The most powerful fleet that had ever sailed under the American Flag entered the deltas of the Mississippi River on the eighteenth day of April, in 1862, to force the surrender of the largest and richest city of the Confederacy. The strategic value of New Orleans was greater than that of any other point in the Southern States. Its export trade in cotton and sugar was larger than any city in the world. The great fleet had sailed from Hampton Roads on the second of February under the command of a man sixty years old, who was born in Tennessee, but offered himself to the Union cause--David G. Farragut. This photograph was taken as he stood on the deck of his flagship "Hartford." From the firing of the first gun on New Orleans a rain of iron fell upon the forts. During the first twenty-four hours Captain David Porter's gunners dropped fifteen hundred bombs in and around the forts. The night was hideous with fiery meteors and the day dense with smoke and flame. The roar of the artillery was deafening and shattered the windows in the houses for many miles. For six days and nights the terrific bombardment raged. When Farragut attempted to run the gauntlet to the metropolis of the gulf he swept the shores with a continuous fire of twenty-six thousand shells--a million and a half pounds of metal. The Confederates pushed a fire raft down the river to the daring admiral's flagship and the "Hartford" burst into flame. While one part of the crew fought the fire, the others poured metal from her guns onto the enemy. On the twenty-sixth day of April, Farragut entered the harbor to New Orleans and on the twenty-ninth unfurled the Stars and Stripes in the city.