g of the
7th, started from Donaldsonville with the _Essex, Kineo_, and
_Tennessee_ in company, ran the gauntlet of the batteries, swept
and silenced them with his broadsides, and endured for nearly two
hours a brisk musketry fire from the enemy without serious loss
suffered or inflicted. At half-past one o'clock on the morning of
the 10th of July, the gunboat _New London_, bearing Captain Walker,
Assistant Adjutant-General, with a despatch announcing the surrender
of Port Hudson, came under the fire of Faries's battery, opposite
Whitehall. She was very soon disabled by a shot through her boilers,
and was run ashore near the left bank, where the _Tennessee_ and
the _Essex_ came to her assistance from below. Landing on the east
bank, Captain Walker made his way afoot down the river along the
levee until he came in sight of the _Monongahela_, when, at six
o'clock in the morning, his signals being perceived, he was taken
aboard in one of the ship's boats and communicated to the admiral
the good news that the campaign was at an end. To dispose of Taylor
could be but a matter of a few days; then once more, in the words
of Lincoln, would the great river flow "unvexed to the sea."

Taylor's plans were well laid, and had been brilliantly executed.
In no other way, with the force at his disposal, could he have
performed a greater service for his cause. Save the severe yet
not material check at Donaldsonville, he had had everything his
own way: he had overrun La Fourche; his guns commanded the river;
his outposts were within twenty miles of the city; he even talked
of capturing New Orleans, but this, in the teeth of an alert and
powerful fleet, was at best but a midsummer fancy.

In New Orleans, indeed, great was the excitement when it became
known that the Confederate forces were so near. In Taylor's army
were the friends, the brothers, the lovers, the husbands, even the
fathers of the inhabitants. In the town were many thousands of
registered enemies, and of paroled Confederate prisoners of all
ranks. At one time there were no Union troops in the city, save
a detachment of the 42d Massachusetts, barely two hundred and fifty
strong. But the illness that had deprived Emory's division of its
leader in the field had given to New Orleans a commander of a
courage and firmness that now, as always, rose with the approach
of danger, with whom difficulties diminished as they drew near,
and whose character had earned the respe