It was a few minutes after noon when the citizens of New Orleans could make out the tops of the masts of the larger enemy ships above the tree line of Slaughter Point. A great cry of anguish arose as the first of the ships came into view. It was the swift gunboat Cayuga, with the Stars and Stripes proudly snapping in the breeze.
From the deck of the Hartford, Flag Officer Farragut looked out on a “scene of desolation, ships, steamers, cotton, coal, etc., were all in one common blaze.” He later wrote to his wife and son that he had never witnessed such vandalism as the destruction of property he saw at New Orleans. A dark cloud of smoke covered the river and most of the city, undiminished by a drizzling rain that had begun a few minutes earlier.
In a dramatic moment that struck even deeper into the hearts of those watching from the shore, the ironclad Mississippi, that great hope of the people and the government for New Orleans’s defense, suddenly appeared in the river above the city. She was moving at a rapid pace and almost drew a cheer from the crowds before they noticed the flames and smoke pouring from her gun ports. The giant ironclad floated harmlessly past the Union ships as they dropped. Unable to move her north to safety, Commander Sinclair had ordered her put to the torch.
As the angry crowds shouted and jeered the ships, some waving rifles stolen from government stores, Farragut issued an order that at eleven the following morning, the officers and men of his fleet “would return thanks to Almighty God for His great goodness and mercy in permitting us to pass through the events of the last two days with so little loss of life and blood.”
Within an hour of dropping anchor, Farragut sent Captain Bailey, along with Lieutenant Perkins of the Cayuga, to demand the surrender of the city. The two were taken ashore in one of the steamer’s oar boats, landing at the wharf normally reserved for the river packet that in peaceful times traveled north to Memphis. When the two naval officers disembarked, they were greeted by a jeering, threatening mob. Shouts of “Hang them!” “Hurrah for Jeff Davis!” “Shoot them!” “Kill them!” roared from the crowd, where it appeared every third hand waved a weapon. Large and small Confederate flags were waved in their faces, as were cocked pistols. Bailey asked directions to City Hall, but no one would respond until one man finally recognized the fruitlessness of keeping the two officers on the wharf, and gave them directions.
As Bailey and Perkins began their fateful walk toward City Hall, “the mob followed us in a very excited state,” Perkins later wrote. “They gave three cheers for Jeff Davis and Beauregard, and three groans for Lincoln. Then they began to throw things at us, and shout: ‘Hang them! Hang them! Hang them!’”
A young New Orleans citizen, George Washington Cable, later described the scene. “Two officers of the United States Navy were walking abreast, unguarded and alone, not looking to the right or left, never frowning, never flinching, while the mob screamed in their ears, brandished pistols in their faces, cursed, crowded, and gnashed upon them. So through the gates of death those two men walked to the City Hall to demand the town’s surrender. It was one of the bravest deeds I ever saw done.”
Finally arriving at City Hall, Bailey and Perkins found Mayor Monroe and a group of New Orleans’s most influential and powerful citizens assembled in the Common Council meeting room. On being introduced to the mayor, Bailey informed him, “I have been sent by Captain Farragut, commanding the United States fleet, to demand the surrender of the city, and the elevation of the flag of the United States over the Customs House, Mint, Post Office, and City Hall.”
There was some brief quibbling over Bailey’s credentials, to which the naval officer responded by listing the fleet’s victories as it steamed upriver to the city. Bailey said this string of victories provided all the credentials he required. Monroe was less than satisfied by Bailey’s response but saw that it was all he was going to get. He explained that the city was, and had been for some time, under martial law, and that therefore he did not have the legal authority to surrender the city. Instead, he asked the two officers to wait while he sent a messenger to General Lovell, asking him to join them. During the half hour it took for Lovell to arrive, Bailey commented on the destruction he had witnessed after arriving in the city, regretting that it had taken place. Monroe’s sullen reply was that it was no one’s business other than that of the people of New Orleans.
Outside the building, the mob had grown in both size and ferocity. Some even displayed their anger by kicking at the locked door of the council room itself. Suddenly a loud cheer arose, followed by the clatter of horses’ hooves on the pavement, announcing the arrival of General Lovell. The general entered the room and shook hands with Bailey and Perkins. Captain Bailey restated Flag Officer Farragut’s demand for the city’s surrender. Lovell told Bailey he would not surrender, and went on to explain that he had withdrawn his troops from the city. Then, with a bit more grandiosity than the occasion called for, he declared that if the Union navy wished to shell a city filled with women and children, he could not prevent them. Bailey responded that Farragut had no intention of doing such a thing, that he expected the city to be surrendered peacefully. Lovell stated that he felt the withdrawal of his troops returned control of the city to the civilian officials, leaving him without the authority to surrender it to Farragut. No one, it seemed, wanted to be responsible for the surrender of New Orleans.
Upset over the evasiveness of both the mayor and the general, Captain Bailey realized there was little more he could accomplish. He asked Lovell if he could arrange a safe passage for himself and Lieutenant Perkins since the mob outside appeared more violent than ever. Lovell, who soon after departed the city himself to catch the last troop train to Jackson, Mississippi, said he would. Two Confederate Army officers who had accompanied General Lovell slipped the Union naval officers out through a rear door and returned them by closed coach to the wharf where their boat was waiting. Upon arriving at the wharf, the two army officers had to draw their swords to force a way through the throng that had remained to hurl abuse on the Union sailors who were waiting with their boat for Bailey’s return. Bailey shook hands with both men and thanked them for their help. As jeers and threats were flung at them, Bailey and Perkins boarded the small boat and returned to the fleet.
Bailey reported what had happened to Farragut, who sent several of the civilian river steamboats that had escaped the torches of the mobs to Quarantine Point to pick up General Butler and his troops to prepare for the inevitable occupation of New Orleans. Farragut decided to give the city officials some time in which to come to terms with their fate. During the early evening, the side-wheeler Mississippi moved in close to the city, and its band struck up “The Star-Spangled Banner.” A group of mostly women and children standing near the wharf waved and cheered as the music filled the still evening air. Suddenly a group of mounted men appeared from behind some warehouses and rode down on them, firing wildly into the crowd. The Richmond, anchored nearby, recorded the incident in its log, stating that the ship’s officers had considered firing a volley of grape at the horsemen, but decided against it for fear of the innocent lives it might take.
As night closed in on the fleet, with fires still burning at various places along both shores, Farragut issued orders that each ship’s armory be opened, and that every man be given a cutlass and a revolver to fight off anyone attempting to board. The afternoon newspapers had carried announcements calling for volunteers to band together and board the enemy ships in the river during the night “to save our homes and families from destruction and the tyrannical rule of the Northern vandals.” Because most of the young and strong men of the city were already off somewhere else fighting in the Confederate Army, few responded to the call, and the plan was aborted. There were no recorded attempts to board any of the Union vessels.
Early the next morning, a rowboat approached the Hartford, with a messenger from Mayor Monroe. The man turned out to be an old friend of Farragut, Marion A. Baker, whom he greeted warmly. Baker brought word that the Common Council wou
ld consider his surrender demand at a meeting set for ten o’clock that morning. Secure in the knowledge that he was master of the situation, Farragut agreed to wait for the council meeting. With New Orleans almost completely surrounded by water and virtually impassable swamps, Farragut knew the city was his to take at any time. Lacking enough armed men to secure what he could take, he had little choice but to wait for the city officials to surrender, or for General Butler’s troops to arrive to force the capitulation. The city was incapable of holding out against the combined power of the fleet and Butler’s army. The destruction caused by the mobs had reduced its food supplies to a few days’ worth, and the only nearby potential military threat was rushing away on the railroad line to Jackson, Mississippi. The officials in New Orleans might continue trying to avoid responsibility for the city’s surrender, but it was only a matter of a short time before they had no choice but to capitulate. Because he was a patient man who had no desire to destroy New Orleans through a naval bombardment, Farragut would wait.
Farragut’s assessment of the situation in the city was correct. No one of any position wanted to be branded forever as the man who had surrendered New Orleans to the enemy. Mayor Monroe asked the Common Council for its advice. He told the council members that in his opinion he lacked the power “to perform a military act such as surrender of the city to a hostile force.” His position was that the city was incapable of mounting any resistance to the enemy’s occupation and could only yield to the superior strength of the fleet, but that it be made clear to Farragut “that we maintain our allegiance to the Government of the Confederate States.”
When Marion Baker departed the Hartford, he brought back with him the first of what became a series of communications between Flag Officer Farragut and Mayor Monroe. After briefly recounting the meeting between Bailey and Monroe, Farragut explained his position and his demands: “It must occur to your honor that it is not within the province of a naval officer to assume the duties of a military commandant. I came here to reduce New Orleans to obedience to the laws of, and to vindicate the offended majesty of the Government of, the United States. The rights of persons and property shall be secure. I therefore demand of you, as its representative, the unqualified surrender of the city, and that the emblem of sovereignty of the United States be hoisted over the City Hall, Mint, and Custom House by meridian this day, and that all flags and other emblems of sovereignty other than those of the United States shall be removed from all the public buildings by that hour.”
Farragut then placed the onus of responsibility for controlling the populace squarely on the mayor’s shoulders. “I particularly request that you shall exercise your authority to quell disturbances, restore order, and call upon all the good people of New Orleans to return at once to their vocations; and I particularly demand that no persons shall be molested in person or property for professing sentiments of loyalty to their Government. I shall speedily and severely punish any person or persons who shall commit such outrages as were witnessed yesterday - armed men firing upon helpless women and children for giving expression to their pleasure at witnessing the old flag.”
In this first written communication between the two, Farragut made it clear that as long as his fleet had the power to prevent it, “no flag but that of the United States” would be allowed to fly in its presence. Since doing so could result in bloodshed, he asked Monroe to give this order the widest possible circulation among the population of the city.
Later that morning, just before the scheduled meeting of the Common Council, Farragut sent another message to the city’s leaders. This time it was delivered by Lieutenant Albert Kautz and Midshipman John Read. The two were accompanied by a squad of marines. When the party landed, they were greeted by an angry mob similar to the one that had threatened Bailey and Perkins. The presence of the heavily armed marines aroused the rabble that had been hanging around the wharf yelling insults at the Union ships anchored in the river. A member of the City Guard, which the mayor had deputized in an attempt to bring order to his streets, persuaded Kautz to leave all but one marine behind, and proceed to the City Hall under his protection with a flag of truce. The naval officer followed his advice and delivered Farragut’s letter. In it the flag officer restated his demand that all flags be removed from public buildings, and be replaced by the flag of the United States.
Following the Common Council’s meeting on the morning of April 26, Mayor Monroe sent Farragut a long, rambling response to his earlier communiqués. He told Farragut that General Lovell had returned control of the city to civilian authorities, that the city had no military means to defend itself from the enemy’s ships, and that he possessed no authority to either defend or surrender New Orleans. “To surrender such a place (the undefended city) were an idle and unmeaning ceremony,” wrote Monroe. “The city is yours by the power of brutal force, and not by any choice or consent of its inhabitants.” Monroe must have recognized that without troops in sufficient quantity, Farragut was unable to take actual possession of the city. Until those troops arrived, he would continue to be not uncooperative, but certainly less than completely cooperative with the enemy commander.
As to the matter of raising the U.S. flag on public buildings, Monroe used less deception to camouflage his position when he wrote, “the man lives not in our midst whose hand and heart would not be palsied at the mere thought of such an act, nor could I find in my entire constituency so wretched and desperate a renegade as would dare to profane with his hand the sacred emblem of our aspirations [i.e., the Confederate flag].”
Farragut was a patient man, and he recognized following the first communication with the city’s mayor that local officials were going to take whatever actions they could to delay the Union occupation. For his part, the naval officer could do little other than bombard the city from his ships, something he was loath to do. He did not have enough men, either sailors or marines, to invade and occupy the city; that was a job for thousands of well-armed troops. The Union commander had no reliable intelligence concerning the presence of Confederate or state troops, other than the word of General Lovell that he had withdrawn those under his command. Obviously, from the experience of his envoys, the people - at least those thronging the waterfront and nearby streets each day - were armed and likely to retaliate should he attempt to put numbers of armed men ashore. New Orleans was his, but until the city’s officials surrendered and ordered its populace not to engage in any resistance, he could do little but wait for General Butler’s troops to arrive.
Unable to take more concerted action against the city and its recalcitrant officials, Farragut decided the time had come for him to let them know the United States government was now in de facto control of New Orleans, whether they cooperated with him or continued on their unproductive path. He instructed Captain Morris of the Pensacola to take two boatloads of his marines into the city, take possession of the U.S. Mint located there, and hoist the United States flag from the building’s rooftop flagpole. Ignoring the howling mob, Morris and his well-armed marines accomplished their task with little real difficulty and returned to their ship. Farragut knew that was the easier part of showing that the city now belonged to the national government; it would be much more difficult to keep the flag flying.
Without enough armed men to guard the building and protect its flag, Farragut was forced to leave the emblem of the nation for which he fought to its fate. He did, however, station several sharpshooters and two howitzers in positions aboard the Pensacola so they could fire on anyone attempting to lower the flag.
Shortly before noon, as the crews of the Federal fleet took part in the prayerful services decreed by Farragut, they were suddenly jolted by the firing of one of those howitzers. A party of men had made its way to the roof of the mint building and were lowering the U.S. flag from its staff. The guard fired the gun at them with a load of grape, but the distance and the speed of the rebels resulted in no one being killed or wounded. The flag was brought into the street, where the f
renzied mob tore it to shreds. The leader of the party was a local gambler and rabble-rouser named William Mumford. Following the occupation of the city by Union forces, General Butler would order Mumford arrested for his crime. In June, he was executed as an example to others who continued to voice their Confederate sentiments. To ensure that no one failed to understand what Mumford’s crime was, Butler ordered him hanged from a window of the same mint building from which he had torn down the United States flag. Thousands watched in helpless frustration as the execution took place. It was one of several incidents that led to Butler being called “the Beast of New Orleans.”
His patience running out, Farragut decided to take additional action to further weaken the Confederacy’s hold on New Orleans and the Mississippi River. He was getting bored waiting either for the city to capitulate, or the army troops to arrive to allow him to silence the arrogant Mayor Monroe. He was anxious to return civility to the streets of the city in which he had spent his own childhood. Fortunately, the situation in the city was improving. Monroe had turned to the European Brigade, composed of New Orleans residents who were citizens of France, Spain, Germany, Italy, and Portugal, for help. He requested its commanding officer, Brigadier General Paul Juge, Jr., to order the brigade to patrol the city’s streets in an effort to reduce the lawlessness that had been running rampant. A 9:00 p.m. curfew was put into effect, and strictly enforced by Juge’s gaudily uniformed soldiers.
Late that afternoon, April 26, Farragut sailed up the river with intentions to attack and destroy the Confederate batteries at Carrollton, located about eight miles north of New Orleans. Accompanying the Hartford were the Richmond, the Pensacola, the Brooklyn, and the Oneida. Arriving there prepared for battle, the flag officer found the long line of earthworks deserted, and the battery’s cannons spiked by the withdrawing Confederate soldiers, who lacked transport sufficient to take their guns with them.
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