The people laughed at their enemy. There was but one verdict:
"They'll think twice before attempting to repeat the scenes of 1812."
Not only were the two great forts impregnable but the shores were lined with batteries. What could wooden ships do with such forts and guns? It was a joke that they should pretend to attack them. Their only possible danger was from the new iron-clad gunboats in the upper waters of the river. They were building two of their own kind which would be ready long before the enemy could break through the defenses from the North.
When Farragut stripped his fleet for action and moved toward the forts on the sixteenth of April, New Orleans was the gayest city in America. The spirit of festivity was universal. Balls, theaters, operas were the order of the day. Gay parties of young people flocked down the river and swarmed the levees to witness the fun of the foolish attempt of a lot of old wooden ships to reduce the great forts.
The guns were roaring now their mighty anthem. Ships and forts—forts and ships. The batteries of Farragut's mortar schooners were hurling their eleven-inch shells with harmless inaccuracy.
The people laughed again.
For six days the earth trembled beneath the fierce bombardment. The fleet had thrown twenty-five thousand shells and General Duncan reported but two guns dismantled, with half a dozen men killed and wounded. The forts stood grim and terrible, their bristling line of black-lipped guns unbroken, their defenses as strong as when the first shot was fired.
On the evening of April twenty-third, the fire of the fleet slackened. Farragut had given up the foolish attempt, of course. He had undertaken the impossible and at last had accepted the fact.
But the people of New Orleans had not reckoned on the character of the daring commander of the Federal fleet. He coolly decided that since he could not silence the guns of the forts he would run past them with his swift steam craft and take the chances of their batteries sending him to the bottom.