Lincoln's Admiral Page 13

  Farragut returned to New Orleans the following morning, just before the Confederate gunboat McRae, which had performed so bravely against the Union fleet, arrived flying a flag of truce. She was escorted by one of the gunboats Farragut had left at Quarantine Point. On the McRae were the seriously wounded soldiers who had been evacuated from Forts Jackson and St. Philip during a truce arranged by General Duncan and Commander Porter.

  While Farragut was conducting the frustrating negotiations with Mayor Monroe, General Duncan continued his efforts to get the Louisiana moved to a position between the two forts in order to work more closely with the batteries of both forts, should additional enemy vessels attempt to force their way through the river obstruction. The floating battery could also serve to protect the forts, most of whose guns faced downriver, from attack by the Union ships and gunboats located upstream. Commander Mitchell agreed to move the ironclad, but was unable to do so since she lacked the ability to move under her own steam, and there were not enough Confederate gunboats left afloat after the earlier fight against Farragut’s fleet to accomplish the task. The last great hope of New Orleans remained where she was, unable to do anything to protect the city or the forts.

  Later, in a report concerning the status of the forts at the time, General Duncan wrote, “At daylight [of April 27] the steamer which had been observed the day before working her way up in the back bays was in view, immediately in the rear of Fort St. Philip, and near the mouth of Fort Bayou. A frigate and five other vessels were also in sight towards Bird Island, one of which was seen working her way up the bay. From ten to thirteen launches were visible near the bayou back of Fort St. Philip, by means of which troops were being landed at the Quarantine above us.”

  At noon that same day, Commander Porter sent one of his gunboats, under a flag of truce, to the forts. For the second time, he demanded their surrender. Once again, the demand was refused, but this time the soldiers of the garrisons were aware that their situation had taken a dramatic change for the worse. Enemy vessels controlled the river north and south of the forts, enemy troops had landed behind one fort and quite possibly also behind the other, and no word had been received concerning the fate of New Orleans. Several couriers sent to the city had never returned. As rumors that the city had been taken by the enemy spread among the soldiers, their mood became one of subdued obedience to their officers. Gone was the “cheerful, confident, and courageous” enthusiasm Duncan had noted in earlier reports.

  At midnight, a large number of the garrison of Fort Jackson revolted. Officers and soldiers who remained loyal were disarmed, and the fort’s guns were spiked, except for those protecting the gates, which were reversed to face the fort’s interior. Seeing no way of regaining the loyalty of the men who had joined the revolt, many of whom had demonstrated their personal bravery during the mortar bombardment, Duncan decided it was best to allow those who wished to leave the fort to do so peacefully. More than 250 men, roughly half the garrison, departed with their firearms. Many made their way to the Federal pickets stationed around Quarantine Point, where they surrendered themselves. Every company save one, the St. Mary’s Cannoneers, lost men to the mutiny.

  When the mutineers had left, Duncan quickly saw “that there was no further fight in the men remaining behind; that they were completely demoralized, and that no faith or reliance would be placed in the broken detachments of companies left in the fort.” He prepared himself for the inevitable surrender.

  General Duncan’s position was untenable, as he later described in his report. “With the enemy above and below us, it will be apparent at once to any one at all familiar with the surrounding country that there was no chance of destroying the public property, blowing up the forts, and escaping with the remaining troops. Under all these humiliating circumstances there seemed to be but one course open to us”: surrender. Following a hurried meeting with officers from Fort St. Philip, where no mutiny had yet taken place, but where the garrison had also fallen into a state of gloom and despair, it was decided to send word to the enemy gunboats below the forts with a written acceptance of the terms of surrender that had been offered.

  Once terms had been accepted, it would have been illegal for any officer to destroy weapons or equipment. Commander Mitchell was determined that the Louisiana not fall into enemy hands; therefore the surrender was made on behalf of the army forces occupying the forts and the water batteries, not the remnants of the naval forces gathered around the big ironclad. The document sent by Duncan to Porter stated specifically that the officer accepting the terms of surrender offered by Porter has “no control over the vessels afloat.” Since the ironclad was immobile, Mitchell saw that his only course of action was to destroy her. He met with the officers of the Louisiana, and they all concurred that no alternative was available to them except to set her ablaze, for which they immediately began preparations.

  When Porter received the message from Duncan, he steamed upriver in his flagship, Harriet Lane, to accept the surrender of the forts. He was accompanied by the gunboats Westfield, Kennebec, and Winona, all flying the white flag of truce. On the morning of April 28, Duncan, accompanied by Lieutenant Colonel Edward Higgins, who was actual commander of Fort Jackson under the overall command of General Duncan, boarded the Harriet Lane to formalize the surrender. During the solemn ceremony, Porter asked Duncan where the naval commander was. Duncan reminded Porter of his comment in the surrender acceptance that he did not command the naval forces, and, therefore, could not surrender on their behalf. As the hands of the clock on the wall of the cabin in which this discussion was taking place approached 11:00 a.m., an officer entered the cabin and informed Porter that the Louisiana was ablaze, that the ropes holding her to the shore had burned, and she was drifting downriver. Porter asked Duncan if the ironclad’s guns were loaded and her magazine full, to which Duncan responded that he assumed so but had no direct knowledge concerning the vessel.

  The surrender negotiations continued as the huge, burning floating battery picked up speed in her downriver rush. The Louisiana’s guns fired in all directions at once as they became overheated by the inferno. Suddenly, as she came abreast of Fort St. Philip, her magazine exploded, sending shells and shrapnel high into the air. The deadly missiles rained down on the fort, where one Confederate officer was killed, and several others wounded. The loss of the ironclad, which he had hoped to capture, enraged Porter, who railed against Mitchell and the other Confederate naval officers. Porter later came under criticism for wording the surrender document so it read that the forts had surrendered to his mortar flotilla, and not to Farragut’s squadron, of which the mortar flotilla was a part.

  At 4:00 p.m., General Duncan and the other officers and men remaining in Fort Jackson were loaded into two Federal gunboats and taken to New Orleans, where they arrived the following day under parole. They were allowed to keep their sidearms, and the Confederate flag was not removed from the fort and replaced by the United States flag until they were out of sight. The following day, the officers and men of Fort St. Philip were likewise sent upriver to New Orleans.

  Early on the morning of April 29, before word of the surrender of the forts reached him, Farragut sent a final message to Mayor Monroe, giving him forty-eight hours in which to remove all Confederate and state flags or “the fire of this fleet may be drawn down upon the city at any moment.” In those forty-eight hours, all women, children, and other noncombatants, including employees of the various foreign consulates, were to be evacuated from the city. Farragut backed up his demand by sending Captain Bell ashore with detachments of sailors and marines, all armed, along with two howitzers, to remove the Confederate flags from the mint, the post office, and the customs house, and replace them with the flag of the United States. Bell was also told to remove the Louisiana flag from City Hall, but not to replace it, because it was not the property of the Federal government. Bell carried out his assignment with no interference from the mobs, in part because the loaded howitzers remained aimed at the
m during the exchange of the flags.

  When the captured Confederate officers and men formerly of Fort Jackson arrived, a great cheer arose from the sailors and marines on the decks of the anchored warships. In contrast, a sullen silence fell over the citizens who watched as the men came ashore. General Duncan quickly made his way to City Hall to inform the authorities that the forts had fallen, and could no longer be counted on to prevent additional enemy ships from coming upriver to resupply Farragut’s fleet.

  On May 1, General Butler arrived aboard the Mississippi, which Farragut had sent to Quarantine Point to fetch him. His troops landed in the city, and formal occupation of New Orleans was established.

  The fall of New Orleans was a devastating blow to the Confederacy. It not only denied this important center of commerce to the rebel government, but struck a blow at Southern morale from which the people of the South never recovered. In her much-quoted diary, Mary Boykin Chesnut noted, “New Orleans is gone, and with it the Confederacy!” Her reaction was universal throughout the Confederacy, and perhaps more important, in Europe, where Napoleon III was threatening to break the blockade of the Gulf ports if the Confederacy would support his claims on Mexico, and in England, where the loss of New Orleans was seen as the beginning of the end, even by the Confederacy’s most ardent supporters in Parliament and at Queen Victoria’s court. Because of the fall of New Orleans, Europeans now viewed the Confederate cause as lost.

  Farragut’s success proved he had been correct about the forts. Mortars could not reduce them, as inspections by army engineers proved following their capitulation. General Butler said both forts were “substantially as defensible as before the bombardment began.” Lieutenant Godfrey Weitzel of the Engineer Corps found both forts as strong after the thousands of mortars had fallen on them as they had been before the first shell was fired. Despite protests from Porter, who attempted to claim the victory for himself, the forts had fallen because the powerful Union fleet had passed them and isolated them from the rest of the Confederacy, especially New Orleans. This isolation had made both forts irrelevant, and spelled their doom as no mortar shells could have done. David Farragut alone, among almost all navy and army officers and government officials, had recognized the effect his running the forts would have on them and on New Orleans.

  For some inexplicable reason, most of the first Northern newspaper reports of the passing of the forts and the capture of New Orleans failed to mention Flag Officer Farragut. Those few that did include his name did so only in passing. The credit for the success at the forts was at first given to Commander David Porter, while the fall of New Orleans was ascribed to General Butler. It took several days, and a reading of news reports in Southern newspapers, before the population of the United States learned that David Farragut had led the triumphant charge of his fleet up the Mississippi River past the mighty forts and conquered New Orleans. A national hero, his name quickly became a household word throughout the country.

  FLAG OFFICER FARRAGUT was greatly relieved to turn New Orleans over to General Butler. Butler was by vocation a politician, and, as such, could better deal with the obstructionist tactics of the city’s politicians. Besides, Butler had an army of nearly 18,000 troops to persuade the rebellious Mayor Monroe and his cohorts to his point of view.

  Over 100 miles of the lower Mississippi River, from its mouth to New Orleans, was now controlled by the Union navy. But that control was tenuous. Rebel soldiers, some in organized bands, others operating independently, regularly fired at Federal vessels from well-concealed points along the shore. They especially favored sharp bends in the river, or rapids, where boats and ships were forced to slow their speed. The smaller Union gunboats were kept busy patrolling the river and returning the fire of the elusive, hidden enemy.

  With New Orleans under the control of Butler’s army of occupation, Farragut made preparations to move even farther up the Mississippi. A joyful Farragut wrote home, “I am now going up the river to meet Foote - where, I know not - and then I shall resume my duties on the coast, keep moving, and keep up the stampede I have upon them. I have so much to say to my dear wife and boy that it will be the occupation of my declining years, I hope, by the bright fireside of our happy home.”

  In a more melancholy vein, he told Virginia, “It is a strange thought, that I am here among my relatives, and yet not one has dared to say ‘I am happy to see you.’”

  Farragut was undecided about his next course of action. His orders from Secretary Welles, dated January 20, 1862, appeared to be explicit enough. They said that if the Union naval expedition led by Flag Officer Andrew Hull Foote, which was moving downriver from Cairo, Illinois, “shall not have descended the river, you will take advantage of the panic to push a strong force up the river to take their defenses [meaning Vicksburg, Mississippi] in the rear. You will also reduce the fortifications which defend Mobile Bay and turn them over to the army to hold.”

  Welles made it all seem so easy. He appeared to believe that the river approaching Vicksburg from the south would not be strongly defended, and that the Confederate forts overlooking the channel entrance to Mobile Bay would fall at the mere sight of Farragut’s damaged fleet and exhausted crews. Farragut’s own inclination was to return to the Gulf and sail to Mobile, where he would “put it to them.” His uncertainty is revealed in his correspondence, including letters to Welles. In one letter to the navy secretary, he wrote that he would be heading upriver to attempt to link up with Foote. Four days later, he told Welles he was preparing to sail to Mobile. The second letter caused much consternation in Washington. Welles and Navy Undersecretary Fox felt Mobile could be taken at any time, but that the opportunity of gaining complete control of the Mississippi River was too important for Farragut to withdraw. The confusion over the flag officer’s plans was compounded when Captain Bailey arrived in Washington bearing Farragut’s report on the passing of the forts and the capture of New Orleans. Bailey also presented Welles with Confederate battle flags taken during these actions.

  Anxious for news that the squadron had moved upriver, Fox and Welles asked Bailey how many ships Farragut had sent north. When Bailey replied that none had been sent, which was the case when he left the fleet, Fox became alarmed at this “terrible mistake.” But he soon calmed down when word reached him that Farragut had indeed moved upriver. Welles and Fox were impatient to get complete control of the river, because Grant, following his success at Shiloh, was driving Beauregard’s Confederate forces westward out of Tennessee. Union control of the river to Memphis would prevent the rebel army from escaping to the relative safety of Arkansas, across the river. There the Confederates would have the time and opportunity to rest and reorganize for a future attack back across the river. As it turned out, Beauregard decided to move his army southward, toward Corinth, Mississippi, so Farragut’s move north was not as vital as the Washington navy establishment expected.

  On May 1, 1862, the same day that Butler landed his men in New Orleans, Farragut ordered Porter to return to Ship Island with his mortar flotilla. He was to wait there pending instructions to proceed to the Alabama coast to take part in actions against the forts guarding Mobile Bay. Farragut warned him not to undertake any operations against the fortifications himself until the large ships of the squadron arrived. Reports were reaching New Orleans that the Confederate Navy had stationed two large, heavily armed ironclads in Mobile Bay. He feared they could easily destroy Porter’s small ships.

  Having decided to proceed upriver, Farragut first sent the Brooklyn north in company with several gunboats. She was still commanded by Captain Craven, whose personal notes revealed a disdain for Farragut, whom he constantly referred to as “the little man.” Craven was instructed to sail to Vicksburg, where he was to shell and attempt to destroy the large railroad center there. Steaming north, the Brooklyn passed Baton Rouge without incident but ran into trouble before reaching its destination. Two of its accompanying gunboats, the Itasca and the Sciota, suffered engine trouble. Fearful of groun
ding his ship, which regularly scraped the bottom of the river at various points, Craven decided to turn back. Nearing Baton Rouge again, Craven met Commander S. Philip Lee, aboard the gunboat Oneida. He was accompanied by two other gunboats, the Pinola and the Kennebec. Lee carried new orders for Craven from Farragut. The flag officer had learned that the river above Baton Rouge had reached its highest level and would soon begin to drop, making passage of a large ship dangerous. Concerned that the Brooklyn would be grounded and subject to enemy attack, Farragut instructed Craven to go no farther north than Baton Rouge.

  Soon afterward, the Iroquois arrived with additional orders. The gunboat’s commander, James S. Palmer, was instructed by Farragut to capture Baton Rouge, while Lee was ordered to continue north and capture Natchez. Craven was to wait at his anchorage at Tunica Island, north of Baton Rouge, until the flag officer arrived with additional ships.

  On the evening of May 7, the Iroquois dropped anchor off Baton Rouge harbor and sent word to the city’s officials demanding their surrender. When no satisfactory answer had been received by the following morning, Lee sent an armed party ashore with orders to take possession of the Federal arsenal located in the town. This was done with no resistance from the local inhabitants, who numbered about 7,000. The flag of the United States was raised on the arsenal, and this sight greeted Farragut when he arrived the following day.

  Commander Lee took his own gunboat, the Oneida, along with the Pinola and the Kennebec, to Natchez, sixty miles north of Baton Rouge. On May 13, he captured that town with no resistance. While Baton Rouge and Natchez offered no opposition, the officials at both took the same tack as Mayor Monroe of New Orleans, refusing to surrender formally.

  When Farragut, aboard the Hartford, arrived off Baton Rouge on May 9, he was pleased to see the United States flag flying from the flagpole atop the arsenal building. Farragut brought with him 1,500 of Butler’s troops, under the command of Brigadier General Thomas Williams. In the early morning of May 14, the two steamers that served as army transports, the Ceres and the Burton, were sent north to Natchez. They were protected by the sloop Richmond. The Brooklyn and several gunboats had arrived at Natchez a few hours after the city was taken by Lee’s small flotilla. With the arrival of the Brooklyn, Lee took his gunboats and the two army transports farther upriver to test the mettle of the Confederate forces at Vicksburg. Intelligence concerning that city’s defenses was lacking, and no one knew what Lee could expect to confront there.