27 April 1862, New Orleans, the aftermath

"New Orleans gone—and with it the Confederacy. Are we not cut in two? That Mississippi ruins us if lost. The Confederacy done to death by the politicians. What wonder we are lost. Those wretched creatures the Congress and the legislature could never rise to the greatness of the occasion. They seem to think they were in a neighborhood squabble about precedence.
The soldiers have done their duty.

Panoramic view of New Orleans, 1862,
Federal fleet at anchor in the river

All honor to the Army. Statesmen busy as bees about their own places or their personal honor—too busy to see the enemy at a distance. With a microscope they were examining their own interest or their own wrongs, forgetting the interest of the people they represent. They were concocting newspaper paragraphs to injure the government. No matter how vital, nothing—nothing—can be kept from the enemy. They must publish themselves night and day and what they are doing, or the omniscient Buncombe will forget them.
This fall of New Orleans means utter ruin to the private fortunes of the Prestons. Mr P came from New Orleans so satisfied with Mansfield Lovell and the tremendous steam rams he saw there. While in New Orleans, Burnside offered Mr P five hundred thousand dollars, a debt due from him to Mr P, and he refused to take it.* He said the money was safer in Burnside's hand than in his. And so it may prove—ugly as the outlook is now. Burnside is wide awake. He is not a man to be caught napping."

*John S. Preston sold his extensive Louisiana sugar plantations to John Burnside, a New Orleans merchant, in 1857. These holdings helped make Burnside the greatest sugar planter in the state during the 1860s.