Vicksburg below that place with as little injury and loss of life
as possible. The circumstances that have been narrated caused him to
receive this dispatch below the town; and on the 24th, two days after
the descent of the Essex, he departed for New Orleans. Davis assured him
that the Essex and Sumter should look out for the river between
Vicksburg and Baton Rouge. To them were joined three of Farragut's
gunboats; and the five vessels took an active part in supporting the
garrison of Baton Rouge when an attack was made upon the place by the
Confederates on the 5th of August. In this the Arkansas was to have
co-operated with the enemy's troops, and she left Vicksburg on the 3d
for that purpose; but her machinery broke down, and while lying helpless
against the river bank the Essex came in sight. Resistance in her then
plight was hopeless. She was set on fire by her commander, the crew
escaping to the shore. Farragut himself reached Baton Rouge shortly
after this happened. He had with much difficulty succeeded in getting
the heavier ships to New Orleans on the 28th of July; and there he had
lingered, unwilling to leave the river, though desirous of doing so,
until affairs seemed on a reasonably secure basis. The chief element of
anxiety was the Arkansas, concerning whose power to harm quite
exaggerated notions prevailed. While thus lying before New Orleans word
was brought him of the attack on Baton Rouge, and he at once retraced
his steps with the Hartford, Brooklyn, and some smaller ships. On the
7th he reached the scene of action, and learned the destruction of the
Confederate vessel. The same day he wrote to the Department: "It is one
of the happiest moments of my life that I am enabled to inform the
Department of the destruction of the ram Arkansas; not because I held
the iron-clad in such terror, but because the community did." It must
have been an additional element of satisfaction to him that the
disappearance from the waters of the Mississippi of the last hostile
vessel capable of offensive action released him from the necessity of
remaining himself, or of keeping a large force there, during the
unhealthy season.

Before leaving Vicksburg the crews of the fleet had suffered severely
from the sickness common in that climate. The Brooklyn had sixty-eight
sick out of a total of three hundred; and as this proportion was less
than in the upper river flotilla, where the sick numbered forty per cent
of the total force,