run at by the ram, and attacked by forts and rebel steamers, we succeeded in getting through, taking all their gun-boats and the ram to boot." He added that he should "push on" to New Orleans, leaving the forts to the tender mercies of the general.*

On the 26th of April, the Twenty-sixth Massachusetts under Colonel Jones, the same Colonel Jones that led the Sixth Massachusetts through Baltimore on the 19th of April, 1861, was crowded on board the Miami, with companies of the Fourth Wisconsin and Twenty-first Indiana. Cautiously the little steamer felt her way in those shallows; but when the fort was still six miles distant, she grounded again. The thirty boats were manned and filled with troops. Guided by Lieutenant Weitzel, and by Captain Everett of the Sixth Massachusetts battery, who had been out reconnoitering there during the bombardment, the boats pulled for the swampy shore. The bayous empty into the gulf at that point with such a rush of cross-currents, that, at times, it was all the boats could do to hold their own. Four miles and a half of fierce rowing brought them into Mannel's canal, which, running like a mill-race, forbade farther progress by rowing. Soldiers sprang into the water-a line of soldiers clutching the side of each boat; and floundering thus breast-deep in water and mire, and phantom sharks, drew the boats by main force a mile and a half, to a landing place five miles above St. Philip. By this laborious process two hundred of the troops were landed from the Miami in the course of the day, meeting no

*Captain Boggs brought a characteristic note to Captain Porter also:

"DEAR PORTER: We had a rough time of it, as Boggs will tell you, but, thank God, the number of killed and wounded was very small, considering. This ship had two killed and eight wounded. We destroyed the ram in a single combat between her and the old Mississippi, but the ram backed out when she saw the Mississippi coming at him so rampantly, and he dodged her, and ran on shore, whereupon Smith put two or three broadsides through him, and knocked him all to piecos. The ram pushed a fire-raft on to me, and in trying to avoid it, I ran the ship on shore. He again pushed the fire-raft on me, and got the ship on fire all along one side. I thought it was all up with us, but we put it out, and got off again, proceeding up the river, fighting our way. We have destroyed all but two of the gun-boats, and these will have to surrender with the forts. I intend to follow up my success and push for New Orleans, and then come down and attend to the forts, so you hold them in statu quo until I come back. I think if you send a flag of truce, and demand their surrender they will yield, for their intercourse with the city is cut off We have cut the wires above the quarantine, and are now going ahead. I took three hundred or four hundred prisoners at quarantine. They surrendered, and I paroled them not to take up arms again. I could not stop to take care of them. If the general will come up to the bayou and land a few men, or as many as he pleases, he will find two of our gun-boats there to protect him from gun-boats that are at the forts. I wish to get to the English Turn, where they say they have not placed a battery yet, but have two above, nearer New Orleans. They will not be idle, and neither will L. You supported us most nobly. Very truly yours,

"D. G. FARRAGUT.”

opposition. Lieutenant Weitzel stationed part of them on the western bank, part on the eastern. Captain Porter had, meanwhile, placed some of his mortar-schooners in the bay behind Fort Jackson; and thus, on the morning of the 27th, the forts were invested on every side-up the river, down the river, and in the rear.

That night came the thrilling news that Captain Farragut's fleet was at an anchor before New Orleans. General Butler, perceiving the absolute necessity of light-draft steamers for landing his heavy guns and ammunition, desiring also to confer with Captain Farragut, left General Williams to continue the landing of the troopsa work of days—and went up to the city, accompanied by Captain Boggs.

The same night, a picket of Union men on the western bank had a peculiar and joyful experience. A body of rebel troops, two hundred and fifty in number, came out of Fort Jackson, and gave themselves up. They said they had fought as long as fighting was of any use; but, seeing the forts surrounded, they had resolved not to be sacrificed upon a point of honor, and therefore had mutinied, spiked the up-river guns, and broken away. The forts were still defensible, however, and could have given the troops a tough piece of work. But, the next morning, the officers deemed it best to surrender. Captain Porter, who chanced to be present in the river, and had the means of reaching the forts by water, negotiated the surrender, granting conditions more favorable than were necessary. The officers were allowed to retain their side-arms and private property, and both officers and men were released on parole. While the negotiations were proceeding in the cabin of the Harriet Lane, the huge Louisiana was set on fire by her officers, and set adrift down the river. She blew up only just in time not to destroy the Union fleet, toward which she was drifting. The explosion was regarded by the army as a commentatory note of exclamation upon the favorable terms conceded to the garrison. Captain Porter justly placed in close confinement the officers who had done the dastardly act.

The joy, the curiosity with which the troops entered the forts and scanned the result of the long fire upon them, may be imagined. St. Philip, beyond one or two slight abrasures, was absolutely uninjured. Respecting the damage done to Fort Jackson, different opinions have been published. It is important for our

instruction in the art of war that the truth upon this point should be known and established. The testimony of Lieutenant Weitzel will settle the question in the mind of every officer of the regular army. In a report to General Butler, dated May 5th, 1862, Lieutenant Weitzel says:

"The navy passed the works, but did not reduce them. Fort St. Philip stands, with one or two slight exceptions, to-day without a scratch. Fort Jackson was subjected to a torrent of thirteen-inch and eleven-inch shells during a hundred and forty-four hours. To an inexperienced eye it seems as if this work were badly cut up. It is as strong to-day as when the first shell was fired at it. The rebels did not bomb-proof the citadel; consequently the roof and furring caught fire. This fire, with subsequent shells, ruined the walls so much that I am tearing it down and removing the debris to the outside of the work. Three shot-furnaces and three cisterns were destroyed. At several points the breast-hight walls were knocked down. One angle of the magazine on the north side of the postern was knocked off. Several shells went through the flank casemate arches (which were not covered with earth), and a few through the other casemate arches (where two or more struck in the same place). At several points in the casemates, the thirteen-inch shell would penetrate through the earth over the arches, be stopped by the latter, then explode, and loosen a patch of brick work in the souffoir of the arch about three feet in diameter and three-quarters of a brick deep, at its greatest depth.

"To resist an assault, and even regular approaches, it is as strong to-day as ever it was. I conducted a land force, after the navy had passed up the river by the way of the gulf, through a bayou and canal which were familiar to me, to a point on the river about five miles above the works, and in plain sight of the rebels, but out of range. The garrison of Fort Jackson seeing themselves completely surrounded, became demoralized, three hundred mutinied and deserted in a body, and were taken by a picket which I had posted as soon as I landed on the west bank of the river, from Cyprien's canal to Allen's store. The commanding officer the next day sur rendered both works. He had provisions in them for four months, and ammunition in abundance.

"They had about eighty heavy guns mounted, in all, at Fort Jackson, and about forty at Fort St. Philip. All of them were the

old guns picked up at the different works around the city, with the exception of about six ten-inch columbiads, and two one-hundredpounder rifled guns (the latter of their own manufacture and quito a formidable gun). They had done nothing to the lower battery at Fort Jackson in the way of building the breast-heights and laying the platforms. Nearly all the platforms are at the works. They had only six guns in the lower battery at Fort Jackson, only fourteen guns in casemate at the same fort (all smooth bore). They had seventeen guns in the upper battery and eighteen in the lower battery at Fort St. Philip (all the old guns), and only five in the main work.

"The fleet suffered most from the two batteries at Fort St. Philip. They being so low the fleet fired over them, and they in their turn repeatedly hulled the vessels.

"The fire on both sides, as a general thing, was too high. The fleet followed the advice I gave them, to run in right close, and a great many of the officers have already thanked me for my advice. I was with the fleet during the bombardment, giving the flag-officer and others the benefit of my knowledge of the works, and during the engagement was on board the armed transport Saxon, in the bend of the river just opposite Fort Jackson, and had a good view of the engagement.

"In conclusion I beg leave to say, that you have every reason to be proud of the works; and had they had their full armament (the new one), with the proper amount of shell-guns, that fleet would never have passed them. The chain was removed two nights before the attack, without any loss. It was a grand humbug."

If the splendid daring of Captain Farragut and the fleet deprived General Butler of his lieutenant-generalship, it is but just to him and the army to declare, that it was the prompt and unexpected landing of the troops in the rear of St. Philip that caused the mutiny which led to the surrender. Fighting wins the laurel, and justly wins it, for fighting is the true and final test of soldierly merit: but a maneuver which accomplishes results without fighting that also merits recognition.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE PANIC IN NEW ORLEANS.

NEW ORLEANS did not rush headlong into secession in the Charleston manner. The doctrine, that if Mr. Lincoln was elected the nation must be broken up, was not popular there during the canvass of 1860; it was, on the contrary, scouted by the ablest newspapers, and the influential men. In 1856, the city had given a majority of its votes to Mr. Fillmore; in 1860, Bell and Everett were the favorite candidates. Bell, 5,215; Douglas, 2,996; Breckinridge, 2,646; Lincoln, 0. The fact was manifest to all reflecting men, that the two states which derived from the Union the greatest sum-total of direct pecuniary benefit were Massachusetts and Louisiana.

The great sugar interest, the Creole sugar-planters, who held the best of the cultivated parts of the state, stood by the Union last of all. Thomas J. Durant, an eminent lawyer of New Orleans, one of the half dozen men of position who have never deserted the cause of their country, says, in a letter to General Butler:

"The protection and favor which were enjoyed by these men under the government of the United States, and the benefit they derived from their possession of the home market for their product, to the utter exclusion of all foreign competition, was thoroughly understood by them. They are men retaining all the peculiarities of a French ancestry: not apt in what is called business, yet fond of gain; generous, high-spirited, and averse to the active strife of commerce as well as of politics. They never concerned themselves too eagerly in the contests of party, and no equal body of men in the South looked upon secession with so much reluctance, or were so unwilling to be dragged into it, as the sugar-planters of Louisiana. It is true, they at last yielded to the moral epidemic which overspread the South; and when the young men, under the excitement of martial enthusiasm and a mistaken view of the interests of their section, went to the war, their feelings became, to a certain extent,