That night we anchored, getting under weigh early the next morning, and just at noon we rounded the bend in the river below the city, and New Orleans was in sight!
We steamed up close in to the levee, which was alive with people, and where great heaps of cotton bales were blazing that had been fired by the authorities to prevent them from falling into our hands. At the same time the unfinished iron-clad Louisiana came drifting down stream all ablaze.
Just at this time a sudden thunder-storm burst upon us, and the rain fell in torrents as we dropped our anchors in the stream nearly opposite the mint. It was, altogether, a scene not easily to be forgotten.
The fruitless negotiations which followed between Farragut and Mayor Munroe, that came so near terminating in the bombardment of the city by the fleet, are all matters of history, and could not here be even intelligently summarized, except at great length.
As is known, on May 1 General Butler and his troops came up to New Orleans and took formal possession of the city we had captured; and from that time it was fully restored to the Federal government, from which it had been alienated for more than a year.
A portion of the fleet, with the Richmond as the flagship, soon after ascended the Mississippi, receiving in turn the surrender of Baton Rouge and Natchez, but meeting with the first check at Vicksburg, where, in response to our demand, the city government by a bare majority of one vote declined to surrender; and as we, unfortunately, had no co-operating troops, we could not well enforce our demand, or, indeed, have held the city if we had been able to capture it.
Two regiments of troops at that time would have prevented the necessity for the terrible campaign of Vicksburg and the sacrifice of fifty thousand lives in the prolonged struggle which was to come.
The morning we sighted Vicksburg, as we were carefully feeling our way up the river, where ships of the size of ours had never before been seen, I had the morning watch, and while yet a few miles below the city we saw a curious-looking boat drifting down stream with two negroes as its occupants, who were directing their frail craft with rude paddles. As they came near us the darkeys made signs that they wished to communicate, so I slowed our engines and the men paddled alongside, and, catching the rope that was thrown to them, to our surprise both climbed on board, setting adrift their little craft, which was merely an old mortar-box.
The men were brought to me, and proved to be two very intelligent negroes, who, hearing by underground telegraph that “Massa Linkum’s big ships had whopped out de Confeds at New Orleans, and were coming up river to set de niggers free,” had improvised a boat, and had trusted to the current to drift them down to the ships.
They seemed perfectly convinced that our principal mission was to set them free, which, as it was before the Emancipation Proclamation had been written, was very far from being the case. In fact, it was directly the reverse, and commanding officers were as yet forbidden to receive or to harbor escaped slaves.