Thus was timely and satisfactorily completed an act, by which Farragut signalized and sealed the fact that the conquest of New Orleans and of its defenses, from the original conception of the enterprise to its complete fulfillment by the customary tokens of submission and taking possession, was wholly the work of the United States Navy; of which he, by his magnificent successes, became the representative figure. It was a triumph won over formidable difficulties by a mobile force, skillfully directed and gallantly fought. By superior promptitude and a correct appreciation of the true strategic objective had been reduced to powerlessness obstacles not to be overcome by direct assault, except by a loss of time which would have allowed the enemy to complete preparations possibly fatal to the whole undertaking. Forts Jackson and St. Philip, which the fleet could not have reduced by direct attack, fell by the severance of their communications. It is not to be questioned that the moral effect of the passage of the forts, succeeded, as it was, by the immediate fall of the great city of the Mississippi, was very great; but it was not upon the forts themselves, nor in the unexpected mutiny of the garrison, that that effect was chiefly manifested. Great as was the crime of the men, they showed by their act a correct appreciation of those results to the forts, from the passage of the fleet, which some have sought to ignore--results physical, undeniable, fatal. It was not moral effect, but indisputable reasoning which sapped the further resistance of men--brave till then--to whom were wanting the habit of discipline and the appreciation of the far-reaching effects upon the fortunes of a campaign produced by a prolonged, though hopeless, resistance. They saw that the fate of the forts was sealed, and beyond that they recognized no duties and no advantages. On the scene of his exploit Farragut reaped the material fruits of the celerity in which he believed; and which he had reluctantly for a space postponed, at the bidding of superior authority, in order to try the effect of slower methods. These being exhausted, he owed to the promptness of his decision and action that the Louisiana, on whose repairs men were working night and day, did not take the advantageous position indicated to her by the officers of the forts; and that the Mississippi, the ironclad upon which not only the designers, but naval officers, founded extravagant hopes, was neither completed nor towed away, but burned where she lay. The flaming mass, as it drifted hopelessly by the Hartford, was a striking symbol of resistance crushed--of ascendency established over the mighty river whose name it bore; but it was a symbol not of moral, but of physical victory.