Federal Lieutenant Commander Perkins went to Donaldsonville to obtain troops to prevent the ship's capture. While Farragut commended Perkins' handling of the ship, he informed him that "the principle was wrong a commander should never leave his vessel under such circumstances."

You smashed in the door [at New Orleans] in an unsurpassed movement and the success above became a certainty. . . . Your last move past Port Hudson has hastened the downfall of the Rebs."

Two days before, the commerce raider had destroyed two ships near New York, and now was reported to be "bound for the Provincetown mackerel fleet." The recent exploits of Lieutenant Read in C.S.S. Clarence, Tacony, and Archer had created great concern as to the safety of even New England waters.

The activity of Florida reinforced these fears, which had already been expressed to Lincoln in a resolution urging "the importance and necessity of placing along the coast a sufficient naval and military force to protect the commerce of the country from piratical depredations of the rebels. ..." On July 7, the President had requested Secretary Welles to "do the best in regard to it which you can. . ."

In preparation for an attack on battery Wagner, Morris Island, Maj Gen. Quincy A. Gillmore, commanding Union troops, operating against Charleston, mapped 2 diversionary maneuvers. the first, which took place on July 9th, involved the shelling of and a landing on James Island, west of Morris. The operation was executed as scheduled and without difficulty. The outnumbered Confederates proved unable to oppose it in force.

Gillmore's second diversion, an amphibious expedition against a railroad bridge on the South Edisto River below Morris Island, occurred on the 10th. On that dark, fog-shrouded morning, a small fleet out of Beaufort- a steamer, a tug, and a transport carrying 250 members of the 1st South Carolina Colored Infantry, plus 2 guns of the 1st Connecticut battery- passed up the South Edisto under Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson. The little flotilla had smooth sailing until about 4:00 A.M., when it reached Willstown Bluff, about 20 miles up the Edisto, at its confluence with the Pon Pon River. There, Higginson found his way blocked by spiked timbers sunk across the river's neck, as well as by a 3-gun battery, which withdrew when Higginson landed the troops on the bluff and took possession of the area.

The obstruction posed greater difficulties. The expeditionary force worked till 1:00 P.M. to clear them, with the aid of high tide, and only after the tugboat, the Governor Milton, had run aground. after passing the spikes, Higginson's transport, the Enoch Dean, moved barely a mile before again encountering Confederate artillery. and likewise running aground. Finally, early in the afternoon, the fleet cleared the shoals, and ascended the river, moving to within 2 miles of its objective, before the Dean grounded a second time. Unable to free the vessel, Higginson dispatched a tug to attack the rail bridge on its own.

It did not get far. Under an intense shelling by the gunners ashore, members of the Washington Artillery of New Orleans and South Carolina's Chestnut and Marion batteries, the tug was forced to retreat soon after starting out. With the Dean free once again, both ships returned downriver, only to have the Milton became entangled in the same obstructions it had cleared earlier. When Higginson's steamer, the John Adams, failed to pry the vessel loose, Higginson set the tug afire, transferred its crew to the transport, and returned in disgust, his expedition a failure.

"The Mississippi, [Army] transport passed us this morning. We boarded her and got papers to the 5th. The captain of the transport told the boarding officer that McClellan's army would have been annihilated but for the gunboats." Continual Confederate concern about the gunboats was noted by a British Army observer, Colonel Garnet J. Wolseley, who wrote that he "noted with some interest the superstitious dread of gunboats which possessed the Southern soldiers. These vessels of war, even when they have been comparatively harmless had several times been the means of saving northern armies.