"The first thing brought to the general's notice by the attendant clerks was a petition from the sheriff of New Orleans for the relief of certain prisoners. A tall, shrewish woman, now entered and asked for an order to make a tenant pay rent. Next came a woman, child in arms, detailing her sufferings, her husband having been impressed into the Confederate service. An old and very respectable gentleman desired a pass for a family of a mother, six children, and four servants, to Baton Rouge. A committee appeared, desiring work on the streets for poor men who had been in rebel service; petition instantly granted, if the parties named would take the oath of allegiance. A gentleman appears, who wishes to get an order to repair a building occupied by United States troops as a hospital; he was waved out with impatience. Merchants now crowd in with all sorts of questions regarding business matters. An officer of the navy obtrudes his gold-laced cuff, and places a letter on the table from Commodore Porter; it is opened, read, and answer dictated, in a moment. A man now presents himself, and says his negro, who had been absent several days, said he was forcibly retained in the national lines; General Shepley rises from his seat, his eyes flash; he replies, mildly but positively, that he don't believe the negro's story, and demands a responsible white man for a witness, the complainant leaving precipitately. Old gentleman in an undertone asks a favor; it is granted, and old gentleman goes off delighted. An old lady in black now comes in, with a little negro girl following in the rear, carrying her work-bag. Old lady seats herself on the lounge, and the little negro girl crouches on the carpet at her feet. General Shepley gets up and speaks to old lady; she says nothing, pouts at the contraband, and gets some answer that is satisfactory-for exit old lady, little negro, and work-bag.

"A delegation of merchants now appear, who have some conversation about the currency. A city official makes a report about cleaning the streets. A Maine skipper comes in his eyes enlarged, and his face on a broad grin. General Shepley is from his town; but something more, the Maine skipper has found his vessel over at Algiers, that was taken from him some months before by the privateers; he gets an order to take possession of his vessel, and announces that he has more sugar offered him for New York than he can put in his newly gained prize. Meantime, two handsome young

ladies in gay colors have been quietly watching the proceedings through their half-drawn-aside veils, never deigning to come forward to make their requests. The General approaches them, and a most animated conversation in an undertone, so far as they are concerned, ensues. The general listens very attentively, evidently becomes interested, and grants the request. Now he goes to the ladylike personage in black. It is clear she is a widow; and the way she rolled her large, speaking, dark creole eyes up into the face of the general, was well calculated to make an impression on the ‘governor' if he had been born even farther north than Maine. The lady next pointed out her sons, and asked a favor. She wanted to get out of the city, and would the general be so kind as to give her a pass to go beyond the federal lines ?

“A committee is now announced. It is headed by the president of the Union association, and is composed of its prominent members. They present a petition to the general, requesting certain municipal reforms. The next person introduced was a highly respectable and wealthy planter, who had never yielded to the pressure of secession, or never concealed his sentiments, though daily persecuted, and often threatened with imprisonment or assassination. He represented the sufferings in the 'interior parishes' as fearful, the evils of starvation and suffering occasioned by the rebellion being aggravated by the high water that had flowed in from the river, the levee law being entirely disregarded by the landed proprietors.

"For five long hours the audiences continue, and only end to enable the general to resume new duties at his military head-quarters at the custom-house."

The general life of the city had resumed something of its wonted careless gayety and business bustle. The morning markets of New Orleans were bright once more with red bandannas, and noisy with the many-tongued chatter of the hucksters-Creole, French, German, Spanish, and English. "I suppose," remarks a spirited writer,* "that nowhere since the dispersion of the builders of Babel, could be heard such polyglot vociferations as proceed from the sidewalk peddlers in the French market at New Orleans. On one side, the gesticulative Gaul rolls his r's with absolutely canine emphasis in the utterance of his native language, or gallicizes the English

* Mr. Thomas Butler Gunn, the able correspondent of the New York Tribune.

appellation of the most popular of vegetables into 'pa-ta-ta-s!' or informs you that the price of a bird or fish is 'two bit! two bityou no like him, you no hab him!' On another, the German vociferates with as harmonious an effect as might be produced by the simultaneous shaking up of pebbles in a quart pot, and the filing of a hand-saw; while on a third and fourth, the Creole, Sicilian, and Dego rival each other in vocal discord. Fancy all this, and throw in any amount of obstreperous, broad-mouthed, gleeful negro laughter, and you have some approximation toward the sounds audible at the time and locality I have undertaken to describe."

The far-famed rotunda of the St. Charles hotel again resounded with the noise of multitudinous conversation; but its lofty dome echoed not back the sound of the auctioneer's hammer, that doomed the pampered house-slave to the horrors of a Red River plantation, or consigned a beautiful quadroon to the arms of a lucky gambler. The levee still looked bare and deserted to those who had known it in former years; but there was some life there. A few vessels were loading or discharging. The ferry-boats were plying on the river. The scream of the steam-whistle was heard, and steamboats were "up" for Carrollton, Baton Rouge, or Fort Jackson. In the stream lay at anchor a few representatives of the immortal fleet, the arrival of which, in the last days of April, ushered in a new era of the history of Louisiana.

CHAPTER XXXII.

RECALL.

THERE had been rumors all the summer that General Butler was about to be recalled from the Department of the Gulf. In August, he alluded to these rumors in one of his letters to General Halleck, and said, that if the government meant to remove him, it was only fair for his successor to come at once, and take part of the yellow fever season. General Halleck replied, September 14, that these rumors were “without foundation.” Mr. Stanton had written approvingly of his course. Mr. Chase and Mr. Blair expressed

very cordial approval of it. The president, in October, wrote to the general in a friendly and confidential manner. It was only the secretary of state who appeared to dread that total suppression of the enemies of the United States in Louisiana, which it was General Butler's aim to effect. But it was not supposed that his policy would carry him so far as to deprive his country of the services of the man who, wherever he had been employed, had shown so much ability, and who had just achieved the ablest and the noblest piece of impromptu statesmanship the modern world has seen.

General Butler was going on in the usual tenor of his way. His favorite scheme, as the winter drew near, was the roofing of the custom-house, the citadel of New Orleans. The government had expended millions upon that edifice, and its marble walls had been completed, but it stood exposed to the weather, and was rapidly depreciating. The estimates of competent engineer officers showed that it could be covered for about forty thousand dollars with a roof of wood, which would last thirty or forty years, save the costly structure from decay, and render the upper stories inhabitable. He procured part of the necessary timber by seizing a large quantity which was the property of those notorious 'foreign neutrals,' Gautherin and Co., and which, he was prepared to show, had been bought by the Confederate government. In executing the work, he intended to employ a large number of the men who were daily fed by the bounty of the government. The operation was about to be begun, when the order for his recall arrived. It would have been done in three months from the revenues of the department. The Custom-House is still without a roof.

Another project engaged his attention toward the close of the year. He received information that a speculative firm in Havana had imported from Europe, a large quantity of arms, which they hoped to sell to the Confederate government. He sent an officer to Havana to examine these arms, procure samples, and endeavor to get the refusal of them for three months, so as to gain time for the war department to effect the purchase of the arms for the United States. Captain Hill, the officer employed on this errand, had obtained a refusal of the arms for several weeks, when the change of commanders took place, and the affair was dropped. Captain Hill reports, that no citizen of the United States, supposed to have a public commission, was safe at that time in Havana. He was

subjected to every kind of aunoyance, and was warned by friendly Cubans not to be in the streets alone after dark. The town swarmed with rebel emissaries and rebel sympathizers, affording another proof that, in this quarrel, we are alone against the benighted men, and classes of men, who are interested in retarding the progress of civilization. The day after the departure of Captain Hill from New Orleans, the report was current in the city that he had been sent by General Butler to the North, with two millions in gold, the spoils of Lafourche, to deposit in some place of safety against the coming day of wrath. He carried, in fact, just two thousand dollars in gold, to defray his expenses in Havana.

New Orleans elected two members of congress in December, Mr. Benjamin F. Flanders, and Mr. Michael Hahn, both unconditional Union men. Mr. Flanders received 2,370 votes out of 2,543; Mr. Hahn received 2,581, which was a majority of 144 over all competitors. The canvass was spirited, and no restriction was placed upon the voting, except to exclude all who had not taken the oath of allegiance. At this election, the number of Union votes exceeded, by one thousand, the whole number of votes cast in the city for secession.

It could be truly said in December, that there was in New Orleans, after seven months of General Butler's government, a numerous party for the Union, probably a majority of the whole number of voters. The men of wealth were secessionists, almost to a man. The gamblers and ruffians were on the same side. The lowest class of whites exhibited the same impious antipathy to the negroes, and the same leaning toward their oppressors, that we observe in the corresponding class in two or three northern cities. But, among the respectable mechanics and smaller traders, there was a great host who were either committed to the side of the Union, or were only deterred from committing themselves by a fear that, after all, the city was destined to fall again under the dominion of the Confederates. The Union meetings were attended by enthusiastic crowds, and the eloquence of a Deming, a Durant, a Hamilton, was greeted with the same applause that it elicits at the North. When General Butler appeared in public he was greeted with cheers not less hearty nor less unanimous than he has since been accustomed to receive nearer home. Late in November he made a public visit to the theater. When he entered the house the audi