Could Governor Moore have done anything to slow the fall of New Orleans?

major bill

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
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Aug 25, 2012
I thought we might look at a politician tonight. Thomas Overton Moore was the governor of Louisiana. How much did he help of hurt the Confederate cause?

He did support secession and ordered the Louisiana militia to seize U.S. military installations in Louisiana while the secession convention was in session. He put Col. Braxton Bragg in command of the Louisiana military. Not sure this helped or hurt the Confederacy.

My real reason for bringing up Moore is to ask how much he helped or hurt the fall of New Orleans. I am not sure there was anything Governor Moore could have done to better protect New Orleans. The government in Richmond seems to have paid little attention to the defense of New Orleans or perhaps believed New Orleans was a lost cause and not worth the effort. Governor Moore may have had limited resources, but is there anything he could have done to slow down the Union advance in Louisiana?
 
IMO Gov. Moore was too intent on supporting the Confederacy elsewhere with troops and arms. Relying on a "Chain" to keep Union ships from reaching New Orleans was a farce. Additionally, the troops at Ft. Jackson and Ft. St. Philip were poorly recruited, trained and motivated. Many deserted when the heavy action commenced, and some had threatened mutiny prior to that. New Orleans was basically easy pickings. Again, my 2 cents.
 
IMO Gov. Moore was too intent on supporting the Confederacy elsewhere with troops and arms. Relying on a "Chain" to keep Union ships from reaching New Orleans was a farce. Additionally, the troops at Ft. Jackson and Ft. St. Philip were poorly recruited, trained and motivated. Many deserted when the heavy action commenced, and some had threatened mutiny prior to that. New Orleans was basically easy pickings. Again, my 2 cents.
The chain and forts did not provide New Orleans with as much defense as it was thought they might. I never understood the poorly trained troops. It would have seemed like Moore would have retained a cadre of well trained troops, especially artillery troops. To these Moore could have added troops in training. I wonder if Governor Moore communicated the situation to Richmond? The fall of New Orleans was a major blow to the
Confederacy, yet Richmond did not give the defense of New Orleans the attention it deserved.
 
New Orleans was well defended. It had Forts Phillip and Jackson. There was a chain barrier. There was a collection of smaller armed vessels and an almost completed ironclad. But the biggest protection was the shallow and silty barriers at the passes out of the river into the Gulf of Mexico. The problem wasn't the defense.
The problem for the Confederates was the US Commander. He got his ships over the passes. He knew he had to risk passing the forts, but he had steam power to make the attempt.
As far as the work on the Confederate ironclad, it seems that's unreadiness was not a secret. Unionists and enslaved observers most likely had plenty of opportunity to observe and report progress on the Confederate vessel.

The other Louisiana problem was that A.S. Johnston had determined to get even with Grant and the Yankees for Johnston's embarrassment in February and therefore he stripped Confederate garrisons from all over the west. New Orleans was not unique. The Confederates also surrendered at Island No. 10 and abandoned the town of Pensacola, FL.
 
David Farragut speculated that if the flotilla could pass the forts it could force the surrender of New Orleans without major damage or loss of live. Since he had relatives living there, it was an important consideration.
One should remember that there were plenty of pro slavery former Whigs in New Orleans who supported the continuation of slavery, but not by means of breaking up the country. Also the city had a relatively smaller enslaved population and port workers tended to be foreign immigrants as in most US cities.
 
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I thought we might look at a politician tonight. Thomas Overton Moore was the governor of Louisiana. How much did he help of hurt the Confederate cause?
Interesting question.

Personally, I think his largest contribution to the Confederate cause was moving a Louisiana "camp of instruction" from New Orleans up the railroad to Tangipahoa Parish.

Camp Moore as it was known became one of the largest training camps for CSA recruits in the Western Theater.

 
Sirs, I have thought that one of the reasons that the South didn't put more effort into the defense of New Orleans was that they didn't believe that the North was capable of launching a successful operation at that point in time. With the more than a few officers that came south from the USN and USA, they brought with them an assessment that with the current state of readiness of the USN and USA, an operation of this magnitude, so far away from an easily supplied Northern controlled base, was beyond the capacity of the North.

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 
I don't know how but if he could have made Richmond realize that too much faith was being placed on the "no- cotton- exportation -policy" and not enough was being realized just how much in resources New Orleans (and Louisiana) had to offer. Just for the financial wealth alone (specie) a little more effort should have been forthcoming. He was probably as blind to the matter as Richmond was though.The authorities should have been alerted before any actions were made by the Northern forces.
 
The Confederates knew that New Orleans could be blockaded, which reduced its value to the Confederacy, as noted by @DaveBrt . What they did not consider was that when New Orleans was re-occupied by the US, instead of having to blockade it, the infrastructure of New Orleans was part of the support system for operations in the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean and the lower Mississippi too.
The Confederacy had already lost Ft. Pillow early in April 1862. When Halleck slowly pushed on to Corinth, MS, the Confederacy also had to pull out of Ft. Pillow and they did not garrison Memphis either.
Vicksburg was the important point. The Shreveport/Monroe railroad approached the west bank of the river at Vicksburg, and the proximity of the mouth of the Red River also created a logistical link to western LA and TX.
 
In the late winter of 1863, the same thing happened at Vicksburg. Farragut got the Hartford and its escort above Port Hudson, against even tougher odds. And the Ellet brothers got one ram below Vicksburg. Grant occupied the west bank of the Mississippi and that cut off almost all communication between LA and MS. The key factor was Farragut. He knew what to do with steamships.
 
The theory that once the Napoleonic era begins and the armies are so much larger, the impact of leadership is reduced and the outcome is determined by national will and logistical systems is probably true. But on the water, the forces are much smaller. Command and control is much tighter. The normal squadron has an entirely professional officer corp, no politicians involved and usually no journalists watching. At sea, and on the rivers, the captains and the flag officers matter immensely. Early in the war Farragut was the best on either side. And David Porter got better at it with experience.
Naval warfare is more like basketball, and less like football, than land warfare. If your team has Larry Bird and King James, you're going to win most of the time.
 
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