Horace Greeley, The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860-65: its Causes, Incidents, and Results: Intended to exhibit especially its moral and political phases with the drift and progress of American opinion respecting human slavery from 1776 to the close of the War for the Union. Volume II.

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Mayor's Office, city of New Orleans, City Hall, April 20, 1862.
Flag-Officer D. G. Farragut, United States flag-ship Hartford:

Sir — In pursuance of a resolution which we thought proper to take, out of regard for the lives of the women and children who still crowd the metropolis, General Lovell has evacuated it with his troops, and restored back to me the administration of its government and the custody of its honor. I have, in council with the City Fathers, considered the demand you made of me yesterday of an unconditional surrender of the city, coupled with a requisition to hoist the flag of the United States on the public edifices, and haul down the flag that still floats upon the breeze from the dome of this Hall. It becomes my duty to transmit to you an answer which is the universal sentiment of my constituents no less than the promptings of my own heart on this sad and solemn occasion. The city is without the means of defense; and is utterly destitute of the force and material that might enable it to resist an overpowering armament displayed in sight of it.

I am no military man, and possess no authority beyond that of executing the municipal laws of the city of New Orleans. It would be presumptuous in me to attempt to lead an army in the field. if I had one at command; and I know still less how to surrender an undefended place, held, as this is, at the mercy of your gunners and your mortars. To surrender such a place were an idle and unmeaning ceremony. The city is yours by the power of brutal force, not by my choice or the consent of its inhabitants. It is for you to determine what will be the fate that awaits us here. As to hoisting any flag not of our own adoption and allegiance, let me say to you that the man lives not in our midst whose hand and heart would not be paralyzed at the mere thought of such an act; nor could I find in my entire constituency so desperate and wretched a renegade as would dare to profane with his hand the sacred emblem of our aspirations.

Sir, you have manifested sentiments which would become one engaged in a better cause than that to which you have devoted your sword. I doubt not that they spring from a noble though deluded nature: and I know how to appreciate the emotions which inspired them. You have a gallant people to administrate during your occupancy of this city — a people sensitive to all that can in the least affect their dignity and self-respect. Pray, Sir, do not fail to regard their susceptibilities. The obligations which I shall assume in their name shall be religiously complied with. You may trust their honor. though you might not count on their submission to unmerited wrong.

In conclusion, I beg you to understand that the people of New Orleans, while unable to resist your force, do not allow themselves to be insulted by the interference of such as have rendered themselves odious and contemptible by their dastardly desertion of our cause in the mighty struggle in which we are engaged, or such as might remind them too forcibly that they are the conquered and you the conquerors. Peace and order may be preserved without resort to measures which I could not at this moment prevent. Your occupying the city does not transfer allegiance from the government of their choice to one which they have deliberately repudiated; and they yield the obedience which the conqueror is entitled to extort from the conquered.

Respectfully,

John T. Monroe, Mayor.