North Carolina's turn soon came again, when she lost Roanoke Island (and with it the command of Albemarle Sound) on February 8, 1862; and when she also had Pamlico Sound shut against her by a joint expedition that struck down her defenses as far inland as Newbern on the fourteenth of March. Then came the turn of Georgia, where Fort Pulaski, the outpost of Savannah, fell to the Federals on the eleventh of April. Within another month Florida was even more hardly hit when the pressure of the Union fleet and army on Virginia compelled the South to use. as reinforcements the garrison that had held Pensacola since the beginning of the war.
These were all severe blows to the Southern cause. But they were nothing to the one which immediately followed.
The idea of an attack on New Orleans had been conceived in June, '61, by Commander (afterwards Admiral) D.D. Porter, of the U.S.S.
Powhatan, when he was helping to blockade the Mississippi. The Navy Department had begun thinking over the same idea in September and had worked out a definite scheme. New Orleans was of immense strategic importance, as being the link between the sea and river systems of the war. The mass of people and their politicians, on both sides, absurdly thought of New Orleans as the objective of a land invasion from the north. Happily for the Union cause, Gustavus Fox, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, knew better and persuaded his civilian chief, Gideon Welles, that this was work for a joint expedition, with the navy first, the army second. The navy could take New Orleans. The army would have to hold it.
The squadron destined for this enterprise was commanded by David Glasgow Farragut, who arrived at Ship Island on February 20, 1862, in the Hartford, the famous man-of-war that carried his flag in triumph to the end. Unlike Lee and Jackson, Grant and Sherman, the other four great leaders in the Civil War, Farragut was not an American whose ancestors on both sides had come from the British Isles. Like Lee, however, he was of very ancient lineage, one of his ancestors, Don Pedro Farragut, having held a high command under the King of Aragon in the Moorish wars of the thirteenth century. Farragut's father was a pure-blooded Spaniard, born under the British flag in Minorca in 1755. Half Spanish, half Southern by descent, Farragut was wholly Southern by family environment. His mother, Elizabeth Shine, was a native of North Carolina. He spent his early boyhood in New Orleans.
Both his first and second wives came from Virginia; and he made his home at Norfolk. On the outbreak of the war, however, he immediately went North and applied for employment with the Union fleet.
Farragut was the oldest of the five great leaders, being now sixty years of age, while Lee was fifty-five, Sherman forty-two, Grant forty, and Jackson thirty-eight. He was, however, fit as an athlete in training, able to turn a handspring on his birthday and to hold his own in swordsmanship against any of his officers.
Of middle height, strong build, and rather plain features, he did not attract attention in a crowd. But his alert and upright carriage, keenly interested look, and genial smile impressed all who ever knew him with a sense of native kindliness and power.
Though far too great a master of the art of war to interfere with his subordinates he always took care to understand their duties from their own points of view so that he could control every part of the complex naval instruments of war--human and material alike--with a sure and inspiring touch. His one weakness as a leader was his generous inclination to give subordinates the chance of distinguishing themselves when they could have done more useful service in a less conspicuous position.
Farragut's base at Ship Island was about a hundred miles east from the Confederate Forts Jackson and St. Philip. These forts guarded the entrance to the Mississippi. Ninety miles above them stood New Orleans, to which they gave protection and from which they drew all their supplies. The result of a conference at Washington was an order from Welles to "reduce the defenses which guard the approaches to New Orleans." But Farragut's own infinitely better plan was to run past the forts and take New Orleans first. By doing this he would save the extra loss required for reducing the forts and would take the weak defenses of New Orleans entirely by surprise. Then, when New Orleans fell, the forts, cut off from all supplies, would have to surrender without the firing of another shot. Everything depended on whether Farragut could run past without too much loss. Profoundly versed in all the factors of the problem, he foresaw that his solution would prove right, while Washington's would as certainly be wrong. So, taking the utmost advantage of all the ******* that his general instructions allowed, he followed a course in which anything short of complete success would mean the ruin of his whole career.
The forts were strong, had ninety guns that would bear once fleet, and were well placed, one on each side of the river. But they suffered from all the disadvantages of fixed defenses opposed by a mobile enemy, and their own mobile auxiliaries were far from being satisfactory. The best of the "River Defense Fleet," including several rams, had been ordered up to Memphis, so sure was the Confederate Government that the attack would come from the north. Two home-made ironclads were failures. The Louisiana's engines were not ready in time; and her captain refused to be towed into the position near the boom where he could do the enemy most harm. The Mississippi, a mere floating house, built by ordinary carpenters, never reached the forts at all and was burnt by her own men at New Orleans.