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and the measures which they explain were just. If the United States is in the wrong, those writings are fallacious, and those measures were unjustifiable. In word and deed General Butler is, at least, logical.

I have related, at some length, the civil and military career of General Butler previous to the capture of New Orleans. This was chiefly done, that the reader might judge whether such a man as General Butler was before he went to New Orleans was likely to do such things there as the enemies of his country say he did.

It is of the most momentous importance to the future of the United States, that whatever is written respecting this war should be written truly. Upon the class of writers it chiefly devolves to garner up, for our future warning, solace, and instruction, the experience gained by such an appalling expenditure of life and of the means of living. Let us leave all lying, all delusion, all boasting, all unworthy suppressions, to the malignants who know no better. For us, the TRUTH, though it blast us. We owe it to the heroic dead, who died that we might more worthily live. We owe it to the living, who are so anxious and so perplexed, through the incompleteness of their knowledge. We owe it to the inconceivable multitude of our brethren and fellow-citizens unborn.

For myself, I can say that every page of this volume has been prepared with the single object of conveying to the reader's mind a correct impression of the facts related.

My grateful acknowledgments are due to Mr. Samuel F. Glenn, advocate, of New Orleans, who relinquished, in my favor, a project he had formed of writing a volume on the same subject. He had made, indeed, some progress in the work, sufficient to render its relinquishment an act of great generosity. I told him that the record of an eye-witness would have a value of its own, not to be affected by publications of another nature; but he kindly preferred to retire from the field, and resume his professional labors in New Orleans.

NEW YORK, October 20, 1863.

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General Butler arms the free colored men, and finds work for the fugitive slaves.........

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GENERAL BUTLER IN NEW ORLEANS.

CHAPTER I.

GENERAL BUTLER BEFORE THE WAR.

He came of fighting stock. His father's father, Captain Zeph. aniah Butler, of Woodbury, Connecticut, fought under General Wolfe at Quebec, and served in the continental army in the war of the revolution. A large, old-fashioned powder-horn, covered with quaint carving, done by this old soldier's own hand and jackknife, which was slung at his side when he climbed the hights of Quebec, and the sword which he wore during the war for independence, now hang in the library of General Butler at Lowell, the relics of an honorable career. The mother of General Butler descends from the Cilleys of New Hampshire, a doughty race of ScotchIrish origin; one of whom fought at the battle of the Boyne on the wrong side. That valiant Colonel Cilley, who at the battle of Bennington commanded a company that had never seen a cannon, and who, to quiet their apprehensions, sat astride of one while it was discharged, was an ancestor of our general. Mr. Cilley, member of congress from Maine, who was shot in a memorable duel, twenty-five years ago, was the general's cousin. Thus the tide that courses the veins of Benjamin Franklin Butler is composed, in about equal parts, of that blood which we call AngloSaxon, and of that strenuous fluid which gives such tenacity and audacity to the Scotch-Irish. Such a mixture affords promise of a mitigated Andrew Jackson or of a combative Benjamin Franklin.

The father of General Butler was John Butler, of Deerfield, New Hampshire; captain of dragoons during the war of 1812; a faithful soldier who served for a while under General Jackson at New

Orleans, and there conceived such love for that tough old hero, as to name his first boy Andrew Jackson. After the war, he engaged in the West India trade, sailing sometimes as supercargo, sometimes as merchant, sometimes as captain of the schooner, enjoying for several years a moderate sufficient prosperity. In politics, a democrat, of the pure Jeffersonian school; and this at a time when in New Hampshire to be a democrat was to live under a social ban. He was one of the few who gave gallant support to young Isaac Hill, of the New Hampshire Patriot, the paper which at length brought the state into democratic line. He was a friend, personal as well as political, of Isaac Hill, and shared with him the odium and the fierce joy of those early contests with powerful and arrogant federalism. A 'hearted' democrat was Captain Butler; one whose democracy was part of his religion. In Deerfield, where he lived, there were but eight democratic voters, who formed a little brotherhood, apart from their fellow townsmen, shunned by the federalists as men who would have been dangerous from their principles if they had not been despicable from their fewness. His boys, therefore, were born into the ranks of an abhorred but positive and pugnacious minority-a little spartan band, always battling, never subdued, never victorious.

In March, 1819, Captain Butler, while lying at one of the West India Islands with his vessel, died of yellow. fever, leaving to the care of their mother his two boys, Benjamin being then an infant five months old. A large part of his property he had with him at the time of his death, and little of it ever found its way to his widow. She was left to rear her boys as best she could, with slender means of support. But it is in such circumstances that a New England mother shows the stuff she is made of. Capable, thrifty, diligent, devoted, Mrs. Butler made the most of her means and opportunities, and succeeded in giving to one of her boys a good country education, and helped the other on his way to college, and to a liberal profession. She lives still, to enjoy in the success of both of them, the fruit of her self-denying labors and wise management; they proud to own that to her they owe whatever renders them worthy of it, and thanking God that she is near them to dignify and share their honors and their fortune.

Of late, the world has heard a good deal of that variety of the human being called the YANKEE. Our Southern ex-brethren have

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