This Hallowed Ground - Bruce Catton [80]
And then suddenly it was all over. Most of Farragut’s ships were above the forts, the Confederate gunboats had been sunk or driven ashore, and by daybreak the old admiral was anchoring his fleet halfway between the forts and the city, giving decent burial to his dead and making repairs to damaged hulls and rigging. The forts still held out, but they were dead ducks now, wholly cut off, their garrisons on the edge of mutiny with fatigue, battle-weariness, and a general sense of defeat; they would surrender presently and be occupied by Union troops, and New Orleans would surrender, too, as soon as the fleet got there, because with the forts and gunboats gone it had no means of defense.
Rain was coming down as Farragut’s ships came steaming up to the New Orleans levee. Onshore there were thousands of people, jeering and cursing and shouting impotent defiance at the Yankee ships; and on Hartford’s deck an old tar lounged negligently against a ponderous nine-inch gun, the lanyard in his hand, patting the side of the gun and smiling serenely at the yelling crowd.7 Officers came ashore, United States flags blossomed out over public buildings, and in a short time Breckinridge Democrat Butler would be on the scene with occupation forces. The victory was complete, city gone, forts gone, the two unfinished ironclads destroyed; and by the end of April the Confederacy owned no more of the Mississippi River than the stretch between Baton Rouge and Vicksburg.
So the war was looking up, in the spring of 1862. On the seacoast the navy was tightening its blockade. It owned deep-water harbors in South Carolina now as bases for its blockaders, the army had knocked Fort Pulaski to pieces at the mouth of the Savannah River, the North Carolina sounds were under almost complete Union control, and hopeful people in Washington were beginning to ask if Farragut could not simply go steaming on up the Mississippi and open the river singlehanded. (Not yet did they realize that running past a fort was not the same thing as destroying it.) The general idea set forth in Scott’s Anaconda Plan seemed to be working; perhaps if the armies got busy now victory might be very near.
This meant opportunity for generals; especially for Henry Wager Halleck, commander in the West.
Halleck had assembled a huge army near Pittsburg Landing: Grant’s army, Buell’s army, and the army with which Pope had been opening the upper Mississippi. He had come to the spot himself to take active field command — for the first and only time in the war — and he had given Grant a dubious sort of promotion, making him second-in-command of the united army and giving the troops Grant had been leading to George Thomas. Grant was finding that his job carried a fine title and prestige but no responsibility and little authority; for the time being he was on the shelf and he was bitterly dissatisfied.
Halleck may have been led to shelve him by the criticism that came down on Grant after Shiloh. Grant had won the battle, to be sure — or at any rate the battle had been won and he had been in command when it happened — but the fame he had won at Fort Donelson had been rubbed down a good deal.
The Confederates had hit him at Shiloh when he was not expecting it, and northern