between Forts Jackson and St. Philip, having been broken by a storm, it remained for the enemy only to try the problem that ships under steam can pass forts in open channel;" and having once run the gauntlet, they had but little to fear from the Confederate naval structures in the harbour, as the two iron-clads which were designed to rival the exploits of the "Virginia-Merrimac" were, through the almost criminal neglect of the Navy Department, either uncompleted or unserviceable. This is the whole story of the New Orleans disaster. A few days' bombardment of two forts, eighty miles distant, which are not substantially injured, and in which scarcely any lives are lost, and a triumphant fleet steams quietly up to the city and demands its surrender! The world was amazed at the event. The Southern Confederacy received a blow in the fall of New Orleans from which it never recovered. This city was regarded the key to the Valley of the Mississippi, and its possession almost of vital consequence, in enabling the Confederates to preserve their hold upon the Trans-Mississippi, and obtain vast supplies of grain and meat necessary to the support of the army.

Gen. Lovell was not to be blamed. It was by the incompetency of the water-defence that the city was virtually surrendered; and Gen. Lovell did all he could do, which was to save his little army -less than 3,000 men--and stores, so as to make renewed effort to hold the Mississippi River in another position. But popular indignation in the South demanded a victim, and, instead of being intelligently directed against the Richmond Cabinet, it seized upon the man whose name was intimately connected with the disaster. The appointment of Lovell had never been agreeable to the people of New Orleans, or of his department. They had murmured constantly against him; they did not know him; they did not trust him; they would have preferred Bragg to Lovell, and Beauregard to either. Now they accused him as the author of their great calamity. There was great injustice in this popular passion; and it is only now, when it is perceived how much at variance it is with historical truth, that justice can be hoped for Gen. Lovell, and grateful recognition of a patriotism which no sense of personal wrong could corrupt or subdue.

After the fall of New Orleans, Gen. Lovell fought gallantly at Corinth and Coffeeville; and it was he who fortified Columbia. He afterwards resigned his rank as commander of the department,

and was relieved by Gen. Van Dorn. The clamour of the people still followed him, and was only satisfied when he was withdrawn to comparative obscurity, waiting orders, or nobly volunteering his services on subsequent battle-fields of the war. But it is especially remarkable that, during this persistent popular censure, Gen. Lovell enjoyed for all the time the highest opinions and utmost confidence of his military superiours, the most distinguished leaders of the Confederacy. Gen. Beauregard vindicated his part of the defence of New Orleans, and testified to its skill.* Gen. Lee, a few

* We give below some testimony of Gen. Beauregard (never before published) relative to the defence of New Orleans, and exculpating Gen. Lovell in the court of inquiry summoned in his case. It is interesting as an expression of the judgment and skill of one universally acknowledged the first engineer in the armies of the Southern Confederacy.

QUESTION. From your knowledge of the country about New Orleans, and the peculiarities, would you think it the proper plan to concentrate the main strength in artillery at Forts Jackson and St. Philip, in connection with obstructions at that point, rather than to place the guns at many points along the river which the enemy would have to pass in succession?

ANSWER. The true plan for the defense of a river from the passage of steamers, etc., is, when practicable, to obstruct its navigation with rafts, piles, torpedoes, etc., at the most favourable points for such obstructions, then to defend the latter by a concentration of the greatest number of and heaviest guns at one's command, separating them from each other, however, by traverses, when necessary to protect them from an enfilade fire.

Such was the system proposed by Gens. Bernard, Totten, Majors Chase, Delafield, etc., when they planned Forts Jackson and St. Philip, and the batteries contiguous to those works. Detached batteries are very good when properly located and supported, otherwise they are apt to be overpowered successively by a naval attack, or to be taken in the rear by a land force.

It is evident that since the enemy's steamers and gunboats passed the concentrated fires of Forts Jackson and St. Philip, etc, etc., without much injury, they would have done so even more easily if our guns had been scattered over 75 miles, from those works to New Orleans. Moreover, the river being very high and the country between those two points being low, it could easily have been submerged by cutting the levee at night near any batteries which might have been constructed along the river, thereby cutting off their garrisons from succour or retreat.

I will remark that Forts Jackson and St. Philip were placed that low down the river to protect from the enemy's depredations as much of the country liable to culti vation as practicable, and also to increase the obstacles to a regular siege, resulting from the lowness of their sites, which does not admit of the construction of boyaux and parallels, especially when the river is high.

QUESTION.-The battle having been fought at the forts, and the fleet having passed, do you consider New Orleans a tenable military position-did its evacuation

days after the fall of New Orleans, wrote to him: "I think you may confidently rely upon the judgment of intelligent and reflecting men for the justification of your course, as soon as the facts, as they actually existed, shall be known." Gen. Joseph E. Johnston continued to have such a high opinion of his military abilities that, when he took command of the Army of Tennessee, in 1864, he desired his services, and proposed to give him command of one of the corps of his army. But even these high testimonials did not suffice to restore Gen. Lovell to the confidence of the people, or to the favour of the Executive. The Secretary of War endorsed a disapproval on his application for a command under Gen. John

by the infantry force necessarily follow as a matter of course when the enemy were in full possession of the river?

ANSWER. The forts commanding the river having been passed, New Orleans necessarily lay at the mercy of the enemy's heavy guns afloat, which, owing to the high stage of the river, commanded the banks on both sides to the swamp skirting the river at a distance from one-half to one mile. An army of 50,000 men or more could not then have saved the city from destruction. Whether the latter was desirable at the time, before New Orleans had experienced Butler's iron rule, could only have been determined by the State or Confederate authorities, who should have considered whether the destruction of so large a city would have done more injury to the enemy than ourselves.

It is evident that to him Baton Rouge is a better strategic point than New Orleans, and the destruction of the latter would have relieved him of the necessity of keeping a garrison of 5,000 or 6,000 men there to guard it-this act would have been a mere empty bravado, a wanton destruction of an immense amount of private and public property, which would have shaken at the time the Confederacy to its very centre, and thrown upon its Government a helpless population of about 150,000 noncombatants (men, women, and children), to feed and provide for, when already overburthened to supply the wants of the armies in the field.

When the Russians burnt Moscow, it was for the purpose of annihilating Napoleon's army of 300,000 or 400,000 men, which had invaded that country. When they again consented to the slow but certain destruction of Sebastopol, it was to prevent the allies from taking possession of its immense docks, arsenals, military stores, and the fleet which had sought refuge under the guns of its forts. The possession of the harbour of Sebastopol would also have afforded them a magnificent base for future operations in the Crimea.

As I have already stated, the Mississippi River being extremely high, the streets of New Orleans could have been swept from one extremity to the other by the heavy guns of the enemy's fleet, or had Commodore Farragut preferred reducing the place to submission without using his guns, it would have been only necessary to have cut the levee above and below the city, and the whole population would have been utterly defenseless and in a starving condition in a few days. Without the command of the Mississippi River, New Orleans is not worth holding as a military or strategic position.

ston, saying, in his opinion it would be injudicious to place a corps under command of Gen. Lovell, and it would not give confidence to the army. The paper came back from President Davis, endorsed, "Opinion concurred in."

For these unjust and cruel prejudices there remains for Gen. Lovell only the satisfaction of history. An unfortunate man, placed in difficulties from which he could not extricate himself; a sacrifice, as many another, to the faults and errours of President Davis's administration, he cannot be judged harshly, or without reference to the circumstances which surrounded him; and no account of his military life can deny his ingenuity, his activity, his ceaseless industry, or justly question his fidelity and earnest patriotism in the cause of the Southern Confederacy.

MAJ.-GEN. EARL VAN DORN.

CHAPTER LVII.

His capture of Federal troops in Texas at the beginning of the war.-Temporary command in North Virginia.-Assigned to the Trans-Mississippi.-Battle of Elk Horn.-Correspondence with Gen. Curtis on civilized warfare.-Gen. Van Dorn crosses the Mississippi River.—The Department of Louisiana.-Heroism of the first defence of Vicksburg.-Battle of Corinth.-Gen. Van Dorn removed from command. His reflections on the sentence.-His command of cavalry.-Destroys Grant's depot of supplies at Holly Springs.-Dies by the hand of private violence. His genius as a commander.

THE career of Earl Van Dorn in the war was not well sustained; but it was very brilliant in some of its parts; and it was terminated by a painful and well-remembered tragedy. He was a native of Port Gibson, Mississippi. He graduated at West Point in 1842, and entered the Seventh Infantry. He served in the Mexican War, was promoted first lieutenant, March 3, 1847, and was brevetted captain, April 18, 1847, for gallant and meritorious conduct in the battle of Cerro-Gordo. He obtained another brevet, that of major, at Contreras and Churubusco, and was wounded in entering the city of Mexico.

The State of Texas seceded from the Union on the 1st February, 1861, and volunteer forces were at once started to capture the Federal garrisons and munitions of war within her limits. Van Dorn, holding from the State a Commission as Colonel, organized an expedition, consisting of not more than eighty men, which by a brave enterprise. on the 20th April, 1861, captured the Federal steamer, Star of the West, in the harbour of Galveston, with the troops on board of her. Under cover of night he put off in the lighter which had been used in transporting the