Contents
-SUBJECT INDEX -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
James Ford Rhodes (1848–1927). History of the Civil War, 1861–1865. 1917.
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| property,—all evidence of the panic which had seized upon the city. During the morning of April 25, he reached the Chalmette batteries, three miles below the city and, by a vigorous attack, silenced them in thirty minutes. His despatch is headed, “At anchor off New Orleans;” the town was at his mercy. “The levee,” he wrote, “was one scene of desolation; ships, steamers, cotton, coal, etc., were all in one common blaze.” 1 As he had divined, the passage of the forts compelled the evacuation of New Orleans by the Confederate military force and its surrender, and furthermore, since the enemy’s communications were now severed, the surrender of the forts. On April 29, he sent this despatch to the Secretary of the Navy, “Our flag waves over both Forts Jackson and St. Philip and at New Orleans over the custom-house.” 2 The passage of the forts and the possession of the Mississippi river made the way clear for General Butler and his troops to reach New Orleans by boat. On May 1, Farragut formally turned over to him the city. | 60 |
| After any successful achievement, nothing is so grateful as the appreciation of experts; this Farragut received. From Fox came, “Having studied up the localities and defenses in conceiving this attack, I can fully appreciate the magnificent execution which has rendered your name immortal.” 3 And from Captain Mahan: “The conquest of New Orleans and of its defenses … was wholly the work of the United States Navy.… It was a triumph won over formidable difficulties by a mobile force, skillfully directed and gallantly fought.” 4 | 61 |
| It was “the crowning stroke of adverse fortune” wrote later the Confederate Secretary of War. 5 A less just estimate |
