Destruction of the Confederate Flotilla

The night was intensely dark, and a tremendous battle was waged between the mortar-boats and the forts. The gun-boats as they came up gave the latter heavy broadsides of grape and canister shot, which drove the garrison from their barbette guns. The scene soon became grand and terrible. Fire-rafts, sent down by the Confederates, blazed fearfully, and "rams" plunged against the National vessels with terrible force. The Hartford (Farragut's flag-ship), which was a wooden vessel, was set on fire, but the flames were soon extinguished. The fleet had scarcely passed the forts when it was assailed by a large flotilla of "rams" and gun-boats. A grand and awful scene followed. The noise of twenty mortars and two hundred and sixty great guns, afloat and ashore, made a terrific sound. The explosion of shells that struck deep in the oozy ground, shook the land and water like an earthquake. "Combine," wrote an eye-witness, "all that you ever heard of thunder, and add to it all that you have ever seen of lightning, and you have, perhaps, a conception of the scene," in the darkness before daylight.

In that fearful struggle, the Nationals were victorious. From the fore-rigging of his ship Farragut had watched the combat through his night-glass, and conducted it as far as possible. Within the space of half an hour after the National vessels had left their anchorage, the forts were passed, the great struggle had occurred, and eleven vessels-nearly the whole of the Confederate flotilla-were destroyed. For awhile Captain Bailey sustained the fight with the Confederate flotilla almost unsupported, when Captain Boggs came to his assistance with the gun-boat Varuna, which immediately became the chief object of the wrath of the enemy. In his report Captain Boggs said that immediately after passing the forts, he found himself "amid a nest of rebel steamers." The Varuna rushed in among them (for the river was too narrow to permit her to avoid them), and fired broadsides right and left as she passed. The first one that received her fire was crowded with troops. Its boiler was exploded, and the vessel was run ashore. The Varuna ran three other gun-boats ashore, and had desperate struggles with the "rams," until, badly wounded, she began to sink, when her commander tied her bow to trees and took out her crew and the wounded, while his latest antagonist was burning to the water's edge. So ended one of the fiercest combats of the war. It was "short, sharp, and decisive." In that struggle on the bosom of the river, the Nationals lost only thirty killed and not more than one hundred and twenty-five wounded. The fleet, after the fight, rendezvoused at Quarantine, just above Fort St. Philip, and that was the first public property "repossessed" by the Government, in Louisiana.

While the battle was raging near the forts, General Butler landed his troops, and in small boats they went through narrow and shallow bayous in the rear of Fort St. Philip. The alarmed garrison mutinied, spiked the guns, and sallying out surrendered to Butler's pickets, declaring that they had been pressed into the service, and would fight no more. Porter had continued to bombard Fort Jackson, and after the fall of Fort St. Philip, it was surrendered to that officer with nearly one thousand men.

Meanwhile Farragut (who had thirteen vessels in safety above the forts) had gone up to New Orleans with his fleet, where a fearful panic prevailed, for the inhabitants had heard of the disasters below. Drums were beating; soldiers were seen hurrying to and fro; merchants had fled from their stores; women without bonnets and brandishing pistols were seen in the streets crying, "Burn the city! Burn the city! Never mind us! Burn the city!" Military officers impressed vehicles into the service of carrying cotton to the levees to be burned; and specie to the amount of $4,000,000 was sent out of the city by railway. Millions worth of other property, with a large number of citizens, had left the doomed town, among them General Twiggs, who betrayed his troops in Texas. Like Floyd, he feared the wrath of his injured Government, and fled, leaving behind him the two swords which had been awarded him for gallantry in Mexico, to fall into the hands of the invaders. And when, on the 25th of April, 1862, Farragut approached the city with nine vessels, General Lovell and his troops fled, the torch was applied to the cotton on the levee, and along the river front for miles a sheet of roaring flames burst forth. In that conflagration fifteen thousand bales of cotton, a dozen large ships and as many fine steam-boats, with unfinished gun-boats and other large vessels, perished. The value of cotton, sugar, and other products destroyed, was immense. The citizens were held in durance by Farragut's guns, until the arrival of General Butler on the first of May, when the latter landed with his troops, took formal possession of the defenceless town, and made his headquarters at the St. Charles hotel. Butler ruled New Orleans with the rigor of martial-law. Informed that a man named Mumford had pulled down the National flag where Farragut had unfurled it over the Mint, and had treated it in derision, Butler caused his arrest and his immediate trial on a charge of treason. He was convicted and hanged; the only man who has ever suffered death for that crime since the establishment of our National Government.