Washington Learns that Union Forces Captured New Orleans

April 25, 1862

President Lincoln is told by Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton that the Union Navy under  David G. Farragut has captured New Orleans.  Union ships slipped past Confederate forts commanding the river the previous day.  On arrival in New Orleans, Farragut demanded the surrender of the city, parts of which were already on fire.  The city does not surrender until April 28.

Illinois Senator Orville H. Browning makes one of his regular social-political visits to the White House: “At night I went to the Presidents.   He was alone and complaining of head ache.  Our conversation turned upon poetry, and each of us quoted a few lines from [British poet Thomas] Hood.  He asked me if I remembered the Haunted House.  I replied that I had never read it.  He rang his bell — sent for Hood’s poems and read the whole of it to me, pausing occasionally to comment on passages which struck him as particularly felicitous.  His reading was admirable and his criticisms evinced a high and just appreciation of the true spirit of poetry.  He then sent for another volume of the same work, and read me the ‘lost heir’, and then the ‘Spoilt Child’ the humour of both of which he greatly enjoyed.   I remained with about an hour & a half, and left high in high spirits, and a very genial mood; but as he said a crowd was buzzing about the d about the dor like bees, ready to pounce upon him as soon as I should take my departure, and bring him back to a realization of the annoyances and harrassments of his position.

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