h a gun that carries a
forty-gallon caldron full of red-hot iron.

[Footnote 5: While the Union forces did not succeed in beating Stonewall
Jackson back, in returning to Washington they succeeded in beating
everybody else back. (See Appendix.)]

[Footnote 6: The odium to be cast on the person upon whom it should fall
for the sickening defeat at Bull Run was found to be in such wretched
condition at the time these lines were written that it was decided to go
on without casting it. The writer points with pride to the fact that in
writing this history fifteen cents' worth of odium will cover the entire
amount used.]

CHAPTER XXVI.

SOME MORE FRATRICIDAL STRIFE.

The effort to open the Mississippi from the north was seconded by an
expedition from the south, in which Captain David G. Farragut,
commanding a fleet of forty vessels, co-operated with General Benjamin
F. Butler, with the capture of New Orleans as the object.

Mortar-boats covered with green branches for the purpose of fooling the
enemy, as no one could tell at any distance at all whether these were or
were not olive-branches, steamed up the river and bombarded Forts
Jackson and St. Philip till the stunned catfish rose to the surface of
the water to inquire, "Why all this?" and turned their pallid stomachs
toward the soft Southern zenith. Sixteen thousand eight hundred shells
were thrown into the two forts, but that did not capture New Orleans.

Farragut now decided to run his fleet past the defences, and, desperate
as the chances were, he started on April 24. A big cable stretched
across the river suggested the idea that there was a hostile feeling
among the New Orleans people. Five rafts and armed steamers met him,
and the iron-plated ram Manassas extended to him a cordial welcome to a
wide wet grave with a southern exposure.

Farragut cut through the cable about three o'clock in the morning,
practically destroyed the Confederate fleet, and steamed up to the city,
which was at his mercy.

The forts, now threatened in the rear by Butler's army, surrendered, and
Farragut went up to Baton Rouge and took possession of it. General
Butler's occupation at New Orleans has been variously commented upon by
both friend and foe, but we are only able to learn from this and the
entire record of the war, in fact, that it is better to avoid
hostilities unless one is ready to accept the unpleasant features of
combat. The author, when a boy, learned this af