fervor, that the enemy should perform, without interruption, the ceremony of surrender for himself in taking down the flags flying over all the public buildings of the city. A correspondence ensued between the mayor and the flag-officer of the enemy's fleet. The correspondence was certainly of very unnecessary length on the part of the mayor, and was travestied in the Northern newspapers as a controversy between "Farrago and Farragut." But the sentiments of the mayor, although tedious and full of vain repetitions, were just and honorable. He declared, with explanations that were not necessary to be given to the enemy, and at a length that showed rather too much the vanity of literary style, that the citizens of New Orleans yielded to physical force alone, and that they maintained their allegiance to the government of the Confederate States.

On the morning of the 26th of April, a force landed from the sloop-of-war Pensacola, lying opposite Esplanade-street and hoisted a United States flag upon the mint. It had not remained there long before some young men, belonging to the Pinckney battalion, mounted to the dome of the mint, tore it down and. dragged it through the streets.

Whether Flag-officer Farragut was exasperated or not by this circumstance, is not known; but he seemed to have determined to spare no mortification to the city, which its civil officers had already assured him was unprepared to resist him, and to hesitate at no misrepresentation in order to vilify its citizens. In one of his letters to the mayor, he had sought to publish the fact to the world, that helpless men, women, and children had been fired upon by the citizens of New Orleans "for giving expression to their pleasure at witnessing the old flag;" when the fact was, that the cheering on the levee referred to had been, in defiance of the enemy, for "the Southern Confederacy," and the only firing in the crowd was that of incautious and exasperated citizens at the Federal fleet.

The State flag of Louisiana still floated from the City Hall. It was an emblem of nothing more than State sovereignty, and yet it too was required to be lowered at the unreasonable and harsh demand of the invader. A memorial, praying the common council to protect at least the emblem of State sovereignty from insult, was signed by a large number of the noble

women of New Orleans, including many of the wealthiest, fairest, and highest in social position in the city. The reply of the council was feeble and embarrassed. They passed a resolution declaring that "no resistance would be made to the forces of the United States;" approving, at the same time, the "sentiments" expressed by the mayor, and requesting him "to act in the spirit manifested by them."

On the 28th of April, Flag-officer Farragut addressed his ultimatum to the mayor, complaining of the continued display of the flag of Louisiana on the City Hall, and concluding with a threat of bombardment of the city by notifying him to remove the women and children from its limits within forty-eight hours. The mayor replied with new spirit, that the satisfaction which was asked at the hands of a vanquished people, that they should lower with their own hands their State flag, and perform an act against which their natures rebelled, would not, under any circumstances, be given; that there was no possible exit from the city for its immense population of the women and children, and that if the enemy chose to murder them on a question of etiquette, he might do his pleasure.

In the delay of the enemy's actual otcupation of the city while the correspondence referred to between the mayor and the enemy was in progress, the confidence of the people of New Orleans had, in a measure, been rallied. There were yet some glimmers of hope. They thought that, with the forts still holding out, and the enemy's transports unable to get up the river, the city might be saved. The fleet had no forces with which to occupy it, and there was no access for an army except by way of the lakes. They had determined to cut the levee below should Gen Butler, in command of the land forces, attempt an approach from Lake Borgne, and above the city, should he make the effort from Lake Pontchartrain. In the last resort, they were determined to man the lines around the city, armed with such weapons as they could procure, and fight the Federal land forces whenever they might make their appearance.

These hopes were suddenly dispelled by the unexpected news of the fall of Forts Jackson and St. Philip. Fort Jackson had been very little damaged in the bombardment. It yielded because of a mutiny of three or four hundred of the garrison

who refused to obey the commands of its brave officer, Gen. Duncan. He had no alternative but to give up the place. At the first signs of the mutinous disposition, he threatened to turn his guns on his own men, but found a large number of them spiked. He surrendered, in fact, to his own garrison. The post could, probably, have been held, if the men had stood to their guns. He stated this in an address on the levee to the people, and, while stating it, cried like a child.

The news of the surrender of the river forts effected a sudden change in the views of Flag-officer Farragut. He was. evidently anxious lest Gen. Butler, to whose transports a way had now been opened to the city, should arrive before he could consummate the objects of his expedition. He had already involved himself in a maze of incongruities and contradictions. First, he demanded peremptorily that the flag should be taken down; then he insisted that it should be removed before 12 M. on Saturday, the 28th; on Monday, he repeated the demand, under a threat of bombardment, giving forty-eight hours for the removal of the women and children. On Tuesday morning, he reiterated his peremptory demand, but, within an hour, he agreed to waive every thing he had claimed, and reluctantly consented to send his own forces to take down the flag.

About noon, a Federal force, consisting of about two hundred armed marines and a number of sailors, dragging two brass howitzers, appeared in front of the City Hall, and the officer in command, mounting to the dome of the building, removed the flag of the State in sight of an immense crowd of the citizens of New Orleans. No interruption was offered to the small party of the Federals, and the idle utterances of curiosity were quelled by the sadness and solemnity of the occasion. Profound silence pervaded the immense crowd. Not even a whisper was heard. The very air was oppressive with stillness. The marines stood statue-like within the square, their bayonets glistening in the sunbeams, and their faces stolid with indifference. Among the vast multitude of citizens, the wet cheeks of women and the compressed lips and darkened brows of men betrayed their consciousness of the great humiliation which had overtaken them. But among them all there was not one spirit to emulate the devotion of the martyr-hero of Virginia, who, alone and unaided, on the steps of the Marshall

House, in Alexandria, had avenged with his life the first insult ever offered by the enemy to the flag of his country.

Thus was the surrender of the city of New Orleans completed. Gen. Butler took possession on the 1st of May, and in augurated an administration, the despotism and insolence of which might have been expected from one of his vile personal character and infamous antecedents. He was a man who had all the proverbially mean instincts of the Massachusetts Yankee; he had been a disreputable jury lawyer at home; as a member of the old Democratic party, he had been loud in his professions of devotion to the South; but his glorification in this particular had been dampened in the Charleston Convention, where he pocketed an insult from a Southern delegate, and turned pale at the threat of personal chastisement. The war gave him an opportunity of achieving one of those easy reputations in the North which were made by brazen boastfulness, coarse abuse of the South, and aptitude in lying. We shall have future occasion to refer to the brutal and indecent despotism of this vulgar tyrant of New Orleans, who, in inviting his soldiers to treat as prostitutes every lady in the street who dared to show displeasure at their presence, surpassed the atrocities of Haynau, and rivalled the most barbarous and fiendish rule of vengeance ever sought to be wreaked upon a conquered people. If any thing were wanting to make the soldiers of the South devote anew whatever they had of life, and labor, and blood to the cause of the safety and honor of their country, it was the infamous swagger of Butler in New Orleans, his autocratic rule, his arrest of the best citizens, his almost daily robberies, and his "ingenious" war upon the helplessness of men and the virtue of women.

The narrative of the fall of New Orleans furnishes its own. comment. Never was there a more miserable story, where accident, improvidence, treachery, vacillation, and embarrassment of purpose, each, perhaps, not of great importance in itself, combined under an evil star to produce the astounding result of the fall, after an engagement, the casualties of which might be counted by hundreds, of a city which was the commercial capital of the South, which contained a population of one hundred and seventy thousand souls, and which was the largest exporting city in the world.

The extent of the disaster is not to be disguised. It was a heavy blow to the Confederacy. It annihilated us in Louisiana; separated us from Texas and Arkansas diminished our resources and supplies by the loss of one of the greatest grain and cattle countries within the limits of the Confederacy; gave to the enemy the Mississippi river, with all its means of navigation, for a base of operations; and finally led, by plain and irresistible conclusion, to our virtual abandonment of the great and fruitful Valley of the Mississippi.—It did all this, and yet it was very far from deciding the fate of the war.