![]() ![]() The expedition assembled at Ship Island in the Gulf. The squadron was augmented by a semi-autonomous flotilla of mortar rafts and their support vessels under Commander David Dixon Porter. The Navy contributed a large fraction of its West Gulf Blockading Squadron, which was commanded by Flag Officer David G. ![]() The Union Army offered 18,000 soldiers, led by the political general Benjamin F. Without reducing the pressure from the north, (Union) President Abraham Lincoln set in motion a combined Army-Navy operation to attack from the south. Men and equipment had been withdrawn from the local defenses, so that by mid-April almost nothing remained to the south except the two forts and an assortment of gunboats of questionable worth. Although the menace from upriver was geographically more remote than that from the Gulf of Mexico, a series of losses in Kentucky and Tennessee had forced the War and Navy Departments in Richmond to strip the region of much of its defenses. The Confederate Navy had already driven off the Union blockade fleet in the Battle of the Head of Passes the previous October. New Orleans, the largest city in the Confederacy, was already under threat of attack from the north when Farragut moved his fleet into the river from the south. As long as the forts could keep the Federal forces from moving on the city, it was safe, but if they were negated, there were no fall-back positions to impede the enemy advance. The two Confederate forts on the Mississippi River south of the city were attacked by a Union Navy fleet. ![]() ![]() Philip (April 18–28, 1862) was the decisive battle for possession of New Orleans in the American Civil War. ![]()
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