nterprise, Farragut felt his proper position was now in the Mississippi
itself. Important as was the blockade service, it was of a character
safely to be trusted to a subordinate; whereas the strictly military
operations of the approaching campaign, whatever shape they might
finally take, would be for the control of the river. It therefore
behooved the commander-in-chief of the naval forces to be at hand, ready
to support in any way that might offer the effort to obtain control of a
region of which the water communications were so characteristic a
feature. To push far up a narrow and intricate river a force of ships,
whose numbers are insufficient even to protect their own communications
and insure their coal supplies, is one thing; it is quite another to
repair to the same scene of action prepared to support the army by
controlling the water, and by establishing in combined action a secure
secondary base of operations from which further advances can be made
with reasonable certainty of holding the ground gained. There was no
inconsistency between Farragut's reluctance of the spring and his
forwardness in the autumn. The man who, to secure New Orleans and
compass the fall of the forts, had dared to cut adrift from his base and
throw his communications to the winds, because he had an object adequate
to the risk, was the same who, six weeks later, had testified his
anxiety about communications stretched too far and to no purpose; and
now, half a year after that reluctant ascent of the river against his
better judgment, we find him eagerly planning to go up again,
establishing under the protection of the army an advanced base, from
which, with the supplies accumulated at it, further movements may be
contemplated with a good chance of final success.

On the 14th of November Farragut reported to the Navy Department his
return to New Orleans. The Government, however, had taken warning by the
fiasco of the previous season; and, far from urging the admiral on, now
sought to impress him with the need for caution. As the great object of
opening the Mississippi and obtaining control of it remained, and
necessarily must remain, the first of the Government's aims in the
Southwest, the result of these instructions was to give Farragut the
discretion which had before been denied him. He retained fully his
convictions of the summer. "I am ready for anything," he writes to the
Department, "but desire troops to hold what we get. General B