324

EXPEDITION AGAINST NEW ORLEANS.

between Mobile Bay and Lake Borgne (a low sand-bar, lying just above low water, and averaging seven miles in length and three-fourths of a mile in width), as the most eligible point for operations against any part of the Gulf Coast. Thither some of his troops were sent, in the fine steamship Consti tution, under General J. W. Phelps, whom Butler well knew, and honored as a commander at Fortress Monroe and vicinity. The Constitution returned, and two thousand more of the six thousand men embarked, when an electrograph said to Butler, in Boston, "Don't sail. Disembark."

The Government was then trembling because of the seeming imminence of war with Great Britain, on account of the seizure of Mason and Slidell. They were in Fort Warren, and the British Government had demanded their surrender. This made the authorities at Washington pause in their aggressive policy, to wait for the development of events in that connection. But the tremor was only spasmodic, and soon ceased. The work against treason was renewed with increased vigor. Edwin M. Stanton, who was in Mr. Buchanan's Cabinet during the closing days of his administration'-a man possessed of great physical and mental energy, comprehensiveness of intellectual grasp, and great tenacity of will, had

EDWIN M. STANTON.

Jan. 13,
1862.

superseded Mr. Cameron as Secretary of War," and a conference between him and General Butler resulted in a decision to make vigorous efforts to capture New Orleans, and hold the lower Mississippi.

When that decision was referred to General McClellan, the latter thought such an expedition was not feasible, for it would take fifty thousand men to give it a chance of success, and where were they to come from? He was unwilling to spare a single man of his more than two hundred thousand men then lying at ease around Washington City. His question was promptly answered. New England was all aglow with enthusiasm, and its sons were eagerly flocking to the standard of General Butler, who asked for only fifteen thousand men for the expedition. Already more than twelve thousand were ready for the field, under his leadership. Two thousand were at Ship Island; more than two thousand were on ship-board in Hampton Roads; and over eight thou sand were ready for embarkation at Boston.

President Lincoln gave the project his sanction. The Department of the Gulf was created, and General Butler was placed in command of it. On the 23d of February' he received minute orders from General McClellan to co-operate with the navy, first in the capture of New Orleans and its approaches, and then in the reduction of Mobile, Galveston, and Baton Rouge, with the ultimate view of occupying Texas. To his New

b 1862.

1 See page 146, volume I.

THE NATIONALS AT SHIP ISLAND.

325

England troops were added three regiments, then at Baltimore, and orders were given for two others at Key West and one at Fort Pickens to join the expedition. On paper, the whole force was about eighteen thousand, but when they were all mustered on Ship Island they amounted to only thirteen thousand seven hundred. Of these, five hundred and eighty were artillerymen and two hundred and seventy-five were cavalry.

a Feb. 25, 1862.

On the day after receiving his instructions, General Butler left Washington and hastened to Fortress Monroe. To Mr. Lincoln he said, "Good-bye, Mr. President; we shall take New Orleans or you'll never see me again;" and with the assurance of Secretary Stanton, that "The man who takes New Orleans is made a lieutenant-general," Butler embarked at Hampton Roads," accompanied by his wife, his staff, and fourteen hundred troops, in the fine steamship Mississippi. Fearful perils were encountered on the North Carolina coast, and vexatious delay at Port Royal; and it was thirty days after he left the capes of Virginia before he debarked at Ship Island. There was no house upon that desolate sand-bar, and some charred boards were all the materials that could be had for the erection of a shanty for the accommodation of Mrs. Butler. The furniture for it was taken from a captured vessel.

d

3

⚫ March 25.

'Sept. 16.

When the war broke out, there was an unfinished fort on Ship Island, to which, as we have observed, Floyd, the traitorous Secretary of War, had ordered heavy guns. The insurgents of that region took possession of it in considerable force, and, during their occupation of it for about July, 1861. two months, they made it strong and available for defense. They constructed eleven bomb-proof casemates, a magazine and barracks, mounted twenty heavy Dahlgren guns, and named it Fort Twiggs. When rumors of a heavy naval force approaching reached the garrison, they abandoned the fort, burnt their barracks, and, with their cannon, fled to the main. On the following day, a small force was landed from the National gun-boat Massachusetts, and took possession of the place. They strengthened the fort by building two more casemates, adding Dahlgren and rifled cannon, and piling around its outer walls tiers of sand-bags, six feet in depth. Then they gave it the name of their vessel, and called it Fort Massachusetts. The Constitution arrived there with General Phelps and his troops on the 3d of December, and on the following day' • Dec. 4. he issued a proclamation to the loyal inhabitants of the southwestern States, setting forth his views as to the political status of those

1 Parton's General Butler in New Orleans, page 194.

? The captain of the Mississippi appears to have been utterly incompetent. On the night after leaving Hampton Roads, he ran his vessel on a shoal off Hatteras Inlet, and barely escaped wrecking. On the following day it struck a sunken rock, five miles from land, off the mouth of the Cape Fear, and an hour later, while leaking badly. it was hard fast on the Fryingpan Shoals, and partly submerged, when relief came in the gun-boat Mount Vernon, Commander O. S. Glisson, of the blockading squadron off Wilmington. The Mississippi was taken to Port Royal and repaired, and was again run aground while passing out of that harbor, when her commander was deposed.

3 See page 128, volume I.

4 This fort was on the extreme western end of the island. It was nearly circular in shape, and built of brick. The sand-bags made its walls bomb-proof. Outside of the fort was a redoubt, built of sand-bags, upon which a heavy Dahlgren gun was mounted, so as to command the channel leading into the really fine harbor, in which vessels might find shelter from the worst storms on the Gulf.

These were the Twenty-sixth Massachusetts, Colonel Jones, Ninth Connecticut, Colonel Cahill, and Fourth Battery Massachusetts Artillery, Captain Manning.

326

PROCLAMATION OF GENERAL PHELPS.

States and the slave-system within their borders. It pointedly condemned that system, and declared that it was incompatible with a free government, incapable of forming an element of true nationality, and necessarily dangerous to the Republic, when assuming, as it then did, a political character. He pictured to them the blessings to be derived from the abolition of slavery,

and declared that his motto and that of his troops coming among them was, FREE LABOR AND WORKING-MEN'S RIGHTS.

This proclamation astonished Phelps's troops, provoked the pro-slavery officers under his command, and highly excited the people to whom it was addressed, who heard it, and who used it effectually in "firing the Southern heart" against the "abolition Government" at Washington. It was too far in advance of public opinion and feeling at that time, and General Butler, whose views were coincident with the tenor of the proclamation, considering it premature, and therefore injudicious, said, in transmitting his briga dier's report of operations at Ship Island, that he had not authorized the issuing of any proclamation, "and most certainly not such an one." So General Phelps and those of his way of thinking were compelled to wait a year or two before they saw a public movement toward the abolition of slavery.

sea.

All winter Phelps and his troops remained on the dreary little island, unable, on account of great and small guns in the hands of the neighboring insurgents, to gain a footing on the adjacent shore, and waiting in painful anxiety, at the last, for the arrival of General Butler and the remainder of his command, who, at one time it was feared, had gone to the bottom of the Their advent produced joy, for the troops well knew that the stagnation of the camp would soon give place to the bustle of preparations for the field. That expectation was heightened when, a few hours after he landed, Butler was seen in conference with Captains Farragut and Bailey, of the navy, who were there, in which his Chief of Staff, Major George C. Strong, and his Chief Engineer, Lieutenant Godfrey Weitzel (both graduates of West Point) participated. The latter had been engaged in the completion of the forts below New Orleans, and was well acquainted with all the region around the lower Mississippi.

At that conference, a plan of operation against the forts below New

CAPTURE OF BILOXI AND PASS CHRISTIAN.

327

Orleans and the city itself was adopted, and was substantially carried out a few weeks later.

While preparations for that movement were in progress, some minor expeditions were set on foot. One against Biloxi, a summer watering-place on the Mississippi Main, was incited by the conduct of some Confederates who violated the sanctity of a flag of truce, under circumstances of peculiar wickedness. A little girl, three years of age, the daughter of a physician and noted rebel of New Orleans, was cast upon the shore at Ship Island after a storm, in which it was supposed her father had perished. She was kindly cared for by Mrs. Butler; and, as the child knew the name of her grandfather in New Orleans, the General determined to send her there. Fo that purpose Major George C. Strong, General Butler's chief of staff, too her in a sloop, under a flag of truce, to Biloxi, with money to pay he expenses to New Orleans. There she was left to be sent on. The sloop grounded on her return in the evening, and, while in that condition, an attempt was made to capture her by men who had been witnesses of Major Strong's holy errand. By stratagem he kept the rebels at bay until a gunboat came to his rescue.

On the following day, an avenging expedition, commanded by Major Strong, proceeded to Biloxi. It was composed of two gun-boats (Jackson and New London), and a transport with the Ninth Connecticut, Colonel Cahill, and Everett's battery on board. Fortunately for the Biloxians, they were quiet. Their place was captured without opposition, and the Mayor was compelled to make a humble apology in writing for the perfidy of his fellow-citizens in the matter of the flag of truce.

Leaving Biloxi, Major Strong went westward to Pass Christian. While his vessels lay at anchor there that night, they were attacked by three Confederate gun-boats, that stole out of Lake Borgne. The assailants were repulsed. Major Strong then landed his troops, and, making a forced march, surprised and captured a Confederate camp three miles distant. The soldiers had fled. The camp was destroyed, and the public stores in the town on the beach were seized and carried away. Major Strong also captured Mississippi City.

328

PLAN FOR THE CAPTURE OF NEW ORLEANS.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE CAPTURE OF NEW ORLEANS.

a Jan. 20, 1862.

HIP ISLAND was the place of rendezvous for the naval as well as the land portion of the forces destined for the capture of New Orleans. The naval force was placed under the command of Captain David G. Farragut, a loyal Tennesseean, who sailed from Hampton Roads in the National armed steamer Hartford, on the 2d of February, 1862, and arrived in the harbor of Ship Island on the 20th of the same month, having been detained by sickness at Key West. He had been instructed by the Secretary of the Navy to proceed with all possible dispatch to the Gulf of Mexico, with orders for Flag-officer McKean, on duty there, to transfer to the former the command of the Western Gulf squadron. He was informed that a fleet of bomb-vessels, under Commander David D. Porter (with whose father Farragut had cruised in the Essex during the war of 1812), would be attached to his squadron, and these were to rendezvous at Key West. He was directed to proceed up the Mississippi so soon as the mortar-vessels were ready, with such others as might be spared from the blockade, reduce the defenses which guarded the approaches to New Orleans, and, taking possession of that city under the guns of his squadron, hoist the American flag in it, and hold possession until troops could be sent to him. If the Mississippi expedition from Cairo should then not have descended the river, he was to take advantage of the panic which his seizure of New Orleans would produce, and push a strong force up the stream, to take all their defenses in the rear. 66 Destroy the armed barriers which these deluded people have raised up against the power of the United States Government," said the Secretary, "and shoot down those who war against the Union; but cultivate with cordiality the first returning reason, which is sure to follow your success." With these instructions, and with plans of the known works on the lower Mississippi, furnished by General Barnard, who constructed Fort St. Philip, one of the chief of those works, Farragut proceeded to the performance of the duties required of him.

Porter's mortar fleet had been for several months in preparation at the Navy Yard at Brooklyn, and had caused a great deal of speculation. It consisted of twenty-one schooners of from two hundred to three hundred tons each, made very strong, and constructed so as to draw as little water as possible. They were armed with mortars of eight and a half tons weight, that would throw a 15-inch shell, weighing, when filled, two hundred and twelve pounds. Each vessel also carried two 32-pounder rifled cannon. They rendez