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So it came about that when, in order to secure the control of the Mississippi, the national government resolved upon the capture of New Orleans, Farragut was chosen to lead the undertaking. Several officers, noted for their loyalty, good judgment, and daring, were suggested, but the Secretary of the Navy said, “Farragut is the man.”

The opportunity for which all his previous noble life and brilliant services had been a preparation came to him when he was sixty-one years old. The command laid upon him was “the certain capture of the city of New Orleans.” “The department and the country,” so ran his instructions, “require of you success. … If successful, you open the way to the sea for the great West, never again to be closed. The rebellion will be riven in the center, and the flag, to which you have been so faithful, will recover its supremacy in every state.”

On January 9, 1862, Farragut was appointed to the command of the western gulf blockading squadron. “On February 2,” says the National Cyclopedia of American Biograph, “he sailed on the steam sloop Hartford from Hampton Roads, arriving at the appointed rendezvous, Ship Island, in sixteen days. His fleet, consisting of six war steamers, sixteen gunboats, twenty-one mortar vessels, under the command of Commodore David D. Porter, and five supply ships, was the largest that had ever sailed under the American flag. Yet the task assigned him, the passing of the forts below New Orleans, the capture of the city, and the opening of the Mississippi River through its entire length was one of difficulty unprecedented in the history of naval warfare.”

Danger or death had no terror for the brave sailor. Before setting out on his hazardous enterprise, he said: “If I die in the attempt, it will only be what every officer has to expect. He who dies in doing his duty to his country, and at peace with his God, has played the drama of life to the best advantage.”

The hero did not die. He fought and won the great battle, and thus executed the command laid upon him,–“the certain capture of the city of New Orleans.” The victory was accomplished with the loss of but one ship, and 184 men killed and wounded,–“a feat in naval warfare,” says his son and biographer, “which has no precedent, and which is still without a parallel, except the one furnished by Farragut himself, two years later, at Mobile.”