At last the fleet fought through and reached the clearer atmosphere above the forts; all but the last three gunboats, which were driven back by the fire. Then Farragut immediately sent word to General Benjamin F. Butler that the troops could be brought up by the bayous that ran parallel to the river out of range of the forts. But the General, having taken in the situation at a glance from a transport just below the scene of action, had begun to collect his men at Sable Island, twelve miles behind Fort St. Philip, long before Farragut's messenger could reach him by way of the Quarantine Bayou. From Sable Island the troops were taken by the transports to a point on the Mississippi five miles above Fort St. Philip.
After a well-earned rest the whole fleet moved up to New Orleans on the twenty-fifth, turning the city's lines five miles downstream without the loss of a man, for the simple reason that these had been built only to resist an army, and so lay with flanks entirely open to a fleet. General Lovell (the able commander who had so often warned the Confederate Government of the danger from the sea) at once evacuated the defenseless city. The best of the younger men were away with the armies. The best of the older men were too few for the storm. And so pandemonium broke loose. Burning boats, blazing cotton, and a howling mob greeted Farragut's arrival. But after the forts (now completely cut off from their base) had surrendered on the twenty-eighth a landing party from the fleet soon brought the mob to its senses by planting howitzers in the streets and lowering the Confederate colors over the city hall. On the first of May a garrison of Federal troops took charge of New Orleans and kept it till the war was over.
New Orleans was a most pregnant Federal victory; for it established a Union base at the great strategic point where sea-power and land-power could meet most effectively in Mississippi waters.
But it was followed by a perfect anti-climax; for the Federal Government, having planned a naval concentration at Vicksburg, determined to put the plan in operation; though all the naval and military means concerned made such a plan impossible of execution in 1862. Amphibious forces—fleets and armies combined—were essential. There was no use in parading up and down the river, however triumphantly, so long as the force employed could only hold the part of the channel within actual range of its guns. The Confederates could be driven off the Mississippi at any given point. But there was nothing to prevent them from coming back again when once the ships had passed. An army to seize and hold strategic points ashore was absolutely indispensable. Then, and only then, Farragut's long line of communication with his base at New Orleans would be safe, and the land in which the Mississippi was the principal highway could itself be conquered.
"If the Mississippi expedition from Cairo shall not have descended the river, you will take advantage of the panic to push a strong force up the river to take all their defenses in rear." These were the orders Farragut had to obey if he succeeded in taking New Orleans. They were soon reinforced by this reminder: "The only anxiety we feel is to know if you have followed up your instructions and pushed a strong force up the river to meet the Western flotilla." Farragut therefore felt bound to obey and do all that could be done to carry on a quite impossible campaign. So, with a useless landing party of only fifteen hundred troops, he pushed up to Vicksburg, four hundred miles above New Orleans. The nearest Federal army had been halted by the Confederate defenses above Memphis, another four hundred higher still.
There were several reasons why Farragut should not have gone up. His big ships would certainly be stranded if he went up and waited for the army to come down; moreover, when stranded, these ships would be captured while waiting, because both banks were swarming with vastly outnumbering Confederate troops. Then, such a disaster would more than offset the triumph of New Orleans by still further depressing Federal morale at a time when the Federal arms were doing none too well near Washington. Finally, all the force that was being worse than wasted up the Mississippi might have been turned against Mobile, which, at that time, was much weaker than the defenses Farragut had already overcome. But the people of the North were clamorous for more victories along the line to which the press had drawn their gaze. So the Government ordered the fleet to carry on this impossible campaign.
Farragut did his best. Within a month of passing the forts he had not only captured New Orleans and repaired the many serious damages suffered by his fleet but had captured Baton Rouge, and taken even his biggest ships to Vicksburg, five hundred miles from the Gulf, against a continuous current, and right through the heart of a hostile land. Finding that there were thirty thousand Confederates in, near, or within a day of Vicksburg he and General Thomas Williams agreed that nothing could be done with the fifteen hundred troops which formed the only landing party. Sickness and casualties had reduced the ships' companies; so there were not even a few seamen to spare as reinforcements for these fifteen hundred soldiers, whom Butler had sent, under Williams, with the fleet. Then Farragut turned back, his stores running dangerously short owing to the enormous difficulties of keeping open his long, precarious line of communications. "I arrived in New Orleans with five or six days' provisions and one anchor, and am now trying to procure others.... Fighting is nothing to the evils of the river—getting on shore, running foul of one another, losing anchors, etc." In a confidential letter home he is still more outspoken. "They will keep us in this river till the vessels break down and all the little reputation we have made has evaporated. The Government appears to think that we can do anything. They expect me to navigate the Mississippi nine hundred miles in the face of batteries, ironclad rams, etc.; and yet with all the ironclad vessels they have North they could not get to Norfolk or Richmond."
Back from Washington came still more urgent orders to join the Mississippi flotilla which was coming down to Vicksburg from the north under Flag Officer Charles H. Davis. So once more the fleet worked its laboriously wasteful way up to Vicksburg, where it passed the forts with the help of Porter's flotilla of mortar-boats on the twenty-eighth of June and joined Davis on the first of July. There, in useless danger, the joint forces lay till the fifteenth, the day on which Grant's own "most anxious period of the war" began on the Memphis-Corinth line, four hundred miles above.
Farragut, getting very anxious about the shoaling of the water, was then preparing to run down when he heard firing in the Yazoo, a tributary that joined the Mississippi four miles higher up. This came from a fight between one of his reconnoitering gunboats, the Carondelet, and the Arkansas, an ironclad Confederate ram that would have been very dangerous indeed if her miserable engines had been able to give her any speed. She was beating the Carondelet, but getting her smoke-stack so badly holed that her speed dropped down to one knot, which scarcely gave her steerage way and made her unable to ram. Firing hard she ran the gauntlet of both fleets and took refuge under the Vicksburg bluffs, whence she might run out and ram the Union vessels below. Farragut therefore ran down himself, hoping to smash her by successive broadsides in passing. But the difficulties of the passage wasted the daylight, so that he had to run by at night. She therefore survived his attack, and went downstream to join the Confederates against Baton Rouge. But her engines gave way before she got there; and she had to be blown up.
Farragut was back at New Orleans before the end of July. On the fifth of August the Confederates made their attack on Baton Rouge; but were beaten back by the Union garrison aided by three of Farragut's gunboats and two larger vessels from Davis's command. The losses were not very severe on either side; but the Union lost a leader of really magnificent promise in its commanding general, Thomas Williams, a great-hearted, cool-headed man and most accomplished officer. The garrison of Baton Rouge, being too small and sickly and exposed, was withdrawn to New Orleans a few days later.