it is probable that it fairly represents the general
condition of Farragut's ships. Among the troops accompanying the
expedition there were but eight hundred fit for duty out of over three
thousand. It was not considered well to maintain for a longer time in
Baton Rouge the small garrison hitherto stationed there. It had
honorably repulsed the enemy's attack; but, in the general cessation of
offensive movements by the United States army, the Confederates were
continually strengthening their forces on the line of bluffs south of
Vicksburg, to the importance of which their attention, never entirely
diverted, had been forcibly drawn by the advance of the fleet in the
previous months. Fruitless as that ill-judged advance had been, it
reminded the enemy of the serious inconvenience they would suffer if the
United States ships could freely patrol that part of the Mississippi,
and impressed upon them the necessity of securing a section of it, by
which they could have undisturbed communication between the two shores.
This could be done by fortifying two points in such strength that to
pass them from either direction would involve a risk too great to be
lightly undertaken. The points chosen were Vicksburg and Port Hudson,
two hundred miles apart, and embracing between them the mouth of the Red
River. The latter is the great artery of the region west of the
Mississippi, and also, by means of the Atchafalaya Bayou, offers direct
communication for light-draught vessels with the Gulf of Mexico. Port
Hudson being less than twenty miles from Baton Rouge, the presence in
the latter of a small garrison, which could undertake no offensive
movement and which there were no troops to re-enforce, became
purposeless. On the 16th of August, 1862, the post was abandoned, and
the troops occupying it withdrew to New Orleans.

CHAPTER IX.

THE BLOCKADE AND PORT HUDSON.

1862-1863.

Operations in the Mississippi having now temporarily ceased, Farragut
was at liberty to give his undivided attention for a time to the coast
blockade. The important harbor of Pensacola had been evacuated by the
Confederates in May, less than a month after the capture of New Orleans.
Its abandonment was due to want of troops to garrison it properly; the
pressure of the United States armies in Kentucky and Tennessee, after
the fall of Fort Donelson in the previous February, having necessitated
the withdrawal of all men that could be spared from other points.