plement consisted of eighteen She emerged from the action totally uninjured. The broadsides of the Pensacola, delivered three times, within a distance of ten yards, failed to loosen a single fastening, or to penetrate a single plate. The forts likewise, remained intact; but the garrisons lost 52, in killed and wounded. Commander McIntosh was desperately wounded. He and Commander Mitchell both stood on the deck of the Louisiana during the whole engagement.

Gen. Lovell arrived just in time to see the Federal fleet passing Fort St. Philip, and to witness the desperate but ineffectual attempt of the Confederate gunboats to check its progress up the river. Just at this moment, the Iroon, one of the enemy's vessels started in pursuit of the Doubloon, Gen. Lovell's boat, and was rapidly overhauling her, when the Governor Moore darted upon the Iroon, and ran into her three times. The Federal vessel managed to escape from this assault, and was again chasing the Doubloon, when the Quitman attacked her, ran into her amidships, and sank her. Thus General Lovell narrowly escaped capture. In the mean time, Captain Kennon, commanding the gunboat Governor Moore, sped down the river into the midst of the enemy's fleet, darting hither and thither, attacking first one and then another of his monstrous antagonists, until he had fired away his last round of ammunition. He then drove his vessel ashore, and applied the torch to her with his own hand. In this way the forts were eluded, the Confederate naval forces destroyed, and the great city of New Orleans placed at the mercy of the Federal squadron.

At 2 o'clock, P. M., on the 24th, General Lovell arrived at the city, having driven and ridden almost the whole way up along the levee. He was immediately called on by the mayor and many other citizens, and in reply to the inquiries of these gentlemen, stated that the intelligence already received was correct; that the enemy's fleet had passed the forts in force, and that the city was indefensible and untenable.

The hasty withdrawal of Gen. Lovell's army from the city drew upon him severe public censure; but the applications of this censure were made in ignorance of the facts, and the evidence which afterwards transpired showed that the evacuation had been made at the urgent instance of the civil authorities themselves of New Orleans, who had entreated the Confederate

commander to retire from their midst, in order to save the city from the risk of bombardment. Gen. Lovell expressed a readiness and willingness to remain with all the troops under his command. But it was the undivided expression of public opinion that the army had better retire and save the city from destruction; and, accordingly, the general ordered his troops to rendezvous at Camp Moore, about seventy miles above New Orleans, on the Jackson railroad.

A demand was made by Farragut for the surrender of the command, which Gen. Lovell positively refused, but told the officer who bore the message, that if any Federal troops were landed he would attack them. Two days after he retired, it was said that the city had changed its purpose, and preferred a bombardment to occupation by the enemy. General Lovell promptly ordered a train and proceeded to New Orleans, and immediately had an interview with Mayor Monroe, offering, if such was the desire of the authorities and people, to return with his command and hold the city as long as a man and shot were left.

This offer not being accepted, it was decided that the safety of the large number of unprotected women and children should be looked to, and that the fleet would be permitted to take possession. The raw and poorly armed infantry could by this time have done nothing against the fleet.

The impression which prevailed, that General Lovell had a large army under his command, was singularly erroneous. His army had been stripped to reinforce that at Corinth, and, since the 1st of March, he had sent ten full regiments to Gen. Beauregard, besides many companies of cavalry and artillery. The morning report on the day of the evacuation of New Or leans showed his force to be about twenty-eight hundred men, two-thirds of whom were the volunteer and military companies which had recently been put in camp.

Notwithstanding, however, these facts, the circumstances in which Gen. Lovell agreed to evacuate the city under the persuasion of the civil authorities, appeared by no means to be in that desperate extremity that would have justified the step in military judgment; and it was thought by a considerable portion of the public, not without apparent reason, that the evacuation, at the time it was undertaker, was ill-advised.

hasty, and the result of panic or selfish clamors in the com munity.

The evacuation was begun on the 24th of April. At this time the river forts had not fallen; but two of the enemy's gunboats actually threatened the city; and the works at Chalmette-five 32-pounders on one side of the river, and nine on the other-were still intact. But it is known that there were reasons other than those which were apparent to the public, which decided Gen. Lovell to evacuate the city, and which were kept carefully to himself for obvious reasons. Gen. Lovell was fully aware that a single frigate anchored at Kenner's plantation, ten miles above the city, where the swamp and the river approached within less than a mile of each other, and through which narrow neck the railroad passes, would have effectually obstructed an exit of troops or stores from the city by land.

This was doubtless the real or most powerful reason for the evacuation of the city.*

On the morning of the next day, the Federal ships appeared off the Chalmette batteries, which exchanged a few shots with them, but without effect. Passing the lower batteries, the ships came up the river under full headway, the Hartford leading, then the Brooklyn, the Richmond, the Pensacola, and six gunboats. On and on they came, until they had extended their line a distance of about five miles, taking positions at intervals of about 900 yards apart. The scene on the water and in the city was alike extraordinary. The Confederate troops were still busy in the work of evacuation, and the streets were thronged with carts, drays, vehicles of all description, laden with the multifarious articles constituting the paraphernalia and implements of warfare. Officers on horseback were galloping hither and thither, receiving and executing orders. The streets were

* The water at Kenner's was so high that a ship's guns could have had a clear sweep from the river to the swamp, and there would have been no necessity of any bombardment; the people and the army of New Orleans would have been cut off and starved into a surrender in a short time. The failure of the enemy to occupy Kenner's, for which it is impossible to account, enabled Gen. Lovell to bring out of the city nearly all the portable government property necessary for war purposes, as well as a large part of the State property.

erowded with persons rushing about with parcels of suga buckets of molasses, and packages of provisions plundered from the public stores. Others were busying themselves with patriotic zeal to destroy property of value to the enemy, and huge loads of cotton went rumbling along on the way to the levee.

No sooner had the Federal fleet turned the point and come within sight of the city, than the work of destruction of property commenced. Vast columns of smoke ascended to the sky, darkening the face of heaven, and obscuring the noon-day sun; for five miles along the levee fierce flames darted through the lurid atmosphere, their baleful glare struggling in rivalry with the sunlight; great ships and steamers, wrapped in fire, floated down the river, threatening the Federal vessels with destruction by their fiery contact. In front of the various presses, and at other points along the levee, the cotton had been piled up and submitted to the torch. It was burned by order of the governor of Louisiana and of the military commander of the Confederate States. Fifteen thousand bales were consumed, the value of which would have been about a million and a half of dollars. The tobacco stored in the city, being al held by foreign residents on foreign account, was not destroyed. The specie of the banks, to the amount of twelve or fifteen millions, was removed from the city and placed in a secure place; so were nearly all the stores and movable property of the Confederate States. But other materials were embraced in the awful conflagration. About a dozen large river steamboats, twelve or fifteen ships, some of them laden with cotton, a great floating battery, several unfinished gunboats, the immense ram, the Mississippi, and the docks on the other side of the river, were all embraced in the fiery sacrifice. The Mississippi was an iron-clad frigate, a superior vessel of her class, and accounted to be by far the most important naval structure the Confederate government had yet undertaken.

On evacuating the city, Gen. Lovell had left it under the exclusive jurisdiction of Mayor Monroe. That officer, although he had appealed to Gen. Lovell to evacuate the city, so as to avoid such exasperation or conflict as might put the city in peril of bombardment, was not willing to surrender it to the enemy; but was content, after due protestations of patriotic

fer vor, that the enemy should perform, without interruption, the ceremony of surrender for himself in taking down the flags flying over all the public buildings of the city A correspondence ensued between the mayor and the flag-officer of the enemy's fleet. The correspondence was certainly of very unnecessary length on the part of the mayor, and was travestied in the Northern newspapers as a controversy between "Farrago and Farragut." But the sentiments of the mayor, although tedious and full of vain repetitions, were just and honorable. He declared, with explanations that were not necessary to be given to the enemy, and at a length that showed rather too much the vanity of literary style, that the citizens of New Orleans yielded to physical force alone, and that they maintained their allegiance to the government of the Confederate States.

On the morning of the 26th of April, a force landed from the sloop-of-war Pensacola, lying opposite Esplanade-street and hoisted a United States flag upon the mint. It had not remained there long before some young men, belonging to the Pinckney battalion, mounted to the dome of the mint, tore it down and dragged it through the streets.

Whether Flag-officer Farragut was exasperated or not by this circumstance, is not known; but he seemed to have determined to spare no mortification to the city, which its civil officers had already assured him was unprepared to resist him, and to hesitate at no misrepresentation in order to vilify its citizens. In one of his letters to the mayor, he had sought to publish the fact to the world, that helpless men, women, and children had been fired upon by the citizens of New Orleans "for giving expression to their pleasure at witnessing the old flag;" when the fact was, that the cheering on the levee referred to had been, in defiance of the enemy, for "the Southern Confederacy," and the only firing in the crowd was that of incautious and exasperated citizens at the Federal fleet.

The State flag of Louisiana still floated from the City Hall. It was an emblem of nothing more than State sovereignty, and yet it too was required to be lowered at the unreasonable and harsh demand of the invader. A memorial, praying the common council to protect at least the emblem of State sovereignty from insult, was signed by a large number of the noble