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  At 7:15 a.m., the Queen of the West suddenly appeared in the river with a full blast of smoke sweeping from her funnels. Following closely behind was the Tyler, also belching black smoke. At first, some sailors thought the Tyler had a prize vessel in tow, but they quickly recognized that the third vessel was a huge ironclad, and her guns were firing. The Tyler and the Queen swept down into the midst of the fleet and sought sanctuary.

  As the Arkansas slipped into the Mississippi, her crew gazed in awe out her gun ports at the enemy ships. Masts and funnels filled the scene ahead of them, and more than one wondered if he would survive the gauntlet. Brown had little choice but to continue downriver. He did not have enough steam to turn back, so he allowed the river’s current to aid his crippled boiler and increase his speed.

  With surprising ease, the rebel ironclad slipped past the army rams and the ironclads of Davis’s flotilla. As she moved, all her guns fired, belching smoke ahead, astern, and to each side. Aboard the Union ships, thousands of men scrambled into action. The first round of firing aroused Farragut, who, to the amusement of his crew, appeared on deck wearing only his nightgown.

  The first Federal ship to take action against the rebel ram was the army ram Lancaster. As she began to move in an attempt to ram the approaching enemy, the Arkansas put a shot right into her boiler, sending steam and scalding water splashing over her crew, most of whom died instantly or were lost when they jumped overboard.

  For the next thirty minutes, the roar of cannons filled the air for miles around, as every Union boat fired every gun that could be brought to bear on the Confederate vessel. Most of the shots, including terrifying broadsides from the large sloops, did little damage, although a few succeeded in either penetrating the armor at a weak spot or were lucky enough to enter through a gun port. Brown later described the experience with these words: “As we advanced, the line of fire seemed to grow into a circle constantly closing.” He also remarked about being able to see old “valued friends” on the decks of the enemy ships as he passed. The last Union vessel in line was Davis’s flagship, the Benton. After exchanging a broadside with the Arkansas, she managed to get up enough steam to give chase but withdrew when she came within range of Vicksburg’s northern batteries.

  At Vicksburg, thousands of people had gathered along the river to watch for the approach of the Arkansas. They cheered wildly as she came into view. It was not until the boat was secured to a wharf that soldiers and civilians understood the price the crew of the ironclad had paid for their minor victory. An officer on General Van Dorn’s staff remarked that “it was the most frightful scene of war” he had ever witnessed. There was so much blood about that soldiers who acted as stretcher bearers attempting to remove the wounded and dead were forced to spread ashes on the decks and stairs in order to keep their footing.

  The scene had such a lasting impact on those who saw it, that when Brown attempted to locate replacements for his dead and wounded crewmen before he continued downriver, he could find none.

  Upriver, Farragut was mortified by the ease with which the Confederate vessel had run past his ships. It was without a doubt the most embarrassing incident of his long career, and he was determined to seek immediate revenge. Boarding the Benton, he told Davis he intended to get under way immediately and attack the Arkansas with every ship in his fleet. Davis, also embarrassed by the incident, but less volatile than Farragut, urged restraint. He later told his wife that Farragut “treated my reason as very cold and repulsive,” although he did so in a “perfectly friendly” way.

  Davis succeeded in persuading Farragut not to attack immediately, something the latter would soon regret. Orders from the flag officer to the ships of his fleet called for every gun to seek out the Arkansas as its target. “No one will do wrong,” Farragut told the captains of his fleet, “who lays his vessel alongside of the enemy or tackles the ram. The ram must be destroyed.” One delay piled up on another, and it was not until seven o’clock that night that Farragut’s ships got under way. Davis placed his boats just upriver of the city in order to engage the northern batteries while Farragut’s ships swept in close to the city side of the shore. Once again, the river was filled with the roar of cannon fire, but seek as they might, the Union gunners could not find a trace of the Arkansas in the twilight. One of Farragut’s gunboats, the Winona, was badly damaged during the battle and had to be run aground to prevent her from sinking.

  Farragut continued to feel humiliated by the ironclad ram’s persistent survival, as if it personally sought to destroy his reputation. Aside from that, the ram endangered every Union vessel on the Mississippi. The mortar boats were quickly sent south, and the supply ships were told to be prepared to flee at a moment’s notice should the Arkansas suddenly appear in the river. No one in the Union fleet realized how much damage had been done to the ram, and that her career as a warship was, for all practical purposes, ended. The best she could do was defend herself against attack. In the meantime, she remained hidden behind another vessel at the wharf.

  Farragut was all for steaming upriver once again in search of the ram but was dissuaded from doing so by Captain Bell and the other senior officers. He continued to rage against the ram, however, swearing that he would trade his commission “for a crack at her.” During the following week, communications sped between the two flag officers. Farragut wanted to launch a two-pronged attack against the Vicksburg wharfs, he coming from below and Davis from above. The cautious Davis refused to participate, in part out of fear that his flotilla would be stranded below Vicksburg, unable to reach its own supplies. Finally, Colonel Ellet suggested that he lead his ram fleet against the Arkansas, while Davis’s gunboats engaged the batteries from upriver, and Farragut’s ships did the same from below the city. They agreed.

  The attack, launched on July 22, was a dismal failure. The Arkansas put up a gallant defense against the rams, and Ellet’s boats were badly damaged by the shore batteries. Despite the best efforts of everyone involved, the ironclad remained in service. From Welles came news that both the Navy Department and the country found the escape of the Arkansas cause for “serious mortification.”

  The failure to sink the Arkansas was the last straw for Farragut. If he hadn’t been stuck in this muddy river, he would not have had to suffer such a humiliation. Orders arrived that he should withdraw downriver at his own discretion. Following a conference with Davis, the two parted on friendly terms. Davis wrote of Farragut to his wife, “You must not think Farragut and I differ unkindly,” he wrote. “Nothing can exceed his kindness, candor, and liberality; our old ties have been strengthened by our present intercourse. He is a man who unites with a bold and impetuous spirit an affectionate temper, and a generous and candid nature.”

  Every man in Farragut’s fleet and General Williams’s detachment was relieved to be away from Vicksburg. They left in the predawn hours of July 24. Leaving the ram Arkansas still afloat was something that would haunt Farragut for a long time. Williams and his troops were dropped at Baton Rouge, and Farragut continued on to New Orleans, arriving there on July 28. Davis withdrew his flotilla on July 31 and returned to Memphis. Once again, the center section of the Mississippi River was under the control of the Confederate government.

  From Vicksburg, General Van Dorn wrote to President Jefferson Davis, “The whole of the lower fleet and all the troops have disappeared downriver.” Thinking of it as a victory, Van Dorn soon began dreaming of moving south, with the help of the Arkansas, and recapturing Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

  NEW ORLEANS OFFERED little comfort from the ravages of the mosquitoes and the torrid summer heat. Farragut and the saltwater sailors of his fleet were anxious to be free of the river and back on the open sea. His only hesitation was that the fate of the ram Arkansas remained undecided. He could imagine the ram steaming down the river, wreaking havoc on the gunboats he left to guard Baton Rouge, and then repeating the destruction at New Orleans. The Arkansas, and the potential danger she posed to the Union position on
the river, kept him from returning to the Gulf. Fortunately, that issue would soon be resolved. In the meantime, the strength of Farragut’s forces declined steadily as the fleet’s sick list grew each day, as did the roll of those who died from the effects of the climate.

  While Farragut’s fleet had been steaming downriver from Vicksburg, David Porter and most of his mortar flotilla had been detached from Farragut’s command and transferred to Hampton Roads. Farragut expressed disappointment at losing Porter from his fleet. He did not know, or refused to believe it if he did, that he was rid of an obstacle to the success of his own missions. Even before the first of Farragut’s large ships had entered the Mississippi, Porter had used his direct link to Welles and Fox to attack Farragut and the older captains of his fleet with innuendo and false statements. Fortunately for the outcome of the campaigns on the river, Fox was not completely taken in by Porter. In a letter written to Welles in 1871, Fox said of Porter, “He came back disparaging the old hero, who, when the fire of battle came near, towered head and shoulders above such men, and this Porter could not forgive. He felt he should have been the naval hero of the war.” Porter was a disruptive element in the fleet, constantly undermining the older captains and trying to win favor with the younger officers. Farragut was better off without him.

  Farragut’s first order of business at New Orleans was to arrange for the repairs of his badly damaged ships. Most of the work could be performed by carpenters brought to New Orleans for that purpose, but the Richmond required such extensive repairs that he sent her to the navy yard at Pensacola. The few mortar boats Porter had left to the fleet were literally coming apart from the pounding of their own big guns, so Farragut had them towed to Pensacola for repairs also. He did not anticipate needing their assistance in the Gulf until he was ready to attack Mobile Bay.

  A great shock descended on the Union army and naval commanders at New Orleans on August 1 and 2, when communiqués from General Thomas Williams informed both Farragut and General Benjamin Butler that a Confederate army was advancing on Baton Rouge. Williams also reported that the Arkansas had left her berth at Vicksburg and begun steaming downriver to aid the forthcoming attack on Baton Rouge.

  The assault on Baton Rouge was the brainchild of Confederate general Earl Van Dorn, commander of the defenses of Vicksburg. Van Dorn’s main objective was to build an impenetrable position at Port Hudson, a small village upriver from Baton Rouge. Located on bluffs overlooking the river, Port Hudson would provide the Confederates a good place from which they could close the river to enemy traffic up to Vicksburg. This was of strategic importance because the Red River, the lifeline of supplies from western Louisiana and Texas to the heart of the Confederacy, empties into the Mississippi between Port Hudson and Vicksburg. Supply boats traveled down that river loaded with beef cattle, sheep, corn, and war materials imported from Europe for the Confederate armies. If Van Dorn could keep that lifeline open, the fall of the northern and southern sections of the Mississippi River would be acceptable losses to the Confederacy.

  By launching an attack on Baton Rouge, Van Dorn hoped to either recapture the Louisiana capital itself or, at the least, buy enough time to fortify Port Hudson by bottling up the Federal garrison there. The Arkansas was an indispensable part of Van Dorn’s plan, since Farragut had placed gunboats on station at Baton Rouge. Left unmolested in the river, these boats would contribute considerably toward defending the city by bombarding the Confederate attackers. They could also do great harm to the planned construction of the Port Hudson fortifications before they were completed.

  Van Dorn sent 4,000 men from the Vicksburg garrison, under the command of Major General John C. Breckinridge, to assault Baton Rouge. Breckinridge had been Vice President of the United States under James Buchanan, and had run for the presidency in the 1860 election. Breckinridge left Vicksburg on July 27, and arrived at Camp Moore, Louisiana, sixty miles northeast of Baton Rouge, the following evening. More than 2,000 soldiers were felled by fever during the overcrowded train ride or soon after arriving at Camp Moore. Breckinridge was able to add the 1,000 troops at Camp Moore to his force, but this was little consolation for the effects the insect-infested camp had on the men. Baton Rouge was still a strenuous two-day march away. When the rebels left Camp Moore on August 2, they had deteriorated into a ragtag army of poorly clothed men suffering from the insidious heat and a chronic shortage of drinking water. Nearly a third of them had no shoes. During the forced march, men, either individually or in small clusters, dropped out. Some suffered from either the fever that was ravaging the ranks, or from a terrible thirst that drove many to drink from brackish ponds, while others were unable to continue walking because the sandy soil had rubbed the skin from the bottoms of their feet.

  At eleven o’clock on August 4, this miserable little force of Confederates attacked the Union positions on the outskirts of the city. Baton Rouge’s defenders were not much better off and had only a slight advantage over the attackers.

  The day before, General Williams, commander of the Baton Rouge garrison, had received reports from scouting parties of the approach of the large Confederate force. He had prepared for the expected attack by deploying three regiments along an outer perimeter defense line. Four additional regiments were stationed along an interior line. These were supported by four artillery batteries. Unfortunately, nearly half of Williams’s soldiers were afflicted with the same fever that had struck the rebels. Out of a garrison of almost 4,000 men, he had about 2,000 actual effectives.

  Meanwhile, at two o’clock on the morning of August 3, the Arkansas silently slipped her lines and left the sleeping city of Vicksburg behind. The ram’s commanding officer, Isaac Brown, had been promoted to captain as a result of his daring feat in passing the Union fleets. When the vessel left Vicksburg, Brown was ashore, bedridden with the fever. Before leaving his executive officer, Lieutenant Henry K. Stevens, in command of the ironclad, he had instructed him not to sortie the ram until his return. When General Van Dorn ordered the reluctant executive officer to attack the Union gunboats at Baton Rouge in support of Breckinridge’s troops, he gave Stevens no option except to obey. As military commander of the Vicksburg area, he easily convinced the district’s naval commander - who had no idea of the poor condition of the Arkansas’s engines - that she should participate in the attack on Baton Rouge. Mechanics from as far away as Mobile, Alabama, had been brought to Vicksburg to work on the Arkansas’s engines. Some of these men were still aboard when the ram left Vicksburg.

  Union spies quickly sent word downriver that the Arkansas was back in action, and heading south.

  Manning Baton Rouge’s exterior line of defense were the Twenty-first Indiana, the Fourteenth Maine, and the Sixth Michigan. Opposing them were troops from Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Breckinridge divided his command into two divisions for the assault. The one on the left was commanded by Brigadier General Daniel Ruggles, the one on the right by Brigadier General Charles Clark. Unit designations on both sides of the battle meant little, since there was not a brigade or a company in either army that was anywhere near its normal strength. Both armies suffered heavily from the fever.

  The battle raged for Baton Rouge across the eastern approaches to the city, with the Federals first falling back, then regrouping and advancing. For the first few hours, the battle continued to move back and forth, as the fairly equally matched sides put up a strenuous fight. Toward midmorning, the Confederates controlled a large portion of the city, when a shot through the heart killed General Williams as he urged his men to counterattack a rebel advance. The leaderless Federal soldiers fell back to the river district, where they sought the safety of the Union gunboats. During the battle, Breckinridge and his staff listened for the guns of the Arkansas from the nearby river, but all they heard was the booming of the Union gunboats. Once the Federal sailors found the range, they laid a deadly barrage of fire on the rebel positions. Disappointed that he had not received the help he had been promis
ed, and recognizing he would not be able to hold the city while the Union boats controlled the river, Breckinridge pulled his forces back to the city’s outskirts shortly after 10:00 a.m. His men needed a rest.

  Meanwhile, upriver, Lieutenant Stevens had been forced to make several stops during his trip from Vicksburg. First one, then the other, of the Arkansas’s two engines gave out. Luckily, the mechanics on board had been able to restart the ram’s power plants after each failure. The last and fatal engine failure occurred just four miles north of Baton Rouge. Stevens tied the vessel to the riverbank and waited while the mechanics tried in vain to restart the engines.

  Word that the Arkansas was close by drew a large crowd to the river. People cheered when they saw the ram tied to the shore, but the cheering soon changed to dismay as the noise and smoke of approaching Union gunboats filled the air.

  Having driven off the Confederate troops of Breckinridge, the Union gunboats had steamed north from Baton Rouge in search of the Arkansas. In the lead was the Essex, an ironclad that had been converted from a snag boat. Actually, a part of Flag Officer Davis’s flotilla, the Essex, along with the little ram Sumter, had steamed past Vicksburg in company with Farragut’s ships. Unwilling to run the risk of having the two return above the city without the protection of Farragut’s large ships, Davis assigned them the responsibility of patrolling the river from Vicksburg to Baton Rouge. The Essex was commanded by Commodore William Porter, the older brother of David Porter. Following her were three gunboats Farragut had left to help defend Baton Rouge, the Cayuga, the Kineo, and the Katahdin. Last in line was the ram Sumter.