...is army, and take possession of New Orleans. More than 20,000 soldiers were set in motion (Sept. 27, 1861) southward (5,000 of them cavalry), under the respective commands of Generals Hunter, Pope, Sigel , McKinstry, and Asboth, accompanied by eighty-six heavy guns. These were moving southward early in October; and on the 11th, when his army was 30,000 strong, he wrote to the government: My plan is,...