After a well-earned rest the whole fleet moved up to New Orleans on the twenty-fifth, turning the city's lines five miles downstream without the loss of a man, for the simple reason that these had been built only to resist an army, and so lay with flanks entirely open to a fleet. General Lovell (the able commander who had so often warned the Confederate Government of the danger from the sea) at once evacuated the defenseless city. The best of the younger men were away with the armies. The best of the older men were too few for the storm. And so pandemonium broke loose. Burning boats, blazing cotton, and a howling mob greeted Farragut's arrival. But after the forts (now completely cut off from their base) had surrendered on the twenty-eighth a landing party from the fleet soon brought the mob to its senses by planting howitzers in the streets and lowering the Confederate colors over the city hall. On the first of May a garrison of Federal troops took charge of New Orleans and kept it till the war was over. New Orleans was a most pregnant Federal victory; for it established a Union base at the great strategic point where sea-power and land-power could meet most effectively in Mississippi waters. But it was followed by a perfect anti-climax; for the Federal Government, having planned a naval concentration at Vicksburg, determined to put the plan in operation; though all the naval and military means concerned made such a plan impossible of execution in 1862. Amphibious forces--fleets and armies combined--were essential. There was no use in parading up and down the river, however triumphantly, so long as the force employed could only hold the part of the channel within actual range of its guns. The Confederates could be driven off the Mississippi at any given point. But there was nothing to prevent them from coming back again when once the ships had passed. An army to seize and hold strategic points ashore was absolutely indispensable. Then, and only then, Farragut's long line of communication with his base at New Orleans would be safe, and the land in which the Mississippi was the principal highway could itself be conquered. "If the Mississippi expedition from Cairo shall not have descended the river, you will take advantage of the panic to push a strong force up the river to take all their defenses in rear." These were the orders Farragut had to obey if he succeeded in taking New Orleans. They were soon reinforced by this reminder: "The only anxiety we feel is to know if you have followed up your instructions and pushed a strong force up the river to meet the Western flotilla." Farragut therefore felt bound to obey and do all that could be done to carry on a quite impossible campaign. So, with a useless landing party of only fifteen hundred troops, he pushed up to Vicksburg, four hundred miles above New Orleans. The nearest Federal army had been halted by the Confederate defenses above Memphis, another four hundred higher still.