LIEUTENANT THOMAS B. HUGER, C. S. N.
In command of the “ McRae.”
afloat could pass the forts. Nothing that walked could get through our swamps. The Mississippi—and, in fact, she was a majestically terrible structure, only let us complete her — would sweep the river clean.
But there was little laughter. Food was dear; the destitute poor were multiplying terribly; the market men and women, mainly Germans, Gascon-French, and Sicilians, had lately refused to take the shinplaster currency, and the city authority had forced them to accept it. There was little to laugh at. The Mississippi was gnawing its levees and threatening to plunge in upon us. The city was believed to be full of spies.
I shall not try to describe the day the alarm-bells told us the city was in danger and called every man to his mus-tering-point. The children poured out from the school-gates and ran crying to their homes, meeting their sobbing mothers at their thresholds. The men fell into ranks. I was left entirely alone in charge of the store in which I was employed. Late in the afternoon, receiving orders to close it, I did so, and went home. But I did not stay. I went to the river-side. There until far into the night I saw hundreds of drays carrying cotton out of the presses and yards to the wharves, where it was fired. The glare of those sinuous miles of flame set men and women weeping and wailing thirty miles away on the farther shore of Lake Pontchartrain. But the next day was the day of terrors. During the night fear, wrath, and sense of betrayal had run through the people as the fire had run through the cotton. You have seen, perhaps, a family fleeing with lamentations and wringing of hands out of a burning house: multiply it by thousands upon thousands; that was
ON THEIR
REAR-ADMIRAL THEODORUS BAILEY, U. S. N.
Cajitam in commancl ot tile first division of the Dillon fleet.
any authorized police, but the scheme of some of the worst of the villains who had ruled New Orleans with the rod of terror for many years—the ‘ ‘ Thugs.”
But the public mind was at a transparent heat. Everybody wanted to know of everybody else, “ Why don’t you go to the front ? ” Even the gentle maidens demanded tartly, one of another, why their brothers or lovers had not gone long ago, though, in truth, the laggards were few indeed. The very children were fierce. For now even we, the uninformed, the lads and women, knew the enemy was closing down upon us. Of course we confronted the fact very valorously, we boys and mothers and sisters — and the newspapers. Had we not inspected the fortifications ourselves ? Was not every man in town ready to rush into them at the twelve tapsof the fire-alarm bells ? Were we not ready to man them if the men gave out ? Nothing
Charles street behind the muffled drums, while on their quivering hearts was written as with a knife the death-roll of that lost battle. One of those — a former schoolmate of mine—■who had brought that precious body walked beside the bier, with the stains of camp and battle on him from head to foot, war was coming very near.
Many of the town’s old forms and habits of peace held fast. The city, I have said, was under martial law; yet the city management still went through its old routines. The volunteer fire department was as voluntary and as redundantly riotous as ever. The police courts, too, were as cheerful as of old. The public schools had merely substituted “Dixie,” the “Marseillaise,” and the “Bonnie Blue Flag,” for “Flail Columbia” and the “ Star-Spangled Banner,” and were running straight along. There was one thing besides, of which many of us knew nothing at the time,—a system of espionage, secret, diligent, and fierce, that marked down every man suspected of sympathy with the enemy in a book whose name was too vile to find place on any page. This was not the military secret service,— that is to be expected wherever there is war,—nor
CAPTAIN THEODORUS BAILEY AND LIEUTENANT GEORGE H. PERKINS WAY TO DEMAND THE SURRENDER OE NEW ORLEANS.
The
loved to see him keep the saddle and pass from the wharf to the steamboat’s deck on her long, narrow stage-plank without dismounting.
Such petty breaks in the dreariness got to be scarce and precious toward the last. Not that the town seemed so desolate then as it does now, as one tells of it; but the times were grim.
Opposite the rear of the store where I was now employed—for it fronted in Common street and stretched through to Canal—the huge, unfinished custom-house reared its lofty granite walls, and I used to go up to its top now and then to cast my eye over the broad city and harbor below. When I did so, I looked down upon a town that had never been really glad again after the awful day of Shiloh. She had sent so many gallant fellows to help Beauregard, and some of them so young,—her last gleaning,—that when, on the day of their departure, they marched with solid column and firm-set, unsmiling mouths down the long gray lane made by the open ranks of those old Confederate Guards, and their escort broke into cheers and tears, and waved their gray shakos on the tops of their bayonets, and seized the dear lads’ hands as they passed in mute self-devotion and steady tread, while the trumpets sang “ Listen to the Mocking-bird,” that was the last time; the town never cheered with elation afterward; and when the people next uncovered, it was in silence, to let the body of Albert Sidney Johnston, their great chevalier, pass slowly up St.
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