TWO AGAINST A CITY
It takes brave men to fight battles. It takes braver men to face death
without fighting.
In the spring of 1862 New Orleans, the Queen City of the South, was
blockaded by the Union fleet. No one could come in or go out. The grass
grew in her empty streets. The wharves were deserted and cobwebs lay on
the shut and barred warehouses. The river itself, which had been
thronged with the masts and funnels of a thousand crowded craft, flowed
yellow and empty as the Amazon.
As business stopped and wages grew scarce and scarcer, the fierce,
dangerous part of the population which comes to the surface in times of
siege began to gain more and more control of the city. For years there
had been a secret society of criminals in New Orleans which had often
controlled her city government. It was known as the "Thugs." Heretofore
they had always worked in secret and underground. Now criminals who
formerly would only come out at night and secretly, were seen on the
streets in open day. As the Union lines closed around the city by sea
and land, the crowds of men and women without money and without work
became as fierce and bitter and dangerous as rats in a trap. For a
while they told each other that the city could never be taken. Nothing
afloat, they said again and again, can pass by the great chain and the
sunken ships that block the river. If they could they would sink under
the withering fire of Fort Jackson, a great star-shaped fort of stone
and mortar, or Fort St. Phillip with its fifty-two guns which could be
brought to bear on any vessel going up or down the river. Beyond the
forts was a fleet of rams and gunboats and in a shipyard over at
Jefferson, one of the suburbs of New Orleans, was building the great
iron-clad _Mississippi_, which alone they felt would be equal to
the whole blockading fleet. So thought and said the swarming unemployed
thousands of New Orleans. Finally came a dreadful day when the tops of
the naked masts of the hated Yankee fleet showed against the evening
sky across one of the bends of the river. Then came the roar of distant
guns for a day and a night as the Union vessels attacked the forts and
concealed batteries. Still the people believed in their defenses
although the firing came nearer and nearer. Not until they saw the city
troops carry the cotton out of the cotton-presses down to the wharves
to be burned in miles of twisting flame to save it from the Union Army
did they realize how close was the day of the surrender of the city.
Then all the empty ships which had been moored out in the river were
fired and the warehouses of provisions still left were broken open.
Mobs of desperate men and women surged back and forth fighting for the
sugar and rice and molasses with which the wharves were covered.
Suddenly around Slaughter House Point, silent, grim and terrible, came
the black fleet which had safely run the gauntlet of forts, gunboats,
batteries and torpedoes. For the first time since the war had begun,
the Stars and Stripes floated again in sight of New Orleans. As the
fleet came nearer and nearer, the crowds which blackened the wharves
and levees of New Orleans shouted for the _Mississippi_.
"Where is the _Mississippi_? Ram the Yanks! Mississippi! Mississippi!
Mississippi!" thousands of voices roared across the water and through
the forsaken streets of the doomed city. And then, as if called by the
shout of her city, around a bend suddenly floated the great iron-clad
_Mississippi_ which was to save New Orleans,--a helpless, drifting
mass of flames. There was a moment of utter silence and then a scream
of rage and despair went up that drowned the crackling of the flames.
"Betrayed! Betrayed! We have been betrayed!" was the cry which went up
everywhere. No stranger's life was worth a moment's purchase. One man
whose only crime was that he was unknown to the mob was seized at one
of the wharves and in an instant was swinging, twisting and choking,
from the end of a rope at a lamp-post. Through the crowds flitted the
Thugs and began a reign of terror against all whom they hated or
feared. Men were hung and shot and stabbed to death that day at a word.
The mob was as dangerous, desperate and as unreasoning as a mad dog.
Through this roaring, frothing, cursing crowd it was necessary for
Admiral Farragut to send messengers to the mayor at the City Hall to
demand the surrender of the city. It seemed to the men in the ships
like going into a den of trapped wild beasts, yet instantly Captain
Theodorus Bailey, the second in command, demanded from the admiral the
right to undertake this dangerous mission. With a little guard of
twenty men he was landed on the levee in front of a howling mob which
crowded the river-front as far as the eye could reach. They offered an
impenetrable line through which no man could pass. Captain Bailey drew
his marines up in line and tried to reason with the mob, but could not
even be heard. He then ordered his men to level their muskets and take
aim. In an instant the mob had pushed forward to the front crowds of
women and children and dared the Yanks to shoot. Captain Bailey
realized that nothing could be done by force without a useless
slaughter of men and women and children. In order to save this he
decided to try what could be done by two unarmed men. If this plan
failed, it would be time enough to try what could be done by grape and
canister. Taking a flag of truce and choosing as his companion a young
midshipman named Read, whom he knew to be a man of singular coolness,
Captain Bailey started up the street to the City Hall. It was a
desperate chance. The mob had already tasted blood and it was almost
certain that some one would shoot or stab these two representatives of
the hated Yanks as soon as they were out of sight of the ships. The
slightest sign of fear or hesitation would mean the death of both of
them. Captain Bailey and Midshipman Read, however, were men who would
take just such a chance. Slowly, unconcernedly, they walked along the
streets through a roar of shouts, and curses, and cheers for Jeff
Davis. As they reached the middle of the city, the crowd became more
and more threatening. They were pushed and jostled while men, many of
them members of the dreaded Thugs, thrust cocked revolvers into their
faces and waved bowie-knives close to their throats. Others rushed up
with coils of rope which had already done dreadful service. Captain
Bailey never even glanced at the men around him, but looking straight
ahead walked on as unconcernedly as if he were treading his own
quarter-deck. Young Read acted as if he were bored with the whole
proceeding. He examined carefully the brandished revolvers and knives
and smiled pleasantly into the distorted, scowling, gnashing faces
which were thrust up against his. Occasionally he would half pause to
examine some building which seemed to impress him as particularly
interesting and would then saunter unconcernedly along after his
captain.
[Illustration: Captain Bailey and Midshipman Read Facing the New
Orleans Mob]
Right on through the gauntlet of death passed the two men with never a
quiver of the eye or a motion of the face to show that they even knew
the mob was there. Little by little, men who had retained something of
their self-control began to persuade the more lawless part of the
rabble to fall back. It was whispered around that Farragut, that old
man of iron and fire, had said that he would level the city as flat as
the river if a hand were even laid on his envoys. Finally through the
surging streets appeared the City Hall and the end of that desperate
march was in sight. At the very steps of the City Hall the mob took a
last stand. Half-a-dozen howling young ruffians, with cocked revolvers
in either hand, stood on the lower step and dared the Union messengers
to go an inch farther. Midshipman Read stepped smilingly ahead of his
captain and gently pushed with either hand two of the cursing young
desperadoes far enough to one side to allow for a passageway between
them. Both of them actually placed the muzzles of their cocked
revolvers against his neck as a last threat, but even the touch of cold
steel did not drive away Read's amused smile. The mob gave up.
Evidently these men had resources about which they knew nothing.
"They were so sure that we wouldn't kill them that we couldn't," said
one of the Thugs afterward in explaining why the hated messengers had
been allowed to march up the steps.
They sauntered into the mayor's room where they met a group of
white-faced, trembling men who were the mayor and his council. Captain
Bailey delivered the admiral's summons for the surrender of the city to
the mayor. The mob, which at first had stayed back, at this point
surged up to the windows and shouted curses and threats into the very
mayor's room, threatening him and the council if they dared to
surrender the city. Captain Bailey and his companion gave the trembling
city officials a few minutes in which to make up their minds. Suddenly
there was heard a roar outside louder than any which had come before.
The mob had torn down the Union flag which had been hoisted over the
custom house and rushing to the mayor's office, tore it to pieces
outside the open windows and threw the fragments in at the seated
envoys. This insult to their flag aroused Captain Bailey and young Read
as no threats against them personally had been able to do. Turning to
the mayor and the shrinking council, Bailey said, "As there is a God in
heaven, the man who tore down that Union flag shall hang for it." Later
on this promise was carried out by the inflexible General Butler when
he took over the city from Admiral Farragut and hanged Mumford, the man
who tore down the flag in the city square, before the very mob which
had so violently applauded his action. This incident was the last straw
for the mayor and his associates. They neither dared to refuse to
surrender the city lest it should be bombarded by Farragut nor did they
dare to surrender it for fear of the mob which had gathered around them
with significant coils of rope over their arms. In a half-whisper they
hurriedly notified Captain Bailey that they could not surrender the
city, but that they would make no resistance if the Union forces
occupied it. Looking at them contemptuously, Captain Bailey turned
away, picked up the fragments of the torn flag and faced the mob
outside threateningly. The man who had torn the flag slunk back and his
example was contagious. One by one men commenced to sneak away and in a
minute the City Hall was deserted and Captain Bailey and Midshipman
Read were able to leave the building and drive back to the vessels in a
carriage obtained for them by the mayor's secretary.
So ended what one of the mob, who afterward became a valued citizen of
his state, described as the bravest deed he had ever seen--two unarmed
men facing and defeating a mob of murderers and madmen.