Mutiny at Fort Jackson: The Untold Story of the Fall of New Orleans

Introduction: Massacre on the Levee

introduction massacre on the levee On the morning of April 25, 1862, a U.S. fleet steamed toward New Orleans. Quickly brushing aside Confederate batteries just below the city, the warships approached the largest city in the South just before noon. The sailors strove to catch a glimpse of the city, but smoke from a hundred fires filled the air as Confederates burned anything that might be of value to the United States. Some Confederate patriots set ships alight and cast them adrift on the river, while others scuttled the massive dry docks on the west bank or consigned cotton to the flames. Angry men burst open barrels of sugar and molasses and poured their contents into the gutters. But Confederate sympathizers were not alone in witnessing the fleet’s arrival. Despite ‘‘a terrible rain squall,’’ many other people lined the levees and wharves to welcome the Federal fleet to the Crescent City.∞ The deck log of the uss Brooklyn notes, ‘‘While steaming up the lower part of the city we were cheered by the crowd assembled on the levee.’’ Other men in the fleet reported on the favorable reception they received from the people of 2 Introduction Sketch of New Orleans on the day Farragut’s fleet arrived by William Waud, an eyewitness. (The Historic New Orleans Collection) New Orleans. When the fleet anchored off the city’s wharves shortly after noon, Thomas Harris, a Federal crewman on the Mississippi, saw that ‘‘great excitement was visible. All secesh [secession] flags were pulled down, and the stars and stripes were run up on the Custom House.’’ The sight of the U.S. flag flying from the ships’ rigging, he wrote, ‘‘called forth some loud huzzas from those who had seen it before, and with joy they hailed it now.’’ Samuel Massa, a clerk on the Cayuga, recorded in his diary that at 1 p.m. ‘‘a good many men and women came out and cheered us and one woman hoisted the stars and stripes on the Algiers side.’’ Local resident G. M. Shipper later recalled flying the ‘‘old, red, white and blue, from [his] house No 205 Lafayette Street, on the morning of the day the Federal fleet came into New Orleans.’’ Reports of the pro-Union demonstrations made their way into Captain David Farragut’s report that night to the Navy Department. Men from the fleet had raised the U.S. flag over the former Mint building, he wrote, ‘‘and the people cheered it.’’≤ Confederates could not bear such displays of Union patriotism. G. M. Shipper, who had hung Old Glory from his house, was hauled off to prison for his indiscretion, where he waited until U.S. general Thomas Williams Introduction 3 could spring him from his cell. The flag-waving Americans at the levee faired much worse. Bradley S. Osbon, a reporter for the New York Herald, described what happened next: ‘‘People were rushing to and fro. Some of them cheered for the Union, when they were fired upon by the crowd.’’ Other eyewitnesses filled in details; the log of the uss Richmond notes that the civilians were attacked by ‘‘a troop of horsemen [who] came riding up one of the streets and fired a volley into the men, women, and children.’’ Another ship’s log includes the news that ‘‘a volly [sic] of musketry [was] discharged among them by some soldiers standing near[.] A number was seen to fall.’’ This slaughter appears to have cleared the levee of Unionists. Samuel Massa reported that by 4:00 p.m. the Unionist civilians had been replaced by ‘‘a different crowd to those we first saw, these black-guarding our men and flag of truce, cursed at officers and men sent ashore, calling them damned Yankee abolitionists.’’ One man, he wrote, ‘‘got knocked down kicked and beaten for trying to stop his comrades from calling our boats crews names.’’≥ We are not accustomed to reading about the massacre of civilians in the American Civil War. Nor do we commonly read about white southerners who welcomed the U.S. military into Dixie. But this slaughter of Unionist men, women, and children occurred in full view of the general public, reporters, and the crews of a dozen U.S. warships. How many people died remains a mystery, shielded by Confederate control of the crime site until evidence could be removed. The pro-Confederate New Orleans Bee minimized the...