April the sixth, the fleet reenforced succeeded in slipping past the
batteries in a heavy fog. A landing was effected above and below the
island in large force, and its surrender was a military necessity.

Foote and Pope captured MacKall, the commander, two brigadier generals,
six colonels, a stand of ten thousand arms, two thousand soldiers,
seventy pieces of siege artillery, thirty pieces of field artillery,
fifty-six thousand solid shot, six transports and a floating battery of
sixteen guns.

A cry of anguish came from the heart of the Confederate President. The
loss of men was insignificant--the loss of this enormous store of heavy
guns and ammunition with no factory as yet capable of manufacturing them
was irreparable.

But the cup of his misery was not yet full. The greatest fleet the
United States Navy had gathered, was circling the mouth of the
Mississippi with its guns pointing toward New Orleans. Gideon Welles had
selected for command of this important enterprise the man of destiny,
Davis Glasgow Farragut, a Southerner whose loyalty to the Union had
never been questioned.

Eighty-two ships answered Farragut's orders in his West Gulf squadron at
their rendezvous. His ships were wood, but no braver men ever walked the
decks of a floating battery.

In March he managed to crawl across the bar and push his fleet into the
mouth of the Mississippi. The _Colorado_ was too deep and was left
outside. The _Pensacola_ and the _Mississippi_ he succeeded in
dragging through the mud.

His ships inside, the Commander ordered them stripped for the death
grapple.

New Orleans had been from the first considered absolutely impregnable to
attack from the sea. Forts Jackson and St. Phillip, twenty miles below
the city, were each fortifications of the first rank mounting powerful
guns which swept the narrow channel of the river from shore to shore.

The use of steam, however, in naval warfare was as yet an untried
element of force in the attacking fleet against shore batteries. That
steam in wooden vessels could overcome the enormous advantage of the
solidity and power of shore guns had been considered preposterous by
military experts.

Jefferson Davis had utilized every shipbuilder in New Orleans to hastily
construct the beginnings of a Southern navy. Two powerful iron-clad
gunboats, _Louisiana_ and _Mississippi_, were under way but not ready
for service. Eight small vessels had been bought and armed.

To secure the c