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£ MISSISSIPPI GULF COAST
Admiral David G. Farragut, who lived for a time in Pascagoula, commanded the U.S. Naval forces that conquered th(e city of New Orleans and captured the Confederate forts guarding the mouth of Mobile Bay. HNOC
returned to the business of trying to kill one another.
In late 1863 the stranglehold of the blockade on Mobile, the South’s last post on the Gulf, was tightened. On September 12 the Fanny (formerly the Fox), the last great blockade runner on the Havana-to-Mobile run, slipped into Mississippi Sound and headed east toward Grant’s Pass. Cut off by the Federal fleet at East Pascagoula, the crew of the Rebel vessel rammed the shore in front of the town, fired the ship, and splashed ashore. Mobile would receive few supplies by sea after that.
In the last big raid of the year, the Federals, acting on information supplied . by Claiborne, struck a tannery at Shieldsboro at dawn on October 15. They burned buildings, vats, and a large quantity of hides before withdrawing. Thereafter during the cold winter months they contented themselves with tightening /"the blockade and enforcing their grinding starvation policy. j With Rebel ranks thinned by desertion and outright opposition to con-/	scription agents, the Confederate authorities planned a grand sweep of the
/	piney woods for the spring of 1864 to flush out the jayhawkers and slackers.
I	In late April a picket of Louisiana troops lined up from Shieldsboro to the
north shore of Lake Pontchartrain and played anvil to the hammer of the 6th and the 20th Mississippi regiments, which swept through the pine barrens into Honey Island Swamp driving all before them. The jayhawkers who resisted or attempted escape were hunted down with dogs and summarily shot or hanged.
The Confederates conscripted all men aged 17 to 50 caught in the net, and
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