pi in offensive
operations were transferred farther east, to drive yet another column
through a second natural line of cleavage from Nashville, through
Georgia, to the Gulf or to the Atlantic seaboard. How this new work was
performed under the successive leadership of Rosecrans, Grant, and
Sherman, does not fall within the scope of the present work. Although
the light steamers of the Mississippi squadron did good and often
important service in this distant inland region, the river work of
Farragut's heavy sea-going ships was now over. In furtherance of the
great object of opening the Mississippi, they had left their native
element, and, braving alike a treacherous navigation and hostile
batteries, had penetrated deep into the vitals of the Confederacy. This
great achievement wrought, they turned their prows again seaward. The
formal transfer to Admiral Porter of the command over the whole
Mississippi and its tributaries, above New Orleans, signalized the fact
that Farragut's sphere of action was to be thenceforth on the coast; for
New Orleans, though over a hundred miles from the mouth of a tideless
river, whose waters flow ever downward to the sea, was nevertheless
substantially a sea-coast city.

As the opening of the Mississippi was the more important of the two
objects embraced in Farragut's orders, so did it also offer him the
ampler field for the display of those highest qualities of a general
officer which he abundantly possessed. The faculty of seizing upon the
really decisive points of a situation, of correctly appreciating the
conditions of the problem before him, of discerning whether the proper
moment for action was yet distant or had already arrived, and of moving
with celerity and adequate dispositions when the time did come--all
these distinctive gifts of the natural commander-in-chief had been
called into play, by the difficult questions arising in connection with
the stupendous work of breaking the shackles by which the Confederates
held the Mississippi chained. The task that still remained before him,
the closing of the Confederate seaports within the limits of his
command, though arduous and wearisome, did not make the same demand upon
these more intellectual qualities. The sphere was more contracted, more
isolated. It had fewer relations to the great military operations going
on elsewhere, and, being in itself less complex, afforded less interest
to the strategist. It involved, therefore, less of the