CLASH OF ARMIES 1862BEFORE
New Orleans had seen rapid expansion of
trade and growing prosperity in the years
leading up to the Civil War. It also occupied
a vital strategic location on the Mississippi.
MULTIPLE UNION THREATS
Despite its importance to the Confederacy,
New Orleans had reduced its defenses
because of the Union threat to the north in
Tennessee, where General Ulysses S. Grant
was advancing on forts Henry and
Donelson ❮❮ 104–105. Both land and
naval forces had been dispatched northward,
including eight ships of the River Defense Fleet.
SEABORNE LANDINGS
Union experience of amphibious warfare early
in the war led it to believe that New Orleans
could be taken by a seaborne operation. Both
at Hatteras Inlet, North Carolina, in August 1861,
and the following November at Port Royal, South
Carolina, Union warships showed they could
subdue coastal forts with naval gunfire. This
suggested that the river forts defending access to
New Orleans might be overcome with a naval
attack supported by troop landings. Both
these previous operations had strengthened the
Union blockade of the South’s ports ❮❮ 72–73.
The Fall of New Orleans
The Confederates suffered a major setback when New Orleans fell to Union forces in April 1862.
It happened after a bold nighttime naval operation in which Union warships commanded by David
Farragut forced a passage past the guns of Confederate forts Jackson and St. Philip.
U
nion plans for an attack on New
Orleans began in the winter of
1861–62. Initial estimates called
for up to 50,000 Union troops. However,
by February 1862, the main role had
passed to the Union navy’s West Coast
Blockading Squadron under Captain
David Farragut.
Farragut chose to plan a purely naval
operation to breach New Orleans’ only
serious defenses, forts Jackson and St.
Philip. Sited on opposite sides of the
Mississippi around 75 miles (120km)
south of New Orleans, the forts held an
estimated 126 guns. Conventional
wisdom believed that warships trying to
pass them would be blown out of thewater. The Union squadron would also
have to take on assorted ironclads and
“cottonclads”—ships with cotton bales
attached as a form of armor. In March,
Farragut moved 17 ships past the initial
obstacle: the
sandbars that lay
at the mouth of
the Mississippi.
Farragut’s squadron
included his
flagship USS
Hartford, and some mortar schooners
for land bombardments. He then took
a month to complete his preparations.
The Confederate forts were scouted,
as was the chain of sunken hulks,
stretching from bank to bank, intended
to block passage up the river.
The bombardment began on April 18.
Thousands of shells rained down on the
forts, but the effects were minimal.Return fire from the forts was equally
ineffectual. Farragut, who had never
placed much faith in the mortars, soon
determined to proceed with his favored
plan of forcing a passage upriver. A raid
by his gunboats
succeeded in
opening up a
navigable passage
through the chain.
At around 2 a.m.
on April 24, the
Union ships steamed upriver to the
chain under cover of darkness. They
were formed in three divisions, with
Farragut commanding the center.
Most had passed through the gap in
the chain when, at 3:40 a.m., the moon
rose, revealing them to the enemy, who
unleashed a storm of fire from the forts’
guns. As Farragut’s ships fired back and
the mortar schooners joined in, theBefore the engagement
En route to New Orleans, the crew of a Federal
mortar schooner is pictured on deck with the ship’s
formidable 25,000lb (11,340kg) gun.The population
of New Orleans
according to the 1850 census. This made the
city the sixth largest in the United States
and by far the largest in the Confederacy.168,675