Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 July 1885 — The Capture of New Orleans. [ARTICLE]

The Capture of New Orleans.

From the Century we quote the following from the paper of George W. Cable, on “New Orleans Before the Captuxe“What a gathering I The riffraff of the wharves, the town, the gutters. Such women—such wrecks of women! And all the juvenile rag-tag. The lower steamboat landing, well covered with sugar, rice, and molasses, was being rifled. The men smashed; the women scooped up the smashings. The river was overflowing the top of the levee. A rain-storm began to threaten. ‘Are the Yankee ships in night?’ I asked of an idler.He.pointadout the tops of their naked masts as they showed up across the huge bend of the river. They were engaging the batteries at Camp Chalmette—the old field of Jackson’s renown. Presently that was over. Ah, me! I see them now as they come slowly ; round Slaughterhouse Point into full view, silent, so grim, and terrible; black with men, heavy with deadly portent; the long-banished Stars and Stripes flying against the frowning sky. Oh, for the Mississippi! the Mississippi I J ust then here she came down upon them. But how! Drifting helplessly, a mass of flames. “£he crowds on the levee howled and screamed with rage. The swarming decks answered never a word; but one old tar on the Hartford, standing with lanyard in hand beside a great pivotgun, so plain to view that you could see him smile, silently patted its big black breech and blandly grinned. “And now the rain came down in sheets. About one or two o’clock in the afternoon (as I remember), I being again in the store with but one door ajar, came a roar of shouting and imprecations and crowding feet down Common street. ‘Hurrah for Jeff Davis I Hurrah for Jeff Davis! Shoot them! KiU them! Hang them!’ I locked the door on the outside, and ran to the front of the mob, bawling with the rest, ‘Hurrah for Jeff Davis!’ About every third man there had a weapon out Two officers of the Upited States Navy were walking abreast, unguarded and alone, looking hot to right or left, never frowning, never flinching, while the mob screamed in their ears, shook cocked pistols in their faces, cursed and crowded and gnashed upon them. So through the gates of death those two men walked to the City Hall to deniand

the town’s surrender. It was fine of the bravest deeds I ever saw done. “Later events, except one, I leave to other pens.' An officer from the fleet stood on the City Hall roof about to lower the flag of Louisiana. In the street beneath gleamed the bayonets of a body of marines. A howitzer pointed up and another dbwn the street. All around swarmed the mob. Just then Mayor Monroe—lest the officer above should be fired upon and the howitzers open upon the crowd—came out alone and stood just before one of the howitzers, tall, slender, with folded arms, eying the gunner. Down sank the flag. Captain Bell, tall and stiff, marched off with the flag rolled under his arm, and the howitzers clanking behind. Then cheer after cheer rang out for Monroe. And now, I dare say, every is well pleased that, after all, New Orleans never lowered her colors with her own hands.” , .