At an events, the sad waste of position and opportunity, and the heavy loss in brilliant effort and valuable lives, caused equal dissatisfaction and gloom. Beauregard's new strategic point commanded a valuable sweep of producing territory, protected the communications, and covered Memphis. Still people were not satisfied; and tongues and pens were busy with the subject, until an event occurred that wrapped the whole country in wondering and paralyzing grief.
On the 26th April New Orleans surrendered to Admiral Farragut!
The Federal fleet had long been hovering about the twin forts at the mouth of the river; and daily telegrams of the progress of the bombardment and of their impregnability had schooled the country into the belief that the city was perfectly secure. Day after day the wires repeated the same story of thousands of shell and nobody hurt, until inquiry ceased to be even anxious; and the people were ready to despise this impotent attempt upon the most important point of the far South.
So secure had the Government been in her defenses, that regiment after regiment had been withdrawn from New Orleans and sent to Corinth, until General Lovell found his command reduced to less than three thousand effective men—and more than half of these local militia and volunteer organizations.
Suddenly came the despatch that the fleet had passed the forts at dawn on the 24th! All was consternation in the city. The confidence had been so great that daily avocations went on as usual; and the news found every one as unprepared for it, as though no enemy had been near.
Confusion ruled the hour. General Lovell reached the city from below; and, feeling that his handful of men could effect nothing and might only offer an excuse for bombardment, he yielded to the desire of the city authorities and withdrew to Camp Moore. He carried with him all the munitions and supplies that were capable of transportation; and held himself ready to return at a moment's notice from the Council.
Meanwhile, the Federal fleet had engaged the Confederate flotilla—consisting of an incomplete iron-clad, a plated tow-boat ram, and eight or ten useless wooden shells—and after a desperate fight had driven them off only to be blown up, one by one, by their own commanders.
The water-batteries then offered no effective resistance. The obstructions had been opened to remove accumulated raft, and could not be closed; and the fleet moved slowly up to seize the rich prize that lay entirely within its grasp.
On the 26th April, the "Hartford" leading the van, it anchored off the city to find it hushed as death and wrapped in the eddying smoke-clouds from fifteen thousand burning bales of cotton. After the first burst of consternation, the people took heart; and even at the sight of the enemy's shipping did not lose all hope. There were no soldiers aboard; Butler's army could not dare the passage of the forts in the shells of transports that contained it; the fleet, cut off as it was from all re-enforcement and supply, could, at worst, only shell the city and retire—again running the gauntlets of the two forts; and then the only loss to the city—for the flotilla in its incomplete state could not have been made effective as a defense—would have been the cotton and the trifling damage done by the shells.
So the people hoped on. A long correspondence, coupled with reiterated threats of bombardment, ensued between Mayor Monroe and Admiral Farragut, relative to the State flag that still floated over the Custom House. Still the city was not in Federal power and there might yet be a chance.