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| Louisiana Zouave. |
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ground. At a little past two o'clock in the afternoon, while sitting on the base of the unfinished monument commemorative of the conflict, making a drawing of the plain of Chalmette, where it occurred, we heard seven discharges of heavy guns at the city — the number of the States in the Confederacy.
“Fort Sumter is doubtless gone,” I said to my companion.
It was so. The news had reached the city at that hour, and under the direction of Hatch, the disloyal Collector of the port of New Orleans,1 the guns of the McClelland, which the insurgents had seized, were fired in honor of the event.
On our return to the city, at five o'clock in the evening, we found it alive with excitement.
The Washington Artillery were just marching by the statue of Henry Clay, on Canal Street, and members of many other corps, some of them in the brilliant and picturesque Zouave uniform, were hurrying, singly or in squads, to their respective places of rendezvous.
The cry in all that region then was: “On to Fort Pickens!”
The seizure of that stronghold was of infinite importance to the insurgents; and to that end the conspirators at Montgomery called the military power of the Confederacy to hasten to Pensacola before Fort Pickens should be re-enforced.
The next day was Sunday.
The bulletin-boards were covered with the most exciting telegraphic placards early in the morning.
Among others seen on that of the Delta, was one purporting to be a copy of a dispatch from Richmond, saying substantially that “Ben. McCulloch, with ten thousand men, was marching on
Washington!”
I had seen the chief editor of the Delta with McCulloch on the previous evening.
Another declared that General Scott had resigned, and had offered his services to his native State, Virginia.
Many similar misrepresentations were posted, calculated to inspire the people with hope and enthusiasm and to promote enlistments, while they justified the charge of the Union men, that those pretended dispatches, and a host of others, originated in New Orleans.
Around the bulletin-boards were exultant crowds, sometimes huzzaing loudly; and at the usual hour for Divine Service, the solemn music of the church bells tolling was mingled with the lively melody of the fife and drum.2 Many citizens were seen wearing the secession rosette and badge; and small secession flags fluttered from many a window.
The banner of the so-called Southern Confederacy--the “Stars and bars” 3--was
1 See page 185.
2 A sturdy old negro, named Jordan Noble, celebrated in New Orleans as a drummer at the battle near there in January, 1815, and who went as such to Mexico under General Taylor, was now drumming for the volunteers. He accompanied New Orleans troops to Virginia, and was at the first battle of Bull's Run.
3 See page 256. “We protest against the word ‘ stripes,’ as applied to the broad bars of the flag of our Confederacy. The word is quite appropriate as applied to the Yankee ensign or a barber's pole; but it does not correctly describe the red and white divisions of the flag of the Confederate States. The word is bars--we have removed from under the stripes.” --Montgomery Mail, March, 1861.
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