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from his high estate of worldly prosperity, an impoverished wanderer in foreign lands, he yet has an abiding love in the hearts of his countrymen and a fee of glory which, though disputed now, posterity will surely render.

Gen. Breckinridge has a striking and noble presence. There is no description which fits his person so well as the single word "superb," with its Latin significance and classic associations. Perfect and well-proportioned in all his parts, dignified without a sign of stiffness, graceful as a woman, a veteran of society, and a man who for his age has had the largest political experience in his generation in America, he appears born both to command and to please. A prominent, bulging brow, with deep-set eyes, large and brilliant, gives a massive grandeur to the face, while the lower features show the chiselled, clear-cut marks of noble blood. He was admired as one of the handsomest men in the Confederacy. He was always a favourite of society; he was one of those men who always did and said just what the occasion demanded; and in his public speeches and addresses, although he gave evidences of a great intellect and was numbered among the orators of America, he was yet more remarkable for that nice adjustment of the proprieties which shows the cultivated scholar, and constitutes the perfect gentleman.

MAJ.-GENERAL MANSFIELD LOVELL.

CHAPTER LVI.

His early life and politics.—Story of the fall of New Orleans.—Importance of its line of water-defence.-Gen. Lovell's hands tied by red tape at Richmond.-Not to be blamed for the disaster.-His gallant services after the loss of New Orleans.President Davis refuses to give him a command under Johnston.

THE father of Mansfield Lovell was a citizen of New York; but he came on the maternal side from a Georgian family. He was born in the District of Columbia, was educated at West Point, and, graduating there, was promoted to a second lieutenancy in the Fourth Artillery, July 1, 1842. In the Mexican war he acted as aide-de-camp to Maj.-Gen. Quitman, was wounded in the assault of Chapultepec, and was brevetted captain for gallant and meritorious conduct in that battle. When the war broke out between the North and South, Gen. Lovell had resigned his commission in the United States army, and was living in New York city, and discharging the duties there of deputy Street-Commissioner. He determined to abandon his office, and to cast in his lot with the fortunes of the South. He had always been a strong Democrat, his antecedents were Southern, and he had been a slave-owner all his life. In the old army he had made considerable reputation as an artillerist; and he came to Richmond with high military and political recommendations.

The name of Mansfield Lovell is connected with one of the greatest and most astounding disasters of the war; and in this respect his reputation has suffered so unjustly that it is difficult even now to obtain his dues, and to recall the real merits of the man. That disaster was the fall of New Orleans, and its story is one of the most remarkable of the war. Having obtained the commission

of Major-General, Lovell assumed command of the department of Louisiana on the 18th October, 1861. Before quitting Virginia, he had an interview at Fairfax Court-House with Gen. Beauregard, to consult with him and obtain the benefit of his skill as an engineer, with reference to the defences of New Orleans. It was agreed that it was very important that the channel of the river below the city should be obstructed, and that the safety of New Orleans depended chiefly on the line of water-defence.

But it was with respect to this critical part of the defence, that Gen. Lovell was rendered powerless, and his hands tied by red tape at Richmond. Secretary Mallory of the Navy, insisted that none of the matters belonging to that department should pass out of his control, and when Gen. Lovell applied for authority to make such dispositions of the naval force as he might deem best to aid in the defence of the city, he was flatly refused, and told to keep within the strict limits of his duty, as commanding only the army at New Orleans. And even within these limits, he was obstructed by the authorities at Richmond, who could not be persuaded that the city was in any real danger, and who indulged the fancy that the enemy only contemplated an attack from the upper portion of the river, and that there was to be fought the battle that would decide the tenure of the Mississippi. It was in this fatal delusion that New Orleans was stripped of troops, to be sent to Columbus and adjacent points; and, that while other places on the sea-coast were defended with ten-inch columbiads, the great commercial metropolis of the South bad, on her line of defence, nothing above an eightinch, and, on some parts of it, no other reliance than double-barrel guns of the militia, and 32-pound carronades.

Yet Gen. Lovell did all that was possible. It may be safely said that the interiour lines of fortification adopted and completed by him were a sufficient defence of the city against a land attack by any force the enemy could probably bring. But the true danger lurked in another direction; and while the New Orleans journals contained accounts of the wonderful preparations of defence, the range of forts at every few miles, the impassable rafts, the vast chains, the combinations of a thousand kinds, which no enemy could resist, they had no idea of the slight tenure on which hung the fate of their city.

The raft-consisting of a line of eleven dismasted schooners—

between Forts Jackson and St. Philip, having been broken by, a storm, it remained for the enemy only to try the problem that "ships under steam can pass forts in open channel;" and having once run the gauntlet, they had but little to fear from the Confederate naval structures in the harbour, as the two iron-clads which were designed to rival the exploits of the "Virginia-Merrimac" were, through the almost criminal neglect of the Navy Department, either uncompleted or unserviceable. This is the whole story of the New Orleans disaster. A few days' bombardment of two forts, eighty miles distant, which are not substantially injured, and in which scarcely any lives are lost, and a triumphant fleet steams quietly up to the city and demands its surrender! The world was amazed at the event. The Southern Confederacy received a blow in the fall of New Orleans from which it never recovered. This city was regarded the key to the Valley of the Mississippi, and its possession almost of vital consequence, in enabling the Confederates to preserve their hold upon the Trans-Mississippi, and obtain vast supplies of grain and meat necessary to the support of the army.

Gen. Lovell was not to be blamed. It was by the incompetency of the water-defence that the city was virtually surrendered; and Gen. Lovell did all he could do, which was to save his little army -less than 3,000 men--and stores, so as to make renewed effort to hold the Mississippi River in another position. But popular indignation in the South demanded a victim, and, instead of being intelligently directed against the Richmond Cabinet, it seized upon the man whose name was intimately connected with the disaster. The appointment of Lovell had never been agreeable to the people of New Orleans, or of his department. They had murmured constantly against him; they did not know him; they did not trust him; they would have preferred Bragg to Lovell, and Beauregard to either. Now they accused him as the author of their great calamity. There was great injustice in this popular passion; and it is only now, when it is perceived how much at variance it is with historical truth, that justice can be hoped for Gen. Lovell, and grateful recognition of a patriotism which no sense of personal wrong could corrupt or subdue.

After the fall of New Orleans, Gen. Lovell fought gallantly at Corinth and Coffeeville; and it was he who fortified Columbia. He afterwards resigned his rank as commander of the department,

and was relieved by Gen. Van Dorn. The clamour of the people still followed him, and was only satisfied when he was withdrawn to comparative obscurity, waiting orders, or nobly volunteering his services on subsequent battle-fields of the war. But it is especially remarkable that, during this persistent popular censure, Gen. Lovell enjoyed for all the time the highest opinions and utmost confidence of his military superiours, the most distinguished leaders of the Confederacy. Gen. Beauregard vindicated his part of the defence of New Orleans, and testified to its skill.* Gen. Lee, a few

* We give below some testimony of Gen. Beauregard (never before published) relative to the defence of New Orleans, and exculpating Gen. Lovell in the court of inquiry summoned in his case. It is interesting as an expression of the judgment and skill of one universally acknowledged the first engineer in the armies of the Southern Confederacy.

QUESTION. From your knowledge of the country about New Orleans, and the peculiarities, would you think it the proper plan to concentrate the main strength in artillery at Forts Jackson and St. Philip, in connection with obstructions at that point, rather than to place the guns at many points along the river which the enemy would have to pass in succession?

ANSWER. The true plan for the defense of a river from the passage of steamers, etc., is, when practicable, to obstruct its navigation with rafts, piles, torpedoes, etc., at the most favourable points for such obstructions, then to defend the latter by a concentration of the greatest number of and heaviest guns at one's command, separ ating them from each other, however, by traverses, when necessary to protect them from an enfilade fire.

Such was the system proposed by Gens. Bernard, Totten, Majors Chase, Delafield, etc., when they planned Forts Jackson and St. Philip, and the batteries contig. uous to those works. Detached batteries are very good when properly located and supported, otherwise they are apt to be overpowered successively by a naval attack, or to be taken in the rear by a land force.

It is evident that since the enemy's steamers and gunboats passed the concentrated fires of Forts Jackson and St. Philip, etc, etc., without much injury, they would have done so even more easily if our guns had been scattered over 75 miles, from those works to New Orleans. Moreover, the river being very high and the country between those two points being low, it could easily have been submerged by cutting the levee at night near any batteries which might have been constructed along the river, thereby cutting off their garrisons from succour or retreat.

I will remark that Forts Jackson and St. Philip were placed that low down the river to protect from the enemy's depredations as much of the country liable to cultivation as practicable, and also to increase the obstacles to a regular siege, resulting from the lowness of their sites, which does not admit of the construction of boyaux and parallels, especially when the river is high.

QUESTION.—The battle having been fought at the forts, and the fleet having passed, do you consider New Orleans á tenable military position-did its evacuation

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