By an ordinance of secession passed on the 26th of January 1861, Louisiana joined the Confederate States. In the first year there was very little military activity in the state, but in April 1862 Admiral D. G. Farragut, with a powerful fleet, ascended the Mississippi past Forts Jackson and St Philip, which defended the approach to New Orleans, and a military force under General B. F. Butler occupied that city. The navigation of the river being secured by this success and by later operations in the north ending in July 1863 with the capture of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, the state was wholly at the mercy of the Union armies. The intervening months were signalized by the capture of Baton Rouge in May 1862--the Confederates vainly attempting to recapture it in August. Later, in April 1864, the Confederates under General Richard Taylor won a success against the Unionists under General N. P. Banks at Sabine Cross Roads near Mansfield and were themselves repulsed at Pleasant Hill, these battles being incidental to a campaign undertaken by the Union forces to crush opposition in western Louisiana. A large portion of the state was occupied by them in 1862-1865. There were various minor skirmishes in 1862 and 1863 (including the capture of the Federal camp at Berwick Bay in June 1863). As early as December 1862 the Union military government, at President Lincoln's direction, had ordered elections for Congress, and the men chosen were admitted in February 1863. In March 1864 also a state government to supersede the military rule was established under the president's auspices. By 1863 two parties had arisen among the loyal classes: one of radicals, who demanded the calling of a constitutional convention and the abolition of slavery; the other of conservatives. The former prevailed, and by a convention that assembled in April 1864 a constitution was framed closely following that of 1852 but repudiating the debt incurred by Louisiana as one of the Confederate states and abolishing slavery. Two-thirds of the delegates were from New Orleans. The legislature was ordered to establish free schools for the blacks, and was empowered to give them the suffrage: neither of these provisions, however, was carried out. The extent of the Union control is shown by the fact that the legislature of 1864 represented half of the area and two-thirds of the population of the state. The army stood at the back of the new government, and by the end of 1864 Louisiana was apparently "reconstructed." But in 1864 the opposition of Congress to presidential reconstruction had clearly developed, so that the electoral votes of Louisiana (like those of Tennessee) for president were not counted. By the spring of 1866 the ex-Confederates had succeeded in gaining possession of most of the local government and most of the state offices, although not of the governorship. The Republican party naturally became extremely radical. The radicals wished to have negro