The impact of this event cannot be exaggerated. Cannons boomed 100-gun salutes in northern cities. Newspapers that had bedeviled Sherman for years now praised him as the greatest general since Napoleon. In retrospect the victory at Mobile Bay suddenly took on new importance as the first blow of a lethal one-two punch. “Sherman and Farragut,” exulted Secretary of State Seward, “have knocked the bottom out of the Chicago platform.”
