terprising character. More suitable employment was, however, fast
approaching.

[Illustration: SCENE OF FARRAGUT'S OPERATIONS, 1862-1864.]

CHAPTER VII.

THE NEW ORLEANS EXPEDITION. 1862.

The necessity of controlling the Mississippi valley had been early
realized by the United States Government. In its hands the great stream
would become an impassable barrier between two large sections of the
Southern Confederacy; whereas in the possession of the latter it
remained a link binding together all the regions through which it
flowed, or which were penetrated by any of its numerous tributaries. The
extensive territory west of the river also produced a large part of the
provisions upon which depended the Southern armies, whose main field of
action was, nevertheless, on the eastern side. In a country habitually
so unprepared for war as is the United States, and where, of course,
such a contingency as an intestine struggle between the sections could
not have been provided for, there seemed room to hope that the national
forces might by rapid action seize the whole course of the river, before
the seceding States were able to take adequate measures for its defense.
The Government had the support of that part of the country which had
received the largest manufacturing development, and could, therefore,
most quickly prepare the material for war, in which both sides were
lamentably deficient; and, what was yet more important, it possessed in
the new navy built since 1855 an efficient weapon to which the South had
nothing to oppose. The hope was extravagant and doomed to
disappointment; for to overrun and hold so extensive a territory as the
immediate basin of the Mississippi required a development of force on
the one side and a degree of exhaustion on the other which could not be
reached so early in the war. The relative strengths, though unequal,
were not yet sufficiently disproportioned to enable the gigantic work to
be accomplished; and the principal result of an effort undertaken
without due consideration was to paralyze a large fraction of a navy too
small in numbers to afford the detachment which was paraded gallantly,
but uselessly, above New Orleans. Nor was this the worst; the time thus
consumed in marching up the hill in order at once to march down again
threw away the opportunity for reducing Mobile before its defenses were
strengthened. Had the navy been large enough, both tasks might have been
attempted;