Chapter 11: military operations.
- What was ordered -- Mobile of no consequence -- Baton Rouge seized -- Farragut and Williams advance upon Vicksburg -- Halleck asked for aid -- he refuses -- some strictures on his conduct -- digging the Canal at Vicksburg -- fall in the River -- French vessel before New Orleans -- an international episode: France to recognize the Confederacy, liberate New Orleans, be given Texas and capture Mexico -- Butler meets the emergency -- the forts strengthened -- justification found for firing on a French flat -- the loyal and disloyal citizens put on record -- all arms ordered given up -- Porter's bombardment of Vicksburg -- battle of Baton Rouge -- Admiral Porter's brother -- “lying is a family Vice ” -- General Phelps' resignation -- General strong at Pontchatoula -- Louis Napoleon again -- Admiral Reynaud at New Orleans -- negro regiments organized -- Weitzel's expedition -- his objection to negro soldiers answered -- Twelfth Maine at Manchac pass
The question must have arisen in the mind of the reader, in poring over the administration of these many civil affairs: Were military operations delayed while these things were being done? By no means. Farragut and myself were ordered to do two things, if we could; first, to open the Mississippi River; second, to capture Mobile. Now, the capture of Mobile was of no earthly military consequence to anybody. It was like the attempted capture of Savannah, Port Royal, Fernandina, Brunswick, and Charleston, in which places the lives of so many good men were sacrificed. These places could all have been held by a few vessels under the command of vigilant, energetic, and ambitious young naval officers. The absolute inability of the Confederacy to have a navy or any force on the sea, ought to have suggested to us a militia navy for coast protection and defence. Then there could have been an early concentration of our troops into large armies for the purpose of instruction and discipline; and as almost every part of the Confederacy was penetrable to a greater or less degree by means of rivers, our armies should have marched by water to a very much greater extent than they did. Now, the great water communication of the whole West, through the Mississippi, was to be opened to the sea at all hazards. New Orleans was now invincible to any land force so long as our navy occupied the river and Lake Pontchartrain, and so long as the city was held by five thousand men who had nothing else to do. A single ten-gun sloop off Manchac Pass rendered it impossible for the city to
