The fort Farragut ran past to take New Orleans
Fort Jackson is a masonry fort on the west bank of the Mississippi in Plaquemines Parish, about 70 miles below New Orleans and 40 miles up from the mouth of the river. After the War of 1812 Andrew Jackson advised a stronger defense of the river, and the fort named for him went up between 1822 and 1832, facing the older Fort St. Philip across the water. Together they guarded the approach to New Orleans from the Gulf.
In April 1862 Flag Officer David Farragut brought a Union fleet up the river. From 18 April the mortar schooners of his foster brother, David D. Porter, moored under the riverbanks with bushes on their mastheads for camouflage, kept up a steady bombardment. It did surprisingly little: the shells buried themselves in the soft ground, and only seven guns were disabled and two men killed. A chain stretched across the river below the forts was the real barrier. On the night of 24 April Farragut's ships ran past the guns, losing one warship while the Confederate gunboats were all but wiped out. Cut off, the garrison of Fort Jackson mutinied against its officers, the fort fell on 28 April, and Union forces went on to take New Orleans, the largest city in the Confederacy.
The Union then used the fort as a prison, and held the French champagne merchant Charles Heidsieck here for seven months on charges of spying. In December 1863 Black soldiers of the Corps d'Afrique stationed at the fort rose against low pay and the brutal discipline of a white officer, Colonel Augustus Benedict.
The state sold the fort in 1927 to H. J. Harvey and his wife, who gave it to the parish in 1960, the year it became a National Historic Landmark. The parish began restoring it in 1961 from what the National Park Service described as a jungle of mud-filled tunnels infested with snakes. Hurricane Katrina put it under more than 30 feet of water in 2005. Today the grounds are a park, the interior opens only on occasion, volunteers are working to open more of it, and the Fort Jackson Museum sits in the parish office about a mile southwest.
Other places on the map within a couple of hours.
