Qualla: Capture of New Orleans

Capture of New Orleans: Introduction

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mwanner, Talk, CC BY-SA 3.0. At two o'clock on the afternoon of April 25, 1862, Captain Theodorus Bailey stepped ashore in New Orleans carrying a demand for the city's surrender. Armed mobs surged through the streets. Mayor John T. Monroe refused to capitulate. A man named William Mumford climbed to the roof of the U.S. Mint, tore down the Union flag that marines had raised, and dragged it through the mud for the crowd to destroy. Yet within a week, the largest city in the Confederacy -- home to 168,675 people, 33 steamship lines, and trade worth $500 million -- belonged to the Union. Not a single building had been shelled. The capture of New Orleans was less a battle than a collapse, the moment when the South's most vital port discovered that its defenses had been pointed in the wrong direction.

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Image: Mwanner | Talk | CC BY-SA 3.0

Capture of New Orleans: The Jewel of the Mississippi

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit KLOTZ, CC BY-SA 3.0. By 1860, New Orleans was unlike any other city in the South. Founded by the French, governed for decades by Spain, and shaped by waves of Creole, Haitian, Irish, and German settlers, it was the Confederacy's most cosmopolitan population center -- larger than the next four Souther...

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Image: KLOTZ | CC BY-SA 3.0

Capture of New Orleans: Farragut Runs the Gauntlet

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Johnson, et al., Public domain. The Union's Anaconda Plan, devised by General Winfield Scott, aimed to strangle the Confederacy by seizing the Mississippi River. In mid-January 1862, Flag Officer David G. Farragut led his West Gulf Blockading Squadron toward the river's mouth. Between his fleet and New Orleans ...

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Image: Johnson, et al. | Public domain

Capture of New Orleans: A City That Would Not Bow

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mikereichold, CC BY-SA 2.5. Major General Mansfield Lovell, commanding Confederate forces in the area, had no real options once Farragut broke through. Only 3,000 militiamen armed with shotguns remained. Lovell loaded his troops onto the New Orleans, Jackson, and Great Northern Railroad and sent them north;...

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Image: Mikereichold | CC BY-SA 2.5

Capture of New Orleans: Beast Butler's Reign

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel (book authors). A list of artists and engravers can be found on p. 23 of the PDF., Public domain. On May 1, Major General Benjamin Butler marched 5,000 Union troops into a city of 150,000 hostile residents. A political general from Massachusetts with more ambition than military polish, Butler ruled New Orleans for eight volatile months. He fed the poor with captured Confedera...

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Image: Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel (book authors). A list of artists and engravers can be found on p. 23 of the PDF. | Public domain

Capture of New Orleans: The River Divided

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Government Printing Office: Washington, Public domain. The fall of New Orleans reverberated far beyond the city's levees. It was the Confederacy's largest population center, its busiest port, and its gateway to international trade. Losing it meant losing the lower Mississippi, severing supply lines and shattering the illusion that th...

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Image: Government Printing Office: Washington | Public domain