RULE OF BUTLER IN NEW ORLEANS. 259 have been recognized by Butler as a cowardly opportunity for advantage. In his office, in the St. Charles Hotel, the inscription was placed in plain sight: "There is no difference between a he and a she adder in their venom." His officers were allowed to indulge their rapacity and lust at will; they seized houses of respectable citizens, and made them the shops of infamous female characters; they appropriated the contents of winerooms; they plundered the wardrobes of ladies and gentlemen; they sent away from the city the clothing of whole families; they "confiscated " pianos, libraries, and whatever articles of luxury and ornament pleased their fancy, and sent them as presents and souvenirs to their friends at home. It was the era of plunder and ill-gotten gains. Fines were collected at pleasure. Recusants were threatened with ball and chain. A trade was opened in provisions for cotton, and Butler's own brother was made banker and broker of the corrupt operations, buying confiscated property, trading provisions and even military stores for cotton, and amassing out of the distress of an almost starving people fortunes of princely amount and villainous history. No wonder that the principal of these outrages lived in perpetual alarm for the safety of his life. It was said that he wore secret armour. He certainly was never for a moment without an armed guard. Sentinels walked in five paces of him; and when he sat in his office, several pistols lay beside him, and a chair allotted to the visitor was chained to the wall while a pistol capped but unloaded was placed, as if carelessly, within reach, as a cunning decoy to the supposed assassin.* A shocking incident of Butler's despotism in New Orleans was the execution of William B. Mumford, a citizen of the Confederate States, charged with the singular crime of having taken the Federal flag from the United States Mint, which was done before the city had surrendered, and was, in any circumstances, but an act of war. He was condemned to death for an insult to the enemy's ensign. It was scarcely to be believed that on such a charge a human life would be taken, deliberately and in cold blood. Butler was inexorable. The wife and children of the condemned man piteously plead for his life. Butler's answer was cruel and taunting. A number of citizens joined in a petition for mercy. Butler answered that We are indebted to James Parton, a Northern biographer of Butler, for mention of this ingenious device. Parton thus describes the arrangements of his hero's office, while transacting business: "The office was a large room, furnished with little more than a long table and a few chairs. In one corner, behind the table, sat, unobserved, a short-hand reporter, who, at a signal from the General, would take down the examination of an applicant or an informer. The General began business by placing his pistol upon the table, within easy reach. After the detection of two or three plots to assassinate him, one of the aides caused a little shelf to be made under the table for the pistol, while another pistol, unloaded, lay upon the table, which any gentleman, disposed to attempt the game of assassination, was at liberty to snatch." some vicious men in New Orleans had sent him defiant letters about Mumford's fate; that an issue had been raised, that it was "to be decided whether he was to govern in New Orleans or not "--and he decided it by keeping the word he had first pronounced, and sending Mumford to the gallows. The condemned man was one of humble station in life, and was said to have been of dissipated habits. But he was faultlessly brave. On the gallows the suggestion was made to him that he might yet save his life by a humiliating and piteous confession. He replied to the officer who thus tempted him: "Go away." He turned to the crowd, and said, with a distinct and steady voice: "I consider that the manner of my death will be no disgrace to my wife and children; my country will honour them." More than a thousand spectators stood around the gallows; they could not believe that the last act of the tragedy was really to be performed; they looked on in astonished and profound silence. Before the era of Butler in New Orleans, the Confederates had had a large and instructive experience of the ferocity of their enemies, and their disregard of all the rules of war and customs of civilization. At Manassas and Pensacola the Federals had repeatedly and deliberately fired upon hospitals. In the naval battle in Hampton Roads, they had hung out a white flag, and then opened a perfidious fire upon our seamen. At Newbern they had attempted to shell a town containing several thousand women and children, before either demanding a surrender, or giving the citizens notice of their intentions. They had broken faith on every occasion of expediency; they had disregarded flags of truces; they had stolen private property; they had burned houses, and desecrated churches; they had stripped widows and orphans of death's legacies by a barbarous law of confiscation; they had overthrown municipalities and State Governments; they had imprisoned citizens, without warrant and regardless of age or sex; and they had set at defiance the plainest laws of civilized warfare. Butler's government in New Orleans, and his "ingenious" war upon the helplessness of men and virtue of women was another step in atrocity. The Louisiana soldiers in Virginia went into battle, shouting: "Remember Butler!" It was declared that the display of Federal authority in the conquered city of New Orleans was sufficient to make the soldiers of the South devote anew whatever they had of life and labour and blood to the cause of the safety and honour of their country. And yet it was but the opening chapter of cruelty and horrours, exaggerated at each step of the war, until Humanity was to stand aghast at the black volume of misery and ruin. CHAPTER XVI. MORE THAN ONE-THIRD OF THE FEDERAL FORCES OPERATING AGAINST RICHMOND.-M'CLEL- HER DESTRUCTION.—A COURT OF INQUIRY.-NAVAL ENGAGement at drewRY'S BLUFF.— WEYER'S CAVE. MARVELLOUS In the first part of the year 1862, the Federal Government, with plans fully matured, had under arms about six hundred thousand men; more than one-third of whom were operating in the direction of Richmond. What Gen. McClellan himself said of the vast and brilliant army with which he designed to capture the Confederate capital was not extravagant. It was, indeed, "magnificent in material, admirable in dscipline and instruction, excellently equipped and armed." On March 1, 1862, the number of Federal troops in and about Washington had increased to 193,142, fit for duty, with a grand aggregate of 221,987. Such was the heavy and perilous force of the enemy that, in the spring of 1862, hung on the northern frontier of Virginia. Let us see what was in front of it on the Confederate line of defence. Gen. Joseph E. Johnston had in the camps of Centreville and Manassas less than thirty thousand men. These figures are from an official source. "Stonewall" Jackson had been detached with eleven skeleton regiments to amuse the enemy in the Shenandoah Valley, passing rapidly between Banks and Shields, and giving them the idea that he meditated a formidable movement. Such was the force that in North Virginia stood in McClellan's path, and deterred him from a blow that at that time might have been fatal to the Southern Confederacy. It had been the idea of the Washington authorities to despatch the Confederacy by a combined movement in the winter. The order of President Lincoln for a general movement of the land and naval forces against the Confederate positions on the 22d of February (Washington's birthday), directed that McClellan's army should advance for the immediate object of seizing and occupying a point upon the railroad southwest of Manassas Junction. But McClellan urged a different line of operations on the Lower Rappahannock, obtained delay, and did not advance. or In the mean time, Gen. Johnston had not been an idle spectator of the immense and overwhelming preparations of the enemy in his front. As a commander he was sagacious, quick to apprehend, and had that peculiar military reticence in connection with a sage manner and decisive action, that obtained the confidence of his men instead of exciting criticism, alarming their suspicions. In the first winter months of 1862, he had determined to change his line on the Potomac. All idea of offensive operations on it had long ago been abandoned. It had become necessary in Gen. Johnston's opinion that the main body of the Confederate forces in Virginia should be in supporting distance of the Army of the Peninsula, so that, in the event of either being driven back, they might combine for final resistance before Richmond. During winter, Johnston had been quietly transporting his immense stores towards the Rappahannock, removing every cannon that could be spared, and filling the empty embrasures with hollow logs painted black, which even at a few yards' distance much resembled thirty-two and sixtyfour pounders. Never were preparations for a retreat so quietly and skilfully made. So perfectly were all things arranged that all stores, baggage, sick, material, and guns were removed far to the rear, before Johnston's own men realized the possibility of a retreat. It was only as the different brigades fell into line, and the main army defiled southward through Fauquier County that the men discovered the movement to be a general and not a partial one. On the 8th of March, the Government at Washington issued a peremptory order to McClellan to move for the new base of operations he designed on the Chesapeake Bay, and to capture the Confederate batteries on the Potomac. The change in the situation which Johnston's skilful retreat had effected was not known in Washington. On the 9th of March McClellan's army was in motion. All Washington was in expectation; it was known that the second "On-to-Richmond " had commenced, and that the second grand army was about to pass its grand climacteric. At night Fairfax Court-House was reached, and the grand army encamped within a radius of two miles. At a late hour came the wonderful tidings that Manassas and Centreville had been evacuated! There was no enemy there. But there was a great conflagration in full flame, bridges and machine-shops just blown up, and other incendiary fires gleaming in the distance. Nothing was left in the famous Confederate position; it was desolate, though frowning in fortified grandeur. Thus had been accomplished in the face of the enemy the most successful and complete evacuation-the most secure and perfect retreat of which the history of the war furnishes an example. Johnston had safely escaped with his entire right and left wings; he had securely carried off every gun and all his provisions and munitions; and he had blown up or otherwise destroyed every bridge and culvert on turnpike and railroad along his route.* When Johnston's army had crossed the Rappahannock, it was drawn up in line, and waited a week for the enemy; but McClellan refused the challenge, and moved down the stream near the sea-board. To contract * In Gen. McClellan's official report of this period, he seeks to convey the impression to the reader that he was well aware of Johnston's evacuation, and only marched his troops to Manassas that they might gain "some experience on the march and bivouac preparatory to the campaign, and to get rid of the superfluous baggage and other impediments which accumulate round an army encamped for a long time in one locality." He continues: "A march to Manassas and back could produce no delay in embarking for the Lower Chesapeake, as the transports could not be ready for some time, and it afforded a good intermediate step between the quiet and comparative comfort of the camps round Washington and the rigours of active operations." If Gen. McClellan had designed to have written something to be laughed at, he could not have better succeeded than in the sentences quoted above. |