Fort Jackson terribly with the shells from his mortars. On the 26th, he sent a flag of truce with a demand for its surrender, and saying that he had information that Commodore Farragut was in possession of New Orleans. On the following morning, Colonel Higgins, the commander of the forts, replied that he had no official information of the surrender of New Orleans, and, until such should be received by him, no proposition for a surrender of the works under his command could be entertained for a moment. On the same day, General Duncan, then in Fort Jackson, issued an address to the soldiers, as the commander of the coast defenses, urging them to continue the contest, saying: "The safety of New Orleans and the cause of the Southern Confederacy-our homes, families, and every thing dear to man-yet depend upon our exertions. We are just as capable of repelling the enemy to-day as we were before the bombardment." But the soldiers did not all agree with him in opinion. They saw the blackened fragments of vessels and other property strewing the swift current of the Mississippi, and were satisfied that the rumors of the fall of New Orleans that had reached them were true. They had also heard of Butler's troops in the rear of Fort St. Philip. So that night a large portion of the garrison mutinied, spiked the guns bearing up the river, and the next day sallied out and surrendered themselves to Butler's pickets on that side of the river, saying they had been impressed, and would fight the Government no longer.

Colonel Higgins now saw that all was lost, and he hastened to accept the generous terms which Porter had offered. While these terms were being reduced to writing in the cabin of the Harriet Lane,' Mitchell towed his battery (the Louisiana), which lay above the forts, out into the strong current, set her on fire, and abandoned her, with her guns all shotted. He expected she would blow up in the midst of the mortar-fleet, but the explosion occurred when she was abreast of Fort St. Philip, when a flying fragment from her killed one of its garrison. She at once went to the bottom of the river, and the remaining Confederate steamers surrendered without resis.

PLAN OF FORT JACKSON.

1 The capitulation was signed on the part of the Nationals by Commanders David D. Porter and W. B Renshaw, and Lieutenant W. W. Wainright, commander of the Harriet Lane; and on the part of the Confederates by General J. K. Duncan, commander of the coast defenses, and Colonel Edwin Iliggins, the commander of the forts. The writer was informed by an officer of the navy who was present at the surrender of Fort Jackson, that when the flag-officer of that work was asked for the garrison flag, which was not to be seen, he pretended to be ignorant of its whereabouts. He appeared to be unduly corpulent, and, on a personal examination, it was found that his obesity was caused by the flag, which was wrapped around his body.

340

ance.1

EXCITEMENT IN NEW ORLEANS.

Commodore Porter turned over the forts and all their contents to General Phelps. Fort Jackson was only injured in its interior works, and Fort St. Philip was as perfect as when the bombardment began. No reliable report of the losses of the Confederates in killed and wounded was ever given. The number of prisoners surrendered, including those of the Chalmette regiment and on board of the gun-boats last taken, amounted to nearly one thousand. The entire loss of the Nationals, from the beginning of the contest until New Orleans was taken, was forty killed and one hundred and seventy-seven wounded.

Porter told Higgins the truth when he said Farragut was in possession

MANSFIELD LOVELL.

of New Orleans. The city was really lost when the Commodore's thirteen armed vessels were lying in safety

and in fair condition at April 24, the Quarantine. Of this 1862. imminent peril of the city General Lovell had been impressed early that morning. He had come down in his steamer Doubloon, and arrived just as the National fleet was passing the forts. He came near being captured in the terrible mêlée on the river that ensued, and sought safety on shore. Then he hastened to New Orleans as fast as courier horses could take him, traveling

chiefly along the levee, for much of the country was overflowed. He arrived there early in the afternoon, and confirmed the intelligence of disaster which had already reached the citizens. A

fearful panic ensued. Drums were beating; soldiers were seen hurrying to and fro; merchants fled from their stores; women without bonnets and brandishing pistols were. seen in the streets, crying, "Burn the city! Never mind us! Burn the city!" Military officers impressed vehicles into the service of carrying cotton to the levees to be burned. Specie, to the amount of four millions of dollars, was sent out of the city by railway; the consulates were crowded with foreigners deposit

TWIGGS'S HOUSE.

1 There seems to have been no kindly co-operation between the forts and the Confederate fleet, and some very spicy correspondence occurred between General Duncan and Captain Mitchell. The former, in his official report, declared that the great disaster was "the sheer result of that lack of cheerful and hearty co-operation from the defenses afloat" which he had a right to expect.

2 Over 1,800 shells fell inside of Fort Jackson, 170 in the water-battery, and about 8,000 in the ditches around the works. For minute particulars of the battle and its results, see the reports of Captains Farragut and Porter, and their subordinate commanders; of General Butler and those under his command; and of General Duncan and Colonel Higgins, of the Confederate forces.

This was the appearance of Twiggs's residence when the writer visited it, in the spring of 1866. It was a

MILITARY EVACUATION OF NEW ORLEANS.

341

ing their money and other valuables for safety from the impending storm; and poor old Twiggs, the traitor, like his former master, Floyd, fearing the wrath of his injured Government, fled from his home, leaving in the care of a young woman the two swords which had been awarded him for his services in Mexico, to fall into the hands of the conquerors who speedily came.'

On his way to New Orleans, Lovell had ordered General Smith, who was in command of the river defenses below the town, known as the Chalmette batteries,' to make all possible resistance; and in the city he tried to raise a thousand volunteers, who should make a desperate attempt to board and capture the National vessels, but

he found only one hundred men who evinced sufficient courage or desperation to undertake the perilous task. Lovell was satisfied

himself, and he convinced the city authorities that the regular and volunteer troops under his immediate command were too few to make resistance, and he could not rely on the militia conscripts, nor a regiment of free colored men who had been pressed into the service, in the presence of foes that they might welcome as their friends. These considerations, and the fact that, on account of the height of the river surface at

that time of flood, a gun-boat might pass up to Kenner's plantation, ten miles above the city, and command the narrow neck between the river and the swamp, across which the railway passes, and thus prevent the troops and supplies going out, or supplies and re-enforcements going into the town, made it absolutely necessary that they should escape as soon as possible. So Lovell prepared to abandon New Orleans. He disbanded the conscripts, and sent stores, munitions of war, and other valuable property up the country by steamboats and the railroad; and while a portion of the volunteers hastened to Camp Moore, on the Jackson and New Orleans

large brick house, at the junction of Camp and Magazine Streets, and was then used by General Canby, the commander of the Department, as the quarters of his paymaster.

1 Parton's Butler in New Orleans, page 264

These were on each side of the river. There were five 32-pounders on one side and nine on the other.

342

DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY AT NEW ORLEANS.

railway, seventy-eight miles distant, the regiment of colored troops refused to go.

With nine vessels Farragut proceeded up the river on the morning of the 25th, and when near the English Turn he met evidences of the abandonment of New Orleans by the Confederates in the form of blazing ships, loaded with cotton, that came floating down the stream. Soon afterward, he discovered the Chalmette batteries on both sides of the Mississippi, a few miles below the city, and at once made dispositions to attack them. The river was so full that his vessels completely commanded the Confederate works. Moving in two lines, they proceeded to the business of disabling them. The gallant Bailey, who had not noticed the signal for close order, was far ahead with the Cayuga, and for twenty minutes she sustained a heavy crossfire alone. Farragut pressed forward with the Hartford, and, passing the Cayuga, gave the batteries such destructive broadsides of shell, grape, and shrapnel that at the first discharge the Confederates were driven from their guns. The Pensacola and the Brooklyn, and then the remainder of the fleet, followed the Hartford's example, and in the course of twenty minutes the batteries were silenced and their men were running for their lives.

The victors were now in the midst of a terrific scene. The river was strewn with fire rafts, burning steamers, and blazing cotton bales, and overhung by an awful canopy of black smoke, sent up by the great conflagration. As soon as it was known that the National vessels were approaching the city, another great panic prevailed, and the work of destruction of property commenced, by order of the Governor of Louisiana and General Lovell.' In a very short time a sheet of flame and pall of smoke, caused by burning cotton, sugar, and other staples of that region, were seen along the levee for the

rious presses along the river front it was piled and fired, and in this way no less than fifteen thousand bales, valued at one million five hundred thousand dollars, were consumed. More than a dozen large ships, some of them laden with cotton, and as many magnificent steamboats, with unfinished gunboats and other vessels, were soon wrapped in flames and sent floating down the river, the Confederates hoping they might destroy the approaching

1 Pollard, i. 816.