The magnitude of this novel enterprise was scarcely realized at the North when the first news was received. It was heralded that Farragut had simply "run by the forts," and there was an evident desire on the part of some to belittle the importance of the circumstance, although it was afterward acknowledged, by both Federal and Confederate reports, that he had passed under a terrific fire.
Captain Bailey, in the Cayuga, preceding the flagship up the river to the Quarantine Station, captured the Chalmette regiment encamped on the river-bank.
On the morning of the 25th, the Cayuga still leading in the progress up-stream, the Chalmette batteries, three miles below New Orleans, were encountered. The Hartford and the Brooklyn, followed by several others coming up rapidly, soon silenced them - and now the city was fairly under Union guns. This result had cost the fleet thirty-seven men killed and one hundred forty-seven wounded.
Farragut appointed eleven o'clock of the morning of the 26th as the hour "for all the officers and crews of the fleet to return thanks to Almighty God for his great goodness and mercy in permitting us to pass through the events of the last two days with so little loss of life and blood."
“Are you dejected? here is comfort. Are you sinful? here is righteousness. Are you led away with present enjoyments? here you have honours, and pleasures, and all in Christ Jesus. You have a right to common pleasures that others have, and besides them you have interest in others that are everlasting, that shall never fail; so that there is nothing that is dejecting and abasing in man, but there is comfort for it in Christ Jesus.”
–Richard Sibbes, Description of Christ