excepting at Charleston and its immediate vicinity, had been abandoned by the Confederates. At the beginning of 1862 the National Government had determined to repossess itself of the important positions of Mobile, New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Galveston, by which it might maintain the National supremacy over the Lower Mississippi, and attempt the occupancy of Texas. General Benjamin F. Butler was placed in command of the Department of the Gulf, which included these points, and comprised the whole theatre of proposed operations. He was directed to co-operate with the navy in the important enterprise; and as the first object of the expedition was New Orleans, he suggested Ship Island, off the coast of Mississippi, as a rendezvous for the land and naval forces. He gathered his troops at Fortress Monroe. When all was in readiness, he visited Washington, and on leaving the President, he said: "Good-bye; we shall take New Orleans or you will never see me again." Secretary Stanton said: "The man who takes New Orleans is made a lieutenant-general." Butler embarked at Fortress Monroe, with his wife, his staff, and about fourteen thousand troops, in the magnificent steamship Mississippi. He suffered vexatious delays at Port Royal; and it was thirty days before he reached Ship Island, a desolate sand-bar, without a house; and only a few charred boards could be found to make a shanty for the shelter of Mrs. Butler. General Phelps was there with Massachusetts and Connecticut troops, and had strengthened an unfinished fort on the Island. Admiral Farragut had also arrived with a naval force; also a fleet of bomb-vessels commanded by Commodore David D. Porter, prepared to co-operate with the land and naval forces. At a short bend in the Mississippi River, seventy-six miles from its passage into the Gulf of Mexico, were two forts-Jackson and St. Philip. These, with some fortifications above and obstructions in the river below, seemed to the Confederates to make the stream absolutely impassable by vessels of an enemy; and they believed New Orleans, where there were ten thousand insurgent troops under General Mansfield Lovell (a former politician of New York), to be perfectly safe from invasion. The people continued their occupations, as usual; and one of the journals said: "Our only fear is, that the northern invaders may not appear. We have made such extensive preparations to receive them that it were vexation if their invincible armada escapes the fate we have in store for it." The test was soon made. General Butler and the two naval commanders arranged a plan for the capture of New Orleans, which comprehended an attack on the forts below the city, first, by Porter's bomb-vessels, Farragut with his stronger vessels CHAP. XV. EVENTS ON THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI. 1573 remaining as a reserve until the guns of the fort should be silenced. Failing in this, Farragut was to attempt to run by the forts, clear the river of Confederate vessels, isolate the forts and cut off their supplies and supports. Then General Butler was to land his troops in the rear of Fort St. Philip (the weaker one), and attempt to carry it by assault. This done, the land and naval forces were to press on toward New Orleans. The general command of the river defences of the Confederates was intrusted to General J. K. Duncan, formerly an office-holder in New York. On the 17th of April the fleets of Farragut and Porter were in the river, with the former as chief commander of the naval forces; and Butler, with about nine thousand troops, was at the Southwest Pass. The fleets comprised forty-seven armed vessels, and these, with transports bearing troops, went up the river, Porter's mortar-boats leading. When these approached the forts, their hulls were besmeared with Mississippi mud; and the masts, yards and rigging, were so covered with the branches of trees, that under this disguise they were enabled to take a position near the forts unsuspected. As when "Birnam Wood" moved "toward Dunsinane," the stratagem was successful. The Mississippi was full to the brim; and a boom and other obstructions near Fort Jackson was swept away by the flood. A battle was begun on the morning of the 18th (April, 1862), by a shot from Fort Jackson. Porter's mortar-boats responded. The latter were supported by the gun-boats; but after pounding the fortifications several days, Farragut, satisfied that he could not reduce them, prepared to run by them in the night of the 23d. The mortar-boats led the way, and the remainder of the navy followed, gallantly breasting the swift-flowing current that went over the river banks and flooded every bayou. The perilous passage of the forts was begun at two o'clock in the morning. The mortar. boats were to cover the movement of the gun-boats. Farragut, in his flagship Hartford, with two other strong vessels, was destined to keep near the right bank of the river and fight Fort Jackson; while Captain Theodorus Bailey, commanding eight gun-boats, was to keep closely to the eastern bank and fight Fort St. Philip. To Captain Bell was assigned the duty of attacking the Confederate fleet above the forts, with six gun-boats. The night was intensely dark, and a tremendous battle was waged between the mortar-boats and the forts. The gun-boats as they came up gave the latter heavy broadsides of grape and canister shot, which drove the garrison from their barbette guns. The scene soon became grand and terrible. Fire-rafts, sent down by the Confederates, blazed fearfully, and "rams" plunged against the National vessels with terrible force. The Hartford (Farragut's flag-ship), which was a wooden vessel, was set on fire, but the flames were soon extinguished. The fleet had scarcely passed the forts when it was assailed by a large flotilla of "rams" and gun-boats. A grand and awful scene followed. The noise of twenty mortars and two hundred and sixty great guns, afloat and ashore, made a terrific sound. The explosion of shells that struck deep in the oozy ground, shook the land and water like an earthquake. "Combine," wrote an eye-witness, "all that you ever heard of thunder, and add to it all that you have ever seen of D. G. FARRAGUT. lightning, and you have, perhaps, a conception of the scene," in the darkness before daylight. In that fearful struggle, the Nationals were victorious. From the fore-rigging of his ship Farragut had watched the combat through his night-glass, and conducted it as far as possible. Within the space of half an hour after the National vessels had left their anchorage, the forts were passed, the great struggle had occurred, and eleven vessels-nearly the whole of the Confederate flotilla-were destroyed. For awhile Captain Bailey sustained the fight with the Confederate flotilla almost unsupported, when Captain Boggs came to his assistance with the gun-boat Varuna, which immediately became the chief object of the wrath of the enemy. In his report Captain Boggs said that immediately after passing the forts, he found himself "amid a nest of rebel steamers." The Varuna rushed in among them (for the river was too narrow to permit her to avoid them), and fired broadsides right and left as she passed. The first one that received her fire was crowded with troops. Its boiler was exploded, and the vessel was run ashore. The Varuna ran three other gun-boats ashore, and had desperate struggles with the "rams," until, badly wounded, she began to sink, when her commander tied her bow to trees and took out her crew and the wounded, while his latest antagonist was burning to the water's edge. So ended one of the fiercest combats CHAP. XV. CAPTURE OF NEW ORLEANS. 1575 of the war. It was "short, sharp, and decisive." In that struggle on the bosom of the river, the Nationals lost only thirty killed and not more than one hundred and twenty-five wounded. The fleet, after the fight, rendezvoused at Quarantine, just above Fort St. Philip, and that was the first public property "repossessed" by the Government, in Louisiana. While the battle was raging near the forts, General Butler landed his troops, and in small boats they went through narrow and shallow bayous in the rear of Fort St. Philip. The alarmed garrison mutinied, spiked the guns, and sallying out surrendered to Butler's pickets, declaring that they had been pressed into the service, and would fight no more. Porter had continued to bombard Fort Jackson, and after the fall of Fort St. Philip, it was surrendered to that officer with nearly one thousand men. Meanwhile Farragut (who had thirteen vessels in safety above the forts) had gone up to New Orleans with his fleet, where a fearful panic prevailed, for the inhabitants had heard of the disasters below. Drums were beating; soldiers were seen hurrying to and fro; merchants had fled from their stores; women without bonnets and brandishing pistols were seen in the streets crying, "Burn the city! 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; and specie to the amount of $4,000,000 was sent out of the city by railway. Millions worth of other property, with a large number of citizens, had left the doomed town, among them General Twiggs, who betrayed his troops in Texas. Like Floyd, he feared the wrath of his injured Government, and fled, leaving behind him the two swords which had been awarded him for gallantry in Mexico, to fall into the hands of the invaders. And when, on the 25th of April, 1862, Farragut approached the city with nine vessels, General Lovell and his troops fled, the torch was applied to the cotton on the levee, and along the river front for miles a sheet of roaring flames burst forth. In that conflagration fifteen thousand bales of cotton, a dozen large ships and as many fine steamboats, with unfinished gun-boats and other large vessels, perished. The value of cotton, sugar, and other products destroyed, was immense. The citizens were held in durance by Farragut's guns, until the arrival of General Butler on the first of May, when the latter landed with his troops, took formal possession of the defenceless town, and made his headquarters at the St. Charles hotel. Butler ruled New Orleans with the rigor of martiallaw. Informed that a man named Mumford had pulled down the National flag where Farragut had unfurled it over the Mint, and had treated it in derision, Butler caused his arrest and his immediate trial on a charge of He was convicted and hanged; the only man who has ever treason. suffered death for that crime since the establishment of our National Gov. ernment. The loss of New Orleans was a terrible blow for the Confederates. "It annihilated us in Louisiana," wrote a Confederate historian, "diminished our resources and supplies by the loss of one of the greatest grain and cattle countries within the limits of the Confederacy, gave to the enemy the Mississippi River with all its means of navigation for a base of operations, and finally led, by plain and irresistible conclusions, to our virtual abandonment of the great and fruitful valley of the Mississippi." The loss of New Orleans produced the greatest irritation in the public mind throughout the Confederacy, and the rigor of Butler's rule there excited the most violent personal hatred of the general. When he was about to leave New Orleans, Jefferson Davis, the chief of the Confederacy, issued a proclamation in which he pronounced Butler to be "a felon deserving of capital punishment;" and he ordered that he should not be "treated simply as a public enemy of the Confederate States of America, but as an outlaw, and common enemy of mankind;" and that, "in the event of his capture, the officer in command of the capturing force, do cause him to be immediately executed, by hanging." He also ordered that the same treatment should be awarded to all commissioned officers serving under Butler. A "Georgian" offered a reward of $10,000 "for the infamous Butler." Richard Yeadon, a prominent citizen of Charleston, publicly offered a reward of $10,000 "for the capture and delivery of the said Benjamin F. Butler, dead or alive, to any Confederate authority." A Daughter of South Carolina," in a letter to the Charleston Courier, said: "I propose to spin the thread to make the cord to execute the order of our noble President Davis, when old Butler is caught; and my daughter asks that she may be allowed to adjust it around his neck." And Paul R. Hayne, a South Carolina poet, wrote: "Yes! but there is one who shall not die In battle harness! One for whom Lurks in the darkness silently Another and a sterner doom! A warrior's end should crown the brave; |