Forts Jackson and St. Philip was a Civil War engagement fought in Louisiana, 1862. It was a Union victory.
Early Union plans had called for the division of the Confederacy by seizing control of the Mississippi River. One of the first steps in such operations was to enter the mouth of the Mississippi River, ascend to New Orleans and capture the city, closing off the entrance to Rebel ships. In mid-January 1862, Flag-Officer David G. Farragut undertook this enterprise with his West Gulf Blockading Squadron. The way was soon open except for the two forts, Jackson and St. Philip, above the Head of the Passes, approximately seventy miles below New Orleans. In addition to the forts and their armament, the Confederates had placed obstructions in the river and there were a number of ships, including two ironclads, to assist in the defense. Farragut based his operations from Ship Island, Mississippi, and on April 8, he assembled 24 of his vessels and Comdr. David D. Porter's 19 mortar schooners near the Head of the Passes. Starting on the 16th and continuing for seven days, the mortar schooners bombarded Fort Jackson but failed to silence its guns. Some of Farragut's gunboats opened a way through the obstruction on the night of the 22nd. Early on the morning of the 24th, Farragut sent his ships north to pass the forts and head for New Orleans. Although the Rebels attempted to stop the Union ships in various ways, most of the force successfully passed the forts and continued on to New Orleans where Farragut accepted the city's surrender. With the passage of the forts, nothing could stop the Union forces: the fall of New Orleans was inevitable and anti-climatic. Cut off and surrounded, the garrisons of the two forts surrendered on the 28th.
Fought between April 18 and 28, 1862, the clash at Forts Jackson and St. Philip settled who would control New Orleans during the Civil War. A Union Navy fleet set upon the pair of Confederate strongholds guarding the Mississippi south of the city. Their survival meant the city stayed out of reach of Federal troops, but their loss or circumvention would leave nothing else standing between the Union and the city itself.
By the time David Farragut steered his ships upriver from the south, New Orleans, the Confederacy's biggest city, already faced danger from the north. Months earlier, in October, Confederate naval forces had repelled the Union blockading squadron during the Battle of the Head of Passes. The danger looming from upstream was, in physical terms, farther away than the one approaching from the Gulf of Mexico, yet a string of defeats in Kentucky and Tennessee compelled Confederate authorities in Richmond, both the War and Navy Departments, to pull much of the region's defensive strength elsewhere. Troops and armaments had been steadily pulled from local posts, leaving almost nothing below the city by mid-April beyond the two forts and a handful of gunboats of dubious quality. Lincoln, unwilling to ease the pressure being applied from the north, launched a joint Army and Navy campaign aimed at the city from its southern approach. Benjamin F. Butler, a general with political roots, commanded the 18,000 Army troops assigned to the effort. Flag Officer David G. Farragut led a substantial portion of the West Gulf Blockading Squadron on the naval side, its strength bolstered by a largely independent flotilla of mortar schooners and their support craft under Commander David Dixon Porter.
The gathering point for this expedition was Ship Island in the Gulf. Once preparations were complete, the fleet entered the river, finishing that maneuver by April 14. The ships then took up positions close to the forts, and combat began on April 18 when the mortars started firing.
What followed split into two distinct phases: a bombardment from the raft-borne mortars that largely failed to damage the forts, and then, on the night of April 24, the successful run past the forts by the bulk of Farragut's fleet. That passage cost the Union one warship sunk and three more turned away, while the Confederate gunboats were almost entirely destroyed. The city fell soon after, with no meaningful resistance left to offer, dealing the Confederacy a wound so severe it never truly recovered. Though the forts still stood once the fleet had gotten past them, the disheartened soldiers inside Fort Jackson rose up in mutiny and compelled its surrender.
Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip stood on opposite banks of the Mississippi River, roughly 40 kilometers (25 mi) above Head of Passes, the spot where the river splits before reaching the Gulf of Mexico, and about 120 kilometers (75 mi) below New Orleans. Fort Jackson sat on the right bank, which ran south at that point, while Fort St. Philip occupied the left, or north, bank. Because of the river's curve, Fort Jackson actually lay east of its counterpart. Built in an earlier age to guard against sailing ships, the forts commanded a bend that forced vessels to slow down as they passed, leaving them almost motionless targets for the 177 guns trained on the channel.
Coastal fortifications had generally been thought safe from naval bombardment, but the Battle of Port Royal,
By April 18, Porter had positioned all 21 of his mortar schooners downstream from the still-intact barrier chain, hugging the riverbanks. Branches disguised the vessels' upper works, though the concussion of firing quickly stripped this covering away. The bombardment began that morning and continued steadily through the day. Porter wanted each mortar firing once every ten minutes, a pace that would have kept shells continuously airborne, but even without sustaining that rhythm, gunners loosed over 1,400 rounds on the opening day, with slightly reduced totals afterward.
Faulty fuses caused numerous shells to detonate prematurely. Starting on the second day, Porter addressed this by ordering every fuse cut to maximum length. This meant shells now struck the ground before exploding, but the soft soil absorbed and dampened much of the blast force.
Fort Jackson, sitting closer to the Union mortars, absorbed heavier punishment than Fort St. Philip, though damage at both remained limited overall. Only seven artillery pieces were put out of action, and the bombardment claimed just two Confederate lives. Confederate return fire proved similarly harmless to Porter's ships, sinking only the schooner USS Maria J. Carlton and killing a single sailor through hostile fire, while another man perished falling from rigging.
Porter had confidently told Welles and Fox that his mortars would pound both forts into ruins within two days. That prediction fell short, and the forts retained most of their fighting capability, yet a post-battle inspection of Fort Jackson revealed considerable wreckage: nearly all nearby scows and small boats had gone down except three; the drawbridge, furnaces for heating shot, and cisterns holding fresh water were destroyed; broken levees had flooded the casemate floors; tent platforms had burned or been shattered by shellfire; every casemate showed cracks, with some roofs punched clean through and brick scattered widely; the fort's outer walls were split from base to summit, letting light stream in; four guns had been knocked from their mounts, with eleven carriages and thirty beds and traverses damaged. Investigators tallied 1,113 mortar shells and 87 round shots embedded in solid ground and levees around the fort, estimated another 3,339 shells had landed in ditches and flooded defensive areas, and counted 1,080 shells that burst in midair above the structure. In total, 7,500 bombs had been launched.
Confederate Brigadier General Duncan, who commanded the forts, described that first day's toll on Fort Jackson: quarters inside the bastions and just outside the walls caught fire and burned early on; the citadel ignited repeatedly and firefighters doused it several times, but eventually the flames could not be controlled, leaving it fully ablaze by the time enemy guns fell silent and putting the powder magazines at serious risk, with some accounts claiming they too had caught fire. Officers and enlisted men alike lost bedding and clothing to these fires, worsening already miserable flood conditions. Duncan called the mortar fire precise and devastating, noting shells landing throughout the fort and knocking out some of the finest guns. He counted 2,997 mortar rounds fired against the position that day.
This destruction, layered atop constant flooding inside the fort, made conditions there nearly unbearable. Soldiers found safety from shrapnel and falling debris only by huddling in the wet, partly submerged casemates. Days of relentless, unanswered bombardment combined with scarce shelter, food, blankets, dry sleeping areas, and clean water to crush morale, and sickness alongside constant dread compounded the misery. These pressures triggered a mutiny among Fort Jackson's garrison on April 28, which set off a broader collapse of Confederate resistance below the city. Fort St. Philip surrendered as well, the Louisiana was destroyed by her own crew, and Confederate naval forces on Lake Pontchartrain were scuttled to prevent capture. This unraveling of morale, beginning with the mutiny, made the Union navy's task of occupying New Orleans
Once past Chalmette, where resistance amounted to little more than a formality, the Union fleet found the way to New Orleans open before it. On the afternoon of April 25, the fourteen surviving vessels reached the city and trained their guns upon it. General Lovell had already pulled his troops out, leaving nothing behind to mount a defense. Terrified residents ransacked shops, put torches to cotton stores and other goods, and left much of the riverfront in ruins. The still-unfinished CSS Mississippi was pushed into the water in haste, with hopes of towing her to Memphis, but when no towboats turned up, her captain ordered her burned instead.
Farragut called for the city's surrender. The mayor and council attempted to pass this burden onto Lovell, who simply handed it back to them. Three days of negotiations went nowhere, so Farragut finally sent a pair of officers ashore along with sailors and marines. At the Custom House, they lowered the state's banner and raised the flag of the United States in its place, marking the city's official return to Union hands.
At the same time, General Butler readied his men to strike at the forts now positioned behind Farragut's fleet. Commodore Porter, who commanded the flotilla still stationed below those forts, called on General Duncan to surrender them, but Duncan would not comply. Porter responded by renewing the bombardment, this time to soften the forts ahead of Butler's coming assault. On the night of April 29, however, the enlisted men garrisoning Fort Jackson rose up in mutiny, having reached the limit of what they would endure. Fort St. Philip took no part in this uprising, yet because the two forts depended on each other, it felt the consequences all the same. With no way to keep fighting, Duncan surrendered the following day.
It was in this same period that CSS Louisiana met her end. Commander John K. Mitchell, the Confederate States Navy's representative near the forts, had been left out of the surrender talks entirely. Believing himself under no obligation to honor the truce as a result, he gave the order to destroy Louisiana. She was set ablaze, broke free of her moorings, and drifted downriver, exploding as she passed Fort St. Philip. The explosion claimed the life of one soldier stationed there.
With Forts Jackson and St. Philip reduced to hollow remnants of Confederate river defense, the entire stretch of the Mississippi between the Gulf and Memphis lay open. Farragut spent several days having his fleet's battle damage repaired before dispatching forces upriver to compel other cities to yield. Lacking any real capacity to resist, both Baton Rouge and Natchez surrendered without a fight. Vicksburg proved a different matter entirely: the fleet's cannons simply could not reach Confederate positions perched on the bluffs above, and the modest army force accompanying the ships lacked the strength to break the deadlock. Farragut attempted a siege, but falling river levels threatened to leave his deep-draft vessels stranded, forcing him to pull back. Another full year would pass before Vicksburg finally fell.
Beyond its immediate military consequences, the loss of New Orleans likely influenced how European nations, chiefly Britain and France, approached the question of recognizing the Confederacy as a legitimate government. Confederate representatives stationed overseas found themselves facing a noticeably chillier reception, when they were received at all, once news of the city's capture reached London and Paris.
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