Unless this boom could be broken the ships could not ascend. Farragut ordered two gunboats to this dangerous task. Stealing up at night, they accomplished it. On the night of April 23d, the ships advanced, a column led by the _Cayuga_ following the eastern bank; Farragut himself, in the _Hartford_, led the column which was to pass close to Fort Jackson. Now came a rare blending of the splendid and the terrible. The night was calm, with starlight and a waning moon; but in the fiercer flashings of the combat the world seemed on fire. In arcs rising far toward the zenith the shells of the mortars mounted and fell; broadsides thundered; from barbette and casemate rolled an incessant reply. Suddenly above the flashes of guns came a steady glare: fire-ships, their pitch-pine cargoes all ablaze, swept into the midst of the struggling fleet. The attacking lines became confused in the volumes of smoke settling down upon the stream. In the blinding vapor friend could scarcely be told from foe. The captain of the Confederate _Governor Moore_, finding that the bow of his own ship interfered with the aim of his gun, coolly blew the bow to pieces with a discharge, then through the shattered opening renewed the battle. A Confederate tug pluckily pushed a fire-raft directly upon the _Hartford_. The tug and its crew disappeared and the _Hartford_ ran aground; the sailors, undaunted, stuck to their work; the ship was pulled off by her own engines, while a deluge from the pumps put out the fire. For an hour and a half the roar and the flashings continued; as the dawn came, the battle was hushed. Three Federal gunboats had been driven back and one sunk, but the main fleet was above the forts. The ships in general were scarred and battered in the night’s encounter, but little harmed, and Farragut made ready at once to go on his way.[225] The passing of the forts made certain the fall of New Orleans. The small Confederate army under General Mansfield Lovell was at once withdrawn and the city left to its fate. Farragut appeared before it, after passing rapidly up the intervening seventy miles, at noon, April 25th. The population of one hundred and fifty thousand souls, seething with natural mortification and passion, lay under the broadsides of the fleet, and, after one outburst, in which a mob trampled on the United States flag, they sullenly submitted. With all possible expedition, the forts having given up, the land forces ascended the river and, on May 1st, took possession.[226] Farragut soon ascended the river to Vicksburg with a large part of his fleet. SYNOPSIS OF THE PRINCIPAL EVENTS, CHIEFLY MILITARY, BETWEEN FARRAGUT’S CAPTURE OF NEW ORLEANS, 1862, AND THE BATTLES OF GETTYSBURG AND VICKSBURG, 1863