In the chaotic weeks following the bombardment of Fort Sumter, Louisiana's state militia mobilized to defend New Orleans and control traffic on the Mississippi River, a strategic artery both the Union and Confederacy recognized as vital. The city, the Confederacy's largest, would fall to Union forces just over a year later in April 1862.
New Orleans in the spring of 1861 was a city bracing for a war few understood the scale of. As the largest city in the Confederacy and the busiest port on the Gulf of Mexico, it sat astride the Mississippi River, the continent's great commercial highway, and both sides understood that whoever controlled it controlled the interior of the country.
Louisiana militia units, hastily organized from local companies and state guards, moved to fortify the river approaches and the city itself, though the defenses would prove badly inadequate. A year later, in April 1862, Admiral David Farragut's Union fleet ran past the forts guarding the river mouth and forced the city's surrender without the prolonged siege Confederate planners had expected, delivering one of the war's most consequential early blows to the Confederacy's economy and morale.