other courts (to decide). You, however, will advise yourself, with your usual care and caution, what may be the effect, now that you are solemnly called upon to declare yourself in favor of the government, of contumaciously refusing to renew your allegiance to it, thereby inducing, from your example, others of your fellow-citizens to remain in the same opposition. I am glad to acknowledge your long and upright life as a man, your former services as an officer of the government, and the high respect I entertain for your personal character and moral worth; but I am dealing with your duty as a citizen of the United States. All these noble qualities, as well as your high social condition, render your example all the more influential and pernicious; and, I grieve to add, in my opinion, more dangerous to the interests of the United States than if, a younger man, you had shouldered your musket and marched to the field in the army of rebellion."

Dr. Mercer was, therefore, compelled to choose a position on one side or the other of the "broad line." He did not take the oath of allegiance, but preferred to enroll himself among the registered enemies of his country. After the departure of General Butler, he escaped to New York, where he has since resided.

General Butler proceeded in the work recommended by Jeff. Thompson, of "piling it on,” taking the material from the “piles” of the friends and comrades of that humorous officer. Another of his raking general orders appeared in October, which sensibly reduced the income of many conspicuous abettors of the rebellion.

"NEW ORLEANS, October 17, 1862.

"All persons holding powers of attorney or letters of authorization from, or who are merely acting for, or tenants of, or intrusted with any moneys, goods, wares, property or merchandise, real, personal or mixed, of any person now in the service of the so-called Confederate States, or any person not known by such agent, tenant or trustee to be a loyal citizen of the United States, or a bona fide neutral subject of a foreign government, will retain in their own hand, until farther orders, all such moneys, goods, wares, merchandise and property, and make an accurate return of the same to David C. G. Field, Esq., the financial clerk of this department, upon oath, on or before the first day of November next. Every such agent, tenant or trustee failing to make true return, or shall pay over or deliver any such moneys, goods, wares, merchandise and property to, or for the use, directly or indirectly, of any person not known by him to be a loyal citizen of the Anited States, without an order from these head-quarters, will be held per

sonally responsible for the amount so neglected to be returned, paid over or delivered. All rents due or to become due by tenants of property belonging to persons not known to be loyal citizens of the United States, will be paid as they become due, to D. C. G. Field, Esq., financial clerk of the department."

To complete the reader's knowledge of this subject, it is only necessary to add that, early in December, all registered enemies. who desired to leave New Orleans, not to return, were permitted to do so. Several hundreds availed themselves of this permission, much to the relief of the party for the Union.

It was these stern and rigorously executed measures which completed the subjugation of the secessionists of New Orleans, and deprived them of all power to co-operate with treason beyond the Union lines. It was these measures which alone could have prepared the way for the sincere return of Louisiana to the Union, the first requisite to which was the suppression of the small party which had traitorously taken the state out of the Union. To complete the regeneration of the state, it was necessary to foster the self-respect, protect the interests, maintain the rights, and raise in the scale of civilization that vast majority of the people of Louisiana, white and black, bond and free, whose interests and the interests of the United States are identical. This great and difficult work General Butler was permitted only to begin. The backwoodsman was called from his fields when the forests had been cleared, the swamps drained, the noxious creatures driven away, and all the rough, wild work done. There would have been a harvest in the following year, if the same energetic and fertile mind had continued to wield the resources of the land.

CHAPTER XXV.

MORE OF THE IRON HAND.

CERTAIN of the Episcopal clergy of New Orleans felt the rigor of General Butler's rule. The clergy of New Orleans were secessionists, of course. Any Christian minister capable of voluntarily living in the South during the last twenty years, or any one who

was permitted to live there, must have been a person prepared to forsake all and follow slavery. This was the condition of their exercising the clerical office in the cotton kingdom, and when the time came they complied with that condition.

One "eminent divine" of New Orleans, it is said, was heard to remark, that strong as was his belief in special providential dispensations, that faith would receive a severe, perhaps a fatal shock, if the yellow fever did not become epidemic in New Orleans that

summer.

When the confiscation act was about to be enforced, General Butler had a controversy with Dr. Leacock, the Episcopal clergyman who promised to read the burial service over Lieutenant De Kay, and broke his promise. This gentleman was of English birth, but had long resided in New Orleans, and, I believe, had become a citizen of the United States; at least, he expressly disclaimed the protection of British law. Dr. Leacock, it appears, now desired exemption from the decrees which tended to separate the friends from the enemies of the Union, and which denied all favor and privileges to those who openly adhered to the Confederate cause. He claimed to be a friend of the Union-in fact, a Union man. Still, he was not prepared to take the oath of allegiance. Now, this man, in November, 1860, had preached a sermon in favor of secession, which so exactly chimed in with the feelings of the secessionists, that four editions of it were printed and sold, to the number of 30,000 copies. The sermon was the usual silly tirade against "the abolitionists," "the savage fanatics of the North," the deadly enemies of a noble southern chivalry. It contained, also, the regulation paragraphs upon John Brown and his "band of assassins," and the "infidel preachers" who had "stimulated" them to fall upon a poor, innocent, unsuspecting, persecuted, patient, longsuffering southern people. The concluding paragraph of this sermon was the following:

"Now, in justice to myself, I must be permitted to make a remark before I close. But a few weeks ago I counseled you, from this place, to avoid all precipitate action; but at the same time to take determined action-such action only as you thought you could take with the conscious support of reason and religion. I give that counsel still. But I am one of you. I feel as a southerner. Southern honor is my honor-southern degradation is my degradation. Let

no man mistake my meaning or call my words idle. As a southerner, then, I will speak, and I give it as my firm and unhesitating belief, that nothing is now left us but secession. I do not like the word, but it is the only one to express my meaning. We do not secede our enemies have seceded. We are on the constitutionour enemies are not on the constitution; and our language should be, if you will not go with us, we will not go with you. You may form for yourselves a constitution; but we will administer among ourselves the constitution which our fathers have left us. This should be our language and solemn determination. Such action our honor demands; such action will save the Union, if anything We have yet friends left us in the North, but they can not act for us till we have acted for ourselves; and it would be as pusillanimous in us to desert our friends as to cower before our enemies. To advance, is to secure our rights; to recede, is to lay our fortunes, our honor, our liberty, under the feet of our enemies. I know that the consequences of such a course, unless guided by discretion, are perilous. But, peril our fortunes, peril our lives, come what will, let us never peril our liberty and our honor. I am willing, at the call of my honor and my liberty, to die a freeman; but I'll never, no, never, live a slave; and the alternative now presented by our enemies is secession or slavery. Let it be liberty or death!"

can.

General Butler ventured to adduce this sermon as evidence of its author's enmity to the Union. Dr. Leacock's reply revealed an astounding moral obliquity.

DR. LEACOCK TO GENERAL BUTLER.

"Major-General BUTLER:

"September 26, 1862.

"SIR:-I have not the sermon in manuscript to which, in your note of yesterday, you refer. It was taken down during its delivery by a reporter unknown to me, but, being called away from the church before it was concluded, he requested the manuscript, that he might not, as he said, give a wrong report of my views. It was given, but never returned. I send, however, a printed copy of it with this remark: that the last section, which I have circumscribed in pencil, was not delivered from the pulpit, as my whole congregation can testify; and that the publisher was immediately required by me, in the presence of several gentlemen, to state this fact, that it might be omitted in any future publication.

"There is no man that desires more heartily than myself the restoration of this Union, as it was before the present controversy arose. In evidence of this fact, I send you another sermon, which was delivered a few weeks after the one in print; and as you will find great difficulty in reading it, I will transcribe the closing paragraph, to which I desire to refer you, as expressive of what I felt then, and of what I feel now.

"The destruction of our Union! Oh, there is not a spot on the civilized globe that would not lament the destruction of our Union. The wail with which the fathers in Egypt pierced the air on the death of their first-born, is ready to burst forth from our bosoms if this dire event should happen. I speak for myself. There are those among us who may be indifferent to it. But the nations around us will consider it a world-wide misfortune. The discontented and aspiring, the exile and the adventurer, all seek its borders, and are at once elevated in the scale of being-enjoying a freer air, a fresher nature. It is the land of the aspirations and dreams of the poor and oppressed of other countries. Even tyrants who hate it, would not see it fall, because they know not how soon they may have to fly to it for refuge. Let the fanatics of the North consider this, and know that they owe it to the world, as well as to the South, to heal the wounds they have inflicted, and restore harmony and happiness to our country.

"The Union, the Union destroyed! Our hearts can scarcely bear the thought, much more the weight of such a visitation. Yet where is the mar to arrest its downward progress? North, south, east, west, where is the man? There is none to answer; there is none to be found. Then, Lord, we come to Thee. Save us, we perish! Say to the troubled spirits of men, be still, that there may be a calm-a calm for deliberate, just, devout consideration to heal the wounds that have been inflicted, and to restore peace and brotherly love to our Union, the Union which has been bequeathed us, the Union of equal rights and equal protection. O Lord, save this Union!' "These are still my feelings-I have never held any other-I have never avowed any other. And I mention this with the alone intention that I should not be misunderstood. I desire to be known as I am. My position demands that I should speak what I believe to be the truth. I have done this, and I leave all consequences with God. Please return me the manuscript.

"I am, sir, respectfully,

"W. T. LEACOCK."

General Butler, not desiring farther correspondence with this reverend person, caused Captain Puffer to ask him whether he had published any recantation or disavowal of the secession paragraph of his sermon, or whether any one else had done so for him. He replied: "I do not know. I only know that I requested the