"Now, therefore, I, Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America, and acting by their authority, appealing to the Divine Judge in attestation that their conduct is not guided by the passion of revenge, but that they reluctantly yield to the solemn duty of redressing, by necessary severity, crimes of which their citizens are the victims, do issue this my proclamation, and, by virtue of my authority as commander-in-chief of the armies of the Confederate States, do order

"First-That all commissioned officers in the command of said Benjamin F. Butler be declared not entitled to be considered as soldiers engaged in honorable warfare, but as robbers and criminals, deserving death; and that they and each of them be, whenever captured, reserved for execution.

“Second-That the private soldiers and non-commissioned officers in the army of said Butler be considered as only the instruments used for the commission of crimes perpetrated by his orders, and not as free agents; that they, therefore, be treated when captured as prisoners of war, with kindness and humanity, and be sent home on the usual parole that they will in no manner aid or serve the United States in any capacity during the continuance of this war, unless duly exchanged.

"Third-That all negro slaves captured in arms be at once delivered over to the executive authorities of the respective states to which they belong, to be dealt with according to the law of said states.

"Fourth-That the like orders be issued in all cases with respect to the commissioned officers of the United States when found serving in company with said slaves in insurrection against the authorities of the different states of this Confederacy.

"In testimony whereof, I have signed these presents, and caused the seal of the Confederate States of America to be affixed thereto, at the city of Richmond, on the 23d day of December, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two.

"By the President.

“J. P. BENJAMIN, Secretary of State."

"JEFFERSON DAVIS.

All unconscious of this fulmination, General Butler engaged passage in an unarmed transport. On the morning of his departure, December 24th, the levee was crowded with a concourse of people extremely different in their demeanor and their feelings from the angry and tumultuous throng which howled defiance at him when he landed on the first of May. He spent his last hour with Admiral Farragut on board the flag-ship Hartford, endeared to both of them by glorious recollections. "Admiral Farragut is one of the men I love," the general frequently remarks. He had

given the admiral a salute when the news came of his promotion to his present nobly-won rank in the naval service, and the admiral, in acknowledging the honor done him, had promised to return the compliment, with "interest," on the first opportunity. So, amid the thunder of the Hartford's great guns, mingling with that of a battery on shore, and the cheers of a great crowd of soldiers and citizens, the general and his family waved farewell to New Orleans.

On the voyage home, he passed within six hours sail of the Alabama-a fact which derives some interest from such paragraphs as the following:

"TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS REWARD!-$10,000!-President Davis having proclaimed Benjamin F. Butler, of Massachusetts, to be a felon, deserving of capital punishment, for the deliberate murder of Wm. B. Mumford, a citizen of the Confederate States at New Orleans; and having ordered that the said Benjamin F. Butler be considered or treated as an outlaw and conron enemy of mankind, and that, in the event of his capture, the officer in command of the capturing force do cause him to be immediately executed by hanging, the undersigned hereby offers a reward of ten thousand dollars ($10,000) for the capture and delivery of the said Benjamin F. Butier, dead or alive, to any proper Confederate authority.

"CHARLESTON, S. C., January 1."

"RICHARD YEADON.

"A daughter of South Carolina writes to the Charleston Courier from Darlington District:

"I propose to spin the thread to make the cord to execute the order of our noble president, Davis, when old Butler is caught, and my daughter asks that she may be allowed to adjust it around his neck.'"

After the departure of General Butler from New Orleans, his successor gave a fair trial to the policy of conciliation. Its failure was immediate, complete, and undeniable. "These southern people," remarks an English writer who went to New Orleans with Genera! Banks, "with their oriental civilization and institution, cherish something of the eastern impression that kindness and conciliation imply weakness, originating in a fear of inflicting punishment. They hated Butler and feared him; now the more foolish sort hope for a certain amount of impunity to the treason yet latent among them." General Banks was obliged to abandon the attempt to win

the enemies of his country by soft words and lenient measures. The testimony of notorious and unquestionable facts has shown the country, that, in so far as General Banks has adopted the policy of his predecessor, his administration of the Department of the Gulf has been successful, and that, in so far as he has essentially departed from that policy, his administration has been a failure. I had collected a great deal of evidence on this point, but as every witness tells the same story, and the facts are familiar to most of us, I will not increase the inagnitude of this too portly volume by detailing it. The Iron Hand, and that alone, till slavery is everywhere abolished, will keep down the insolent and remorseless faction who have brought such woful and wide-spread ruin upon the southern states. Slavery dead, the bitterness of that faction is as harmless as a cooing dove. Jefferson Davis, representing free Mississippi, would be innoxious in the senate itself. To kill slavery is to extract the poison from the fangs of all those deadly foes of their country and their kind. Till that is done, there is no safety but in the iron rule.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

AT HOME.

AND why was he recalled from the Department of the Gulf? It was natural that the general himself should feel some curiosity upon this subject. His curiosity has not been gratified.

Upon reaching New York, he found a letter from the president, requesting his presence at Washington. He was received by all the members of the government with the cordiality and consideration due to his eminent services. He asked the president the reason of his recall, and the president referred him to the secretary of state and the secretary of war, who, he said, had recommended the measure. The general then turned to Mr. Stanton. Mr. Stanton replied, that the reason was one which did not imply, on the part

of the government, any want of confidence in his honor as a man, or in his ability as a commander.

"Well," said the general, "you have now told me what I was not recalled for. I now ask you to tell me what I was recalled for."

"You and I," answered Mr. Stanton, laughing, "are both lawyers, and it is of no use you're filing a bill of discovery upon me, for I sha'n't tell you."

And that is all the explanation which the government has vouchsafed to him. We are justified, however, in concluding, that he was recalled for the purpose of conciliating the French government, which had expressed disapproval of his course toward the "foreign neutrals" of Louisiana.

The question then occurs: Has the French government been conciliated? Has the policy of conciliation been successful? Has it done any good to deprive the country of the services of one of its ablest administrators? The recent scenes in the harbor of Brest appear to answer the question.

General Butler's claim to be the senior major-general chanced to become a subject of conversation at the White House on this occasion. Without having bestowed much thought upon the matter, he had innocently taken it for granted that a major-general, who had won his rank and received his commission several weeks before any other major-general had been appointed, must necessarily be the senior major-general. "The president," as he afterward remarked in the formal statement of his claim, requested by the secretary of war, "has power to do many things; but it has been said that even 'an act of parliament could not make one's uncle his aunt.' How then can the president make a junior officer a senior officer in the same grade? I grant that the president can put the junior in command of the senior, but it took an act of congress to enable the president to do that. But there is no act of congress which has or can settle seniority of rank otherwise than as the almanac, taking note of the lapse of time, has settled it."

The president said that he knew nothing about the dates of the several commissions.

"I only know," said he, "that I gave you your commission the first of anybody."

The board of officers, to whom the question was referred, decided that the president was not bound by the almanac in dating com

missions, and could make a junior senior if he pleased. Consequently, General McClellan, General Fremont, General Dix, and General Banks, all of whom were appointed many weeks after General Butler, take rank before him. This is a small matter, hardly worth mentioning. It is merely one instance more of the systematic snubbing with which one of the very few men of first-rate executive ability in the public service has been rewarded.

In conversing with the president upon the negro question, the general said that if it was considered necessary to abolitionize the whole army, it was only necessary to give each corps a turn of service in the extreme south, where, as General Phelps remarked, the institution exists "in all its pride and gloom."

It is worthy of note, that the only members of the diplomatic corps at Washington, who called upon the general, were the Russian minister and the representative of the free city of Bremen. The friends and the foes of the United States, also the "neutral" powers, appear to have an instinctive perception of the fact, that General Butler is the Union Cause incarnate.

The people, I need not say, gave the returning general a reception that left no doubt in his mind that his labors in the southwest were understood and appreciated by his fellow-citizens. Baltimore, Washington, New York, Boston, Lowell, Philadelphia, IIarrisburgh, and Portland, have each received him with every circumstance which could enhance the dignity or the éclat of an honorable wel

come.

Or, to use the language of the Richmond Examiner:

"After inflicting innumerable tortures upon an innocent and unarmed people; after outraging the sensibilities of civilized humanity by his brutal treatment of women and children; after placing bayonets in the hands of slaves; after peculation the most prodigious, and lies the most infamous, he returns, recking with crime, to his own people, and they receive him with acclamations of joy in a manner that befits him and becomes themselves. Nothing is out of keeping; his whole career and its rewards are strictly artistic in conception and in execution. He was a thief. A sword that he had stolen from a woman-the niece of the brave Twiggs-was presented to him as a reward of valor. He had violated the laws of God and man. The law-makers of the United States voted him thanks, and the preachers of the Yankee gospel of blood came to