Brave Deeds of Union Soldiers

The wharves were deserted and cobwebs lay on the shut and barred warehouses. The river itself, which had been thronged with the masts and funnels of a thousand crowded craft, flowed yellow and empty as the Amazon. As business stopped and wages grew scarce and scarcer, the fierce, dangerous part of the population which comes to the surface in times of siege began to gain more and more control of the city. For years there had been a secret society of criminals in New Orleans which had often controlled her city government. It was known as the "Thugs." Heretofore they hadalways worked in secret and underground. Now criminals who formerly would only come out at night and secretly, were seen on the streets in open day. As the Union lines closed around the city by sea and land, the crowds of men and women without money and without work became as fierce and bitter and dangerous as rats in a trap. For a while they told each other that the city could never be taken. Nothing afloat, they said again and again, can pass by the great chain and the sunken ships that block the river. If they could they would sink under the withering fire of Fort Jackson, a great star-shaped fort of stone and mortar, or Fort St. Phillip with its fifty- two guns which could be brought to bear on any vessel going up or down the river. Beyond the forts was a fleet of rams and gunboats and in a shipyard over at Jefferson, one of the suburbs of New Orleans, was building the great iron-clad Mi... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.