Combat· American Civil War
Baton Rouge Arsenal recovery
A bloodless flag-raising in the rapid Union sweep up the river after New Orleans fell.
With the lower Mississippi opened, the squadron pushed upstream to take possession of the river towns, and on 7 May 1862 three armed boats of Marines from the gunboat USS Iroquois landed at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and took the United States arsenal there, raising the American flag over the recovered federal facility. The Confederates had not held the place in strength, and the seizure met no resistance. No casualties resulted. It was a small but symbolic act, the recovery of a federal arsenal lost to the secession, and part of the swift consolidation by which the Union extended its grip up the lower Mississippi in the weeks after the capture of New Orleans, the Marines' boats going ashore to claim the river towns the navy's passage had laid open.
Podcast episodes on American Civil War
Record no. 436