If so,

a sufficient apology for aiding the rebellion by money and arms? all their army contractors, principally Jews, should be held blameless, for they have made immense fortunes by the war. Indeed, I suppose another Jew-one Judas-thought his investment in the thirty pieces of silver was a profitable one, until the penalty of treachery reached him.

66

When I took possession of New Orleans, I found the city nearly on the verge of starvation, but thirty days' provision in it, and the poor utterly without the means of procuring what food there was to be had.

I endeavored to aid the city government in the work of feeding the poor; but I soon found that the very distribution of food was a means faithlessly used to encourage the rebellion. I was obliged, therefore, to take the whole matter into my own hands. It became a subject of alarming importance and gravity. It became necessary to provide from some source the funds to procure the food. They could not be raised by city taxation, in the ordinary form. These taxes were in arrears to more than a million of dollars. Besides, it would be unjust to tax the loyal citizens and honestly neutral foreigner, to provide for a state of things brought about by the rebels and disloyal foreigners related to them by ties of blood, marriage, and social relation, who had conspired and labored together to overthrow the authority of the United States, and establish the very result which was to be met.

"Farther, in order to have a contribution effective, it must be upon those who have wealth to answer it.

"There seemed to me no such fit subjects for such taxation as the cotton brokers who had brought the distress upon the city, by thus paralyzing commerce, and the subscribers to this loan, who had money to invest for purposes of war, so advertised and known as above described.

"With these convictions, I issued General Order No. 55, which will explain itself, and have raised nearly the amount of the tax therein set forth. "But for what purpose? Not a dollar has gone in any way to the use of the United States. I am now employing one thousand poor laborers, as matter of charity, upon the streets and wharves of the city, from this fund. I am distributing food to preserve from starvation nine thousand seven hundred and seven families, containing 'thirty-two thousand four hundred and fifty souls' daily, and this done at an expense of seventy thousand dollars per month. I am sustaining, at an expense of two thousand dollars per month, five asylums for widows and orphans. I am aiding the Charity hospital to the extent of five thousand dollars per month.

"Before their excellencies, the French and Prussian ministers, complain of my exactions upon foreigners at New Orleans, I desire they would look at the documents, and consider for a few moments the facts and figures set forth in the returns and in this report. They will find that out of ten thousand four hundred and ninety families who have been fed from the fund,

with the raising of which they find fault, less than one-tenth (one thousand and ten) are Americans; nine thousand four hundred and eighty are foreigners. Of the thirty-two thousand souls, but three thousand are natives. Besides, the charity at the asylums and hospitals distributed in about the same proportions as to foreign and native born; so that of an expenditure of near eighty thousand dollars per month, to employ and feed the starving poor of New Orleans, seventy-two thousand goes to the foreigners, whose compatriots loudly complain, and offensively thrust forward their neutrality, whenever they are called upon to aid their suffering country

men.

"I should need no extraordinary taxation to feed the poor of New Orleans, if the bellies of the foreigners were as actively with the rebels, as are the heads of those who claim exemption, thus far, from this taxation, made and used for purposes above set forth, upon the ground of their neutrality; among whom I find Rochereau & Co., the senior partner of which firm took an oath of allegiance to support the constitution of the Confederate States. "I find also the house of Reichard & Co., the senior partner of which, General Reichard, is in the rebel army. I find the junior partner, Mr. Krutt schnidt, the brother-in-law of Benjamin, the rebel secretary of war, using all the funds in his hands to purchase arms, and collecting the securities of his correspondent before they are due, to get funds to loan to the rebel au taorities, and now acting Prussian consul here, doing quite as effective service to the rebels as his partner in the field. I find Mme. Vogel, late part ner in the same house of Reichard & Co., now absent, whose funds are man aged by that house. I find M. Paesher & Co., bankers, whose clerks and employés formed a part of the French legion, organized to fight the United States, and who contributed largely to arm and equip that corps. And a Mr. Lewis, whose antecedents I have not had time to investigate.

"And these are fair specimens of the neutrality of the foreigners, for whom the government is called upon to interfere, to prevent their paying anything toward the Relief Fund for their starving countrymen.

"If the representatives of the foreign governments will feed their own starving people, over whom the only protection they extend, so far as I see, is to tax them all, poor and rich, a dollar and a half each for certificates of nationality, I will release the foreigners from all the exactions, fines, and imposts whatever. I have the honor to be your obedient servant,

"BENJAMIN F. BUTLER,

"Major-General Commanding."

There is the whole case, written out, as all of General Butler's dispatches were, late at night, after twelve or fifteen hours of intense exertion. After such a reaper there is scanty gleaning.

Let me add, however, that among the documents relating to the

expedition may be found many little notes, written in an educated, feminine hand, conveying to General Butler the thanks of "Sister Emily," "Mother Alphonso," and other Catholic ladies, for the assistance afforded by him to the orphans, the widows, and the sick under their charge; "whose prayers," they add, "will daily ascend to Heaven in his behalf." During the latter half of his administration, the charities of New Orleans were almost wholly sustained from the funds wrung from "neutral" foes by Order No. 55. The great Charity hospital received, as we have seen, five thousand a month. To the orphans of St. Elizabeth, when the public funds ran low, the general gave five hundred dollars of his own money, besides ordering rations from the public stores at his own charge, and causing the Confederate notes held by the asylum to be disposed of to the best advantage. A commission was appointed, after a time, to inquire into the condition and needs of all the asylums, hospital and charity schools in the city, and to report the amount of aid proper to be allowed to each. The report of the commission shows, that the rations granted them by General Butler were all that enabled them to continue their ministrations to the helpless and the ignorant, the widow, the orphan, and the sick.

I may afford space for a letter addressed by the commanding general to the Superior of the Sisters of Charity, upon the occasion of the accidental injury of their edifice during the bombardment of Donaldsonville. It is not precisely the kind of utterance which we should naturally expect from a "Beast."

"HEAD-QUARTERS, DEPARTMENT OF THE GULF, "NEW ORLEANS, September 2d, 1862. "MADAME: I had no information until the reception of your note, that so sad a result to the sisters of your command had happened from the bombardment of Donaldsonville.

"I am very, very sorry that Rear-Admiral Farragut was unaware that he was injuring your establishment by his shells. Any injury must have been entirely accidental. The destruction of that town became a necessity. The inhabitants harbored a gang of cowardly guerillas, who committed every atrocity; amongst others, that of firing upon an unarmed boat crowded with women and children, going up the coast, returning to their homes, many of them having been at school at New Orleans.

"It is impossible to allow such acts; and I am only sorry that the righteous punishment meted out to them in this instance, as indeed in all others, fell quite as heavily upon the innocent and unoffending as upon the guilty.

"No one can appreciate more fully than myself the holy, self-sacrificing labors of the sisters of charity. To them our soldiers are daily indebted for the kindest offices. Sisters of all mankind, they know no nation, no kindred, neither war nor peace. Their all-pervading charity is like the boundless love of 'Him who died for all,' whose servants they are, and whose pure teachings their love illustrates.

"I repeat the expression of my grief, that any harm should have befallen your society of sisters; and 1 cheerfully repair it, as far as I may, in the manner you suggest, by filling the order you have sent to the city for provisions and medicines.

"Your sisters in the city will also farther testify to you, that my officers and soldiers have never failed to do to them all in their power to aid them in their usefulness, and to lighten the burden of their labors. "With sentiments of the highest respect, believe me, your friend, "BENJAMIN F. BUTLER.

.6 SANTA MARIA CLARA,

"Superior and Sister of Charity."

The relief afforded by Order No. 55, liberal as it was, did but alleviate the distresses of the poor. The whole land was stricken. The frequent marching of armed bodies swept the country of the scanty produce of a soil deserted by the ablest of its proprietors. In the city, life was just endurable; beyond the Union lines, most of the people were hungry, half naked, and without medicine.

"The condition of the people here," wrote General Butler to General Halleck, September 1st, "is a very alarming one. They literally come down to starvation. Not only in the city, but in the country; planters who, in peaceful times, would have spent the summer at Saratoga, are now on their plantations, essentially without food. Hundreds weekly, by stealth, are coming across the lake to the city, reporting starvation on the lake shore. I am distributing, in various ways, about fifty thousand dollars per month in food, and more is needed. This is to the whites. My commissary is issuing rations to the amount of nearly double the amount required by the troops. This is to the blacks.

"They are now coming in by hundreds-say thousands-almost daily. Many of the plantations are deserted along the "coast," which, in this country's phrase, means the river, from the city to Natchez. Crops of sugar-cane are left standing, to waste, which would make millions of dollars worth of sugar."

Such were some of the fruits of this most disastrous and most

beneficent of all wars. Such were some of the difficulties with which the commander of the Department of the Gulf had to contend during the whole period of his administration. Clothed with powers more than imperial, such were some of the uses to which those powers were devoted.

The government sustained Order No. 55. In December, the money derived from it having been exhausted, the measure was repeated.

"NEW ORLEANS, December 9, 1862. "Under General Order No. 55, current series, from these head-quarters, an assessment was made upon certain parties who had aided the rebellion, 'to be appropriated to the relief of the starving poor of New Orleans.'"

"The calls upon the fund raised under that order have been frequent and urgent, and it is now exhausted.

"But the poor of this city have the same, or increased necessities for relief as then, and their calls must be heard; and it is both fit and proper that the parties responsible for the present state of affairs should have the burden of their support.

"Therefore, the parties named in Schedules A and B, of General Order No. 55, as hereunto annexed, are assessed in like sums, and for the same purpose, and will make payment to D. C. G. Field, financial clerk, at his office, at these head-quarters, on or before Monday, December 15, 1862."

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE WOMAN ORDER.

Ir concerns the people of the United States to know that seccssion, regarded as a spiritual malady, is incurable. Every one knows this who, by serving on "the frontiers of the rebellion," has been brought in contact with its leaders. General Rosecrans knows it. General Grant knows it. General Burnside knows it. General Butler knows it. True, a large number of Southern men who have been touched with the epidemic, have recovered or are recovering. But the hundred and fifty thousand men who own the