constitutional law, from petty larency to high treason, from matrimonial squabbles to suits for divorce. He would dispose of fifteen cases in thirty minutes. An hour was a long trial. He was pestered, at first, with malicious suits, to avenge injuries committed before the capture of the city-a kind of case that sometimes resulted in penalties to both parties; oftener in a prompt dismissal of both from the court. Suits of the most frivolous character wero brought before him. One morning, two women presented themselves, each to prefer a complaint against the other.

"Stand there," said he to one of them. "Stand there," to the other. "Now both speak at once, and talk for five minutes."

Two torrents of vituperation poured from the two mouths. The judge kept his eye upon his watch, and at the end of the time, said: "Now, both of you go home and behave yourselves."

The women departed with evident satisfaction; they had relieved their minds.

Some of the cases demanded an intimate knowledge of local law. For example: Major Bell observed a colored woman hanging about his office for several successive days, in evident distress of mind. He asked her, one day, what she wanted She said that all her goods had been seized by her landlord for rent, though she had paid the rent and had his receipt. It was another tenant of the same house, she said, who was delinquent, and had moved away in the night, leaving her goods liable to seizure. The landlord being summoned, admitted the truth of the woman's story, and pointed out the old statute which gave landlords the right to seize any property in his house for unpaid rent. Major Bell read this astonishing statute, and was compelled to admit that the landlord had the law on his side. He remonstrated with him, however, and pointed out the cruel injustice which he had committed in seizing the property of an honest woman. The man was surly, and said that all he wanted was the law. The law gave him the goods and he meant to keep them. Major Bell was posed. He scratched his wise-looking head. Suddenly, he had an idea.

"Are you a free woman?" he asked the complainant.

"No," said she, "I belong to -"

"Sir," said the judge to the landlord, "another statute requires the written consent of the owner before a tenement can be let to a slave.

Produce it."

The man had forgotten this statute. He could not produce the document.

"Take your choice," said Major Bell; "either give back the woman's property or pay the fine."

The man preferred to restore the goods, and the poor washerwoman was saved from ruin.

'Master," said she, with the eloquence of perfect gratitude, “if you get the yellow fever, send for me, and I'll come and take care of you."

Among the many able men who surrounded General Butler, no one labored more assiduously or more effectively in the service of the people of New Orleans than Major Bell. He had to ransack all books and all the by-ways of his memory for law and precedent to guide him in his novel situation. French law, Spanish law, admiralty law, the slave code, state law, municipal law, common law, were all laid under contribution; and when these failed to meet the case, he drew upon the ample resources of his own common sense. I should add, that during his midsummer absence from the city, his seat was worthily filled by Lieutenant-Colonel Kinsman, the Lieutenant Kinsman of previous pages. Both of these officers were much indebted to the local and legal knowledge of the clerk of the provost court, Mr. Samuel F. Glenn, formerly a member of the bar of New Orleans.

A government needs a government organ. During the month of May, several of the newspapers of New Orleans were suspended by orders from head-quarters. They published the most extravagant rumors of federal disasters, and closed their columns against the true intelligence. Their comments hovered upon the verge of treason, and, not unfrequently, passed beyond the verge. A sudden order to suspend would bring them to a sense of the anomalous situation; they would promise submission; and were generally allowed to resume publication in a day or two.*

"HEAD-QUARTERS, DEPARTMENT OF THE GULF, "NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 5th, 1862.

"It having been made to appear that the suppression of the ‘Estafette du Sud,' French newspaper, will work distress among the employés of the office who are faultless, and the proprietors having assured the United States authorities that nothing shall be published that is offensive or inimical, or in any way reflecting upon the United States or its authorities,--the publication, upon this pledge, is permitted to be resumed at the instance of the acting French consul, M. Fauconnett.

"By order of

"A. F. fUFFER, lieutenant and A. D. C."

MAJOR-GENERAL BUTLER.

1

One of these newspapers, the Delta, noted for the virulence of its treason, was otherwise treated. The office was seized, and permanently held. Two officers, experienced in the conduct of newspapers, Captain John Clark, of Boston, and Lieutenant-Colonel E. M. Brown, of the Eighth Vermont, were detailed to edit the paper in the interest of the United States. The first number of the regenerated Delta appeared on the 24th of May, 1862, and it continued under the same direction until the 8th of February, 1863. It was conducted with very great ability and spirit. Besides the labor of the editors, it had the advantage of occasional contributions from Major Bell and other officers; the commanding general himself frequently giving it the aid of his suggestions. Several ladies of New Orleans contributed. One of them, Mrs. Taylor, who adopted the signature of "Nellie," wrote many lively satirical sketches, which greatly amused the readers of the paper, besides calling forth the exertions of other ladies of similar character. In one feature the Delta differed strikingly from the ordinary newspapers of the South. Your true southerner, your "original secessionist," is a very serious personage. Vanity of the intenser sort is a serious foible; proud ignorance is serious; cruelty is serious; oneidea is serious. There is no joke in your true southerner; and as a consequence, his newspaper is generally a grave and heavy thing, enlivened only by vituperation and ferocity. The sport-impulse comes of an excess of strength. The man of true humor is so much the master of his subject that he can play with it, as the strong man of the circus plays with cannon-balls. The regenerated Delta was one of the most humorous of newspapers. Almost every issue had its good joke, and a great many of its jocular paragraphs, were exceedingly happy hits.

Allusion has been made to the secession songs and secession sentiments taught to the children of the public schools. The schools were dismissed for the summer vacation two weeks earlier than usual, and during the interval the school system was reorganized on the model of that of Boston. A bureau of education and a superintendent of public schools were appointed-good Union men, all. The old teachers were dismissed, and a corps, true to their country, selected in their stead. School-books tainted with treason and pro-slavery were banished, and were replaced by such as are used in northern schools-Union song-books not being

forgotten. The new system worked well, and continues, to this day, to diffuse sound knowledge and correct sentiments among the people of New Orleans.

Such were some of the measures of the commanding general, designed to restore Louisiana to a degree of its former prosperity and good feeling. They were as successful as the circumstances of the time permitted. The levee showed some signs of commercial activity. The money distributed by the army gave life to the retail trade. The poorer classes were won back to a love for the power which protected and sustained them. The original secessionists were, are, and will ever be, there and everywhere, the bitter foes of the United States; but, among those who had reluctantly accepted secession because they supposed it inevitable, the general and the Union gained hosts of friends, who remain to this day, in spite of much discouragement, loyal to the gov

ernment.

CHAPTER ХХІІ.

THE EFFECT IN NEW ORLEANS OF OUR LOSSES IN VIRGINIA.

THE Union army in the Department of the Gulf consisted of about fourteen thousand men, and the disasters in Virginia, which increased a hundred-fold the difficulty of holding New Orleans, forbade the re-enforcement of that army. Ship Island, Fort Jackson, Fort St. Philip, Baton Rouge, posts upon the lakes and elsewhere, required strong garrisons, which reduced the effective men in and near the city to a number inadequate to a successful defense of the place against such an attack as might be expected. General Butler was perfectly aware that the recovery of the city was an object which the rebels had distinctly proposed to themselves. It was the real aim of all that series of movements of which the attack upon Baton Rouge, by Breckinridge, was the most conspicuous. The general's excellent spy system brought him this information, and most of his own measures were more or less influenced by it.

One powerful iron-clad ram could have cleared the river in an hour of the Union fleet. That done, the city might have fallen before the well-concerted attack of a force such as the rebels were known to be able to assemble. They could not have held the city long; but they might have taken it, and held it long enough to do infinite mischief; or they might have necessitated its destruction.

The temper of the secessionists in New Orleans was the worst possible. Liars are generally credulous. At least, they are easily made to believe lies, though they find it so difficult to receive the truth. The news from Virginia would have sufficed to neutralize, for a time, the general's best measures, even if it had come with out exaggerations. But news from Virginia uniformly came first through rebel sources by telegraph, while the truth arrived only after a long sea voyage. To show the effect of this inflammatory intelligence, take one incident as related by an officer of General Butler's staff:

"As a result of this continuous report of national defeats before Richmond, St. Charles street, near the hotel, was yesterday (July 10th) the scene of violence and threatening trouble. A young woman dressed in white and of handsome personal appearance, about 10 o'clock, passed by the hotel, wearing a secession badge. She finally insulted one of our soldiers, and was arrested by a policeman, who attempted to take her to the mayor's office. As a matter of course, there was instantly a scene of confusion, as she had selected the time when she would find the most obnoxious secessionists parading the vicinity. Upon reaching the building next to the Bank of Orleans, she theatrically appealed to the crowd for protection, and the next moment the policeman was knocked down, and a shot was fired out of the store, and wounded the soldier assisting the civil officer. Thereupon a hundred persons, returned soldiers of Beauregard's army, cried murder, and one of the national officers at the same moment fired at the assassin who wounded the soldier. In the confusion the murderers escaped, but the woman, together with some of her most prominent sympathizers, were conveyed before General Shepley at the City Hall. Upon being brought into the presence of General Shepley, she commenced the utterance of threats and abuse, and, further, tookout of her bosom innumerable bits of paper, on which were written