City Hall, April 28, 1862.
To Flag-Officer D. G. Farragut, U. S. Flag-Ship Hartford:
Your communication of this morning is the first intimation I ever had
that it was by your strict orders that the United States flag was
attempted to be hoisted upon certain of our public edifices by officers
sent or there to communicate with the authorities. The officers who
approached me in your name disclosed no such orders and intimated no
such design on your part, not would I have for a moment entertained the
remotest suspicion that they could have been invested with power to
enter such an errand while the negotiations for a surrender between you
and the city authorities were pending. The interference of any force
under your command, as long as those negotiations were not brought to a
close, could not be viewed by us otherwise than as a flagrant violation
of those courtesies, if not of the absolute rights, which prevail
between belligerents under such circumstances. My views and sentiments
with reference to such conduct remain unchanged. You now review the
demands made in your former communication, and you insist on their being
complied with unconditionally, under a threat of bombardment within
forty-eight hours; and you notify me to remove the women and children
from the city that they may be protected from your shells.
Sir, you can but know that there is no possible exit from this city
for a population which still exceeds in number one hundred and forty
thousand, and you must therefore be aware of the utter inanity of such a
notification. Our women and children cannot escape from your shells, if
it be your pleasure to murder them on a question of etiquette. But if
they could, there are few among them who would consent to desert their
families and their homes, and the graves of their relatives in so awful a
moment. They would bravely stand the sight of your shells tearing up
the graves of those who are so dear to them, and would deem that they
died not ingloriously by the side of the tombs erected by their piety to
the memory of departed relatives.
You are not satisfied with the peaceful possession of an undefended
city, opposing no resistance to your guns, because of its bearing its
hard fate with something of manliness and dignity, and you wish to
humble and disgrace us by the performance of an act against which our
nature rebels. This satisfaction you cannot expect to obtain at our
hands.
We will stand your bombardment, unarmed and undefended as we are. The
civilized world will consign to indelible infamy the heart that will
conceive the dead and the hand that will dare to consummate it.
Respectfully,
John T. Monroe,
Mayor of New Orleans.
