With his six sloops-of-war, sixteen gunboats, twenty-one schooners, and five other vessels, forty-eight in all, carrying two hundred guns, all led by the Hartford, Farragut pushed his way through a sea of fire. Five fire-rafts--flat boats, filled with dry wood smeared with tar and turpentine--blazed among his ships, while shot and shell strewed his decks with the dead; but he cut his way to victory, and won immortal honor. Memphis had been captured by our gunboats and rams, under Admiral Davis, June 6. Of the eight Confederate gunboats in the flotilla, three, the Lovell, Beauregard, and Thompson, were destroyed by our vessels; four were captured and repaired for our use; while one, the Van Dorn, escaped. Five transports and some cotton were taken, and a large ram and two tugs on the stocks were destroyed. Sherman was ordered to go to Memphis to take command of the district of West Tennessee. When he entered the city, the stores, churches, and schools were closed. He caused these and the places of amusement to be opened, and put the fugitive slaves to work on the fortifications, and gave them food and clothing. The story is told of an Episcopal clergyman who came to Sherman, saying that he was embarrassed about his prayer for the President. "Whom do you regard as President?" said Sherman. "Mr. Davis," was his reply. "Very well; pray for Jeff Davis if you wish. He needs your prayers badly. It will take a great deal of praying to save him." "Then I will not be compelled to pray for Mr. Lincoln?" "Oh, no. He is a good man, and don't need your prayers. You may pray for him if you feel like it, but there's no compulsion." To some of the editors in Memphis, Sherman said, "If I find the press of Memphis actuated by high principle and a sole devotion to their country, I will be their best friend; but if I find them personal, abusive, dealing in innuendoes and hints at a blind venture, and looking to their own selfish aggrandizement and fame, then they had better look out; for I regard such persons as greater enemies to their country and to mankind than the men who, from a mistaken sense of State pride, have taken up muskets, and fight us about as hard as we care about." Sherman went to the _Argus_ office one day, and, in his familiar manner, said to the young editors, as he sat down and rested his feet on the table: "Boys, I have been ordered to suppress your paper, but I don't like to do that. I just dropped in to warn you not to be so free with your pencils. If you don't ease up, you'll get into trouble." When some complained of the acts of the soldiers, Sherman replied that he knew of several instances where their conduct had been provoked by sneering remarks about "Northern barbarians" and "Lincoln's hirelings." "People who use such language," he said, "must seek redress through some one else, for I will not tolerate insults to our country or cause."