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remarkable records of the war. Any story of New Orleans is incomplete without the hero, Benjamin F. Butler. This man, who was to reap the fruits of the victory of the Federal fleet, and enact the part of military ruler in New Orleans, was an example of that reputation so easily made in the North by brazen assertions, sensational dispatches, and coarse abuse of rebels. Gen. Butler had been a small lawyer in Massachusetts; his first experiment in politics was that of a Northern man with Southern principles; he was a delegate to the Charleston Convention of 1860, and he was accustomed to relate with singular satisfaction the circumstance that he had voted in that body, more than forty times, for Jefferson Davis as the nominee for President of the United States! When the war broke out, he was a ready convert to the popular doctrine in his State, and went in advance of it in his expressions of ferocity towards the people of the South. He had already made himself infamous in Baltimore by his war upon non-combatants; by browbeating quiet citizens; by examining courts in which the severity of the military judge was curiously mingled with the peculiar skill and disreputable adroitness of the pettifogger; and by his quick and apt invention of various instruments of moral torture. The appearance of the man was extraordinary and revolting. He had small, muddy, cruel eyes; one of them was curtained by a drooping lid; and there was a smothered glower in them indicative of ill-contained and violent passion. The other of his features were almost covered up in enormous chops, with little webs of red veins in them; and the whole expression of his face was that of a lecherous coarseness and a cunning ferocity.

Such was the tyrant of New Orleans. He inaugurated his rule in the subdued city by the following order, directed against the women of New Orleans, which at once made his name infamous in all the Christian and civilized countries of the world, and obtained for him in the South the popular and persistent title of the "Beast: "

"HEADQUARTERS, Department of Gulf, New ORLEANS, May 15. "As officers and soldiers of the United States have been subject to repeated insults from women calling themselves ladies, of New Orleans, in return for the most scrupulous non-interference and courtesy on our part, it is ordered hereafter, when any female shall by mere gesture or movement insult, or show contempt for any officers or soldiers of the United States, she shall be regarded and held liable to be treated as a woman about town plying her avocation. By command of Maj.-Gen. BUTLER.

"GEO. C. STRONG, A. A. G.”

The infamous "woman-order" was the prelude to a rule in New Orleans that excited the horrour and disgust of the civilized world. The

not have held out for any great length of time for this reason, and I deemed it best to save their garrisons (composed of well-drilled artillerists) for the works at Vicksburg, where they have ever since rendered such good service. But it was not intended to abandon them so soon, nor, indeed, till I had transferred all the public property from New Orleans."

*

newspapers which declined to publish an edict so disreputable were threatened with suppression; and Mayor Monroe and some of the city authorities who ventured to protest against it, were arrested, shipped down to Fort Jackson, and for many months kept in confinement there. Then followed a series of acts of cruelty, despotism and indecency. Citizens accused of contumacious disloyalty, were confined at hard labour, with balls and chains attached to their limbs. Men, whose only offence was selling medicines to sick Confederate soldiers, were arrested and impris oned. A physician who, as a joke, exhibited a skeleton in his window as that of a Yankee soldier, was sentenced to be confined at Ship Island for two years, at hard labour. A lady, the wife of a former member of Congress of the United States, who happened to laugh as the funeral train of a Yankee officer passed her door, received this sentence: "It is, therefore, ordered that she be not regarded and treated as a common woman,' of whom no officer or soldier is bound to take notice, but as an uncommon, bad, and dangerous woman, stirring up strife, and inciting to riot, and that, therefore, she be confined at Ship Island, in the State of Mississippi, within proper limits there, till further orders." The distinction of sex seems only to

6

*The following appeared in a Southern newspaper during the days of Butler's rule in New Orleans:

แ

'Considering the character of the infamous order issued, with reference to the ladies of New Orleans, the following will be thought a well-designed act of retributive justice. Preparations were making for a dress-parade, and a number of officers had congregated in front of the St. Charles, Butler's headquarters. A handsome carriage was driven in front of the hotel, accompanied by ser vants in livery, with every sign of wealth and taste in the owner of the equipage. The occupant, dressed in the latest fashion and sparkling with jewelry, drew from her pocket her gold card-case, and taking therefrom her card, sent it up to Butler's rooms. The next day himself and lady called at the residence indicated on the card-a fine mansion in a fashionable part of the city-where a couple of hours were agreeably spent in conversation, followed by the introduction of wine and cake, when the highly-delighted visitors took their departure. Butler did not appreciate the fact that he had been made the victim of a successful "sell," until he learned shortly afterwards that he had been paying his respects to the proprietress of one of the most celebrated bagnios in the State, who is at this time considered a woman of the town, plying her vocation as such.'”

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As a matter of justice-or as a specimen of ingenious quibbling, as the reader may decide-we should not omit Gen. Butler's explanation and attempted justification of his "woman-order." The author of these pages, in the painful character of a prisoner of war, had, once, occasion to meet Gen. Butler, and to have some conversation with him, in the course of which Gen. B. volunteered a long defence of his rule in New Orleans. He declared that as to the "woman-order," when Lord Palmerston denounced it in the British Parliament, he might, if he had turned to the Ordinances of London, have found that it had been borrowed from that ancient and respectable authority. The "Ladies" of New Orleans, he said, did not interfere with his troops; it was the demi-monde that troubled him. One of this class had spat in an officer's face. Another had placed herself vis-a-vis to an officer in the street, exclaiming, "La, here is a Yankee; don't he look like a monkey!" It became necessary to adopt an order that "would execute itself," and have these women treated as street-walkers. "How do you treat a street-walker?” said Gen. Butler; "you don't hug and kiss her in the street!" The General explained that he meant only that these women were to be treated with those signs of con tempt and contumely usually bestowed upon street-walkers, so as to make them ashamed of themselves; and it was thus the order "executed itself."

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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 buriness:

"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 humil iating 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'CLELLAN'S OPINION OF HIS ARMY.—ITS NUMERICAL STRENGTH.-OFFICIAL STATEMENT OF CONFEDERATE FORCES IN NORTH VIRGINIA.-LINCOLN'S ORDER OF THE 22D FEBRUARY.— M'CLELLAN'S DISSENT.-WHEN JOHNSTON DETERMINED TO CHANGE HIS LINE ON THE POTOMAC.-HIS PREPARATIONS FOR RETREAT.-HOW IT WAS ACCOMPLISHED.-M'CLELLAN'S ADVANCE.-DISCOVERY OF JOHNSTON'S EVACUATION OF MANASSAS AND CENTREVILLE.— HE CROSSES THE RAPPAHANNOCK AND WAITS FOR THE ENEMY.-HE PENETRATES M'CLELLAN'S DESIGNS.-FEDERAL COUNCIL OF WAR AT FAIRFAX COURT-HOUSE.-SHIFTING OF THE SCENES OF WAR IN VIRGINIA.-THE BATTLE OF KERNSTOWN.-HOW STONEWALL JACKSON CAME TO FIGHT THIS BATTLE.-GREAT NUMERICAL SUPERIORITY OF THE ENEMY. -THE CONTEST AT THE STONE FENCE.-JACKSON FALLS BACK TO CEDAR CREEK.-MAGRUDER'S LINE ON THE PENINSULA.-A FEARFUL CRISIS.-M'CLELLAN HELD IN CHECK BY ELEVEN THOUSAND CONFEDERATES.-OUTWITTED AGAIN BY JOHNSTON.-RETREAT OF THE CONFEDERATES UP THE PENINSULA.-STRATEGIC MERIT OF THE MOVEMENT.-BATTLE OF WILLIAMSBURG.-LONGSTREET'S DIVISION ENGAGED.-SUCCESS OF THE CONFEDERATES.M'CLELLAN'S WHOLE ARMY IN PERIL.-HIS FLANK MOVEMENT ON JOHNSTON'S RETREAT.ENGAGEMENT AT BARHAMSVILLE. THE LINE OF THE CHICKAHOMINY.-JOHNSTON'S BRILLIANT STRATEGY.-EVACUATION OF NORFOLK.-DESTRUCTION OF THE VIRGINIA.-HER LAST CHALLENGE TO THE ENEMY.-A GALLING SPECTACLE.-COMMODORE TATNALL ORDERS HER DESTRUCTION.—A COURT OF INQUIRY.-NAVAL ENGAGEment at drewRY'S BLUFF.A FEEBLE BARRIER TO RICHMOND.-REPULSE OF THE FEDERAL FLEET.-WHAT IT PROVed. -M'CLELLAN'S INVESTMENT OF THE LINE OF THE CHICKAHOMINY.-DEFENCES OF RICHMOND.-SCENES AROUND THE FEDERAL CAPITAL.-ALARM AND EXCITEMENT OF ITS PEOPLE. THE EXODUS FROM RICHMOND.-PUBLIC MEETING IN THE CITY HALL.NOBLE RESOLUTION OF THE LEGISLATURE OF VIRGINIA.-REANIMATION OF THE PEOPLE AND THE AUTHORITIES.-PRESIDENT DAVIS' EARLY OPINION OF THE EFFECT OF THE FALL OF RICHMOND.-APPEALS OF THE RICHMOND PRESS.-JACKSON'S CAMPAIGN IN THE VALLEY OF VIRGINIA.-JACKSON DETERMINES ON THE AGGRESSIVE. DISPOSITION OF THE FEDERA L FORCES WEST OF THE BLUE RIDGE.-AFFAIR AT M'DOWELL.-JACKSON DECEIVES BANKS -SURPRISES HIS REAR-GUARD AT PORT ROYAL.-BANKS' RACE TO WINCHESTER.-SCENES OF RETREAT THROUGH WINCHESTER.-BANKS' QUICK TIME TO THE POTOMAC.-EXTENT OF JACKSON'S SUCCESS.-Fruits of two DAYS' OPERATIONS OF THE CONFEDERATES.-JAOK SON PASSES BETWEEN THE COLUMNS OF FREMONT AND SHIELDS.-DEATH OF TURNER ASHBY.-JACKSON'S TRIBUTE TO HIM.-BATTLES OF CROSS KEYS AND PORT REPUBLICEWELL DEFEATS FREMONT. THE FIELD OF PORT REPUBLIC.—EWELL'S ARRIVAL SAVES THE DAY.-CRITICAL AND SPLENDID ACTION OF TWO VIRGINIA REGIMENTS.-CLOSE OF THE VALLEY CAMPAIGN.-JACKSON'S ALMOST MARVELLOUS SUCCESS.-HIS HALT AT

WEYER'S CAVE.