[Footnote: The next year, Quantrell, a noted guerrilla, with three hundred men, entered Lawrence, Kansas, plundered the bank, burned houses, and murdered one hundred and forty persons. Before a sufficient force could be gathered, he escaped.] THE WAR ON THE SEA AND THE COAST. CAPTURE OF NEW ORLEANS (April 25).--The effort to open the Mississippi was not confined to the north. Early in the spring, Captain Farragut, with a fleet of forty-four vessels, carrying eight thousand troops under General Butler, attempted the capture of New Orleans, which commands the mouth of the river. The mortar-boats, anchored along the bank under the shelter of the woods, threw thirteen-inch shells into Forts Jackson and St. Philip for six days and nights, with little effect. [Footnote: To conceal the vessels, they were dressed out with leafy branches, which, except by close observation, rendered them undistinguishable from the green woods. The direction had been accurately calculated, so that the gunners did not need to see the points towards which they were to aim. So severe was the bombardment that "windows at the Balize, thirty miles distant, were broken. Fish, stunned by the explosion, lay floating on the surface of the water."] Farragut then boldly resolved to carry the fleet past the defences to New Orleans. A chain supported on hulks and stretched across the river closed the channel. An opening broad enough to admit the passage of the gunboats having been cut through this obstruction, at three o'clock in the morning (April 24) they advanced, and poured grape and canister into the forts at short range, receiving in return heavy volleys from the forts and batteries on shore. [Footnote: The vessels were made partly iron-clad by looping two layers of chain cables over their sides, and their engines were protected by bags of sand, coal, etc.] After running a fearful gauntlet of shot, shell, and the flames of fire-rafts, they next encountered the Confederate fleet of thirteen armed steamers, including the steam-battery Louisiana and the iron-plated ram Manassas. After a desperate struggle twelve of the Confederate flotilla were destroyed. The fleet then steamed up to New Orleans, which lay helpless under the Union guns. The forts being now threatened in the rear by the army, soon surrendered. Captain Farragut afterward ascended the river, took possession of Baton Rouge and Natchez, and, running the batteries at Vicksburg, joined the Union fleet above.