raised nearly the amount of 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 is 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. countrymen. "I should need no extraordinary taxation to feed the poor of New Orleans, if the bellies of the foreigners were as active 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. Kruttschnidt, the brother-in-law of Benjamin, the rebel secretary of war, using all the funds in his hands to purchase arms, and collecting the sccurities of his correspondent before they are due, to get funds to loan to the rebel authorities, 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 partner in the same house of Reichard & Co., now absent, whose funds are managed 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 countrymon. "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." 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 added, "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. "The calls upon the fund raised under that order have been frequent and urgent, and it is now exhausted. "No one can appreciate more fully than my-, made upon certain parties who had aided the self the holy, self-sacrificing labors of the sisters rebellion, 'to be appropriated to the relief of of charity. To them our soldiers are daily in- the starving poor of New Orleans.'" debted 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 I 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 further 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. "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." "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 XIV. THE WOMAN ORDER. Ir concerns the people of the United States to know that secession, 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. Genera! 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 slaves of the South, who own the best of the lands, who have always controlled its politics and swayed its drawing-rooms, in whom the disease is hereditary or original, whom it possesses and pervades, like the leprosy or the scrofula, or, rather, like the falseness of the Stuarts and the imbecility of the Bourbonsthese men will remain, as long as they draw the breath of life, enemies of all the good meaning which is summed up in the words, United States. It is from studying the characters of these people that we moderns may learn why it was that the great Cromwell and his heroes called the adherents of the mean and cruel Stuarts by the name of "Malignants." They may be rendered innoxious by destroying their power, i. e., by abolishing slavery, which is their power; but, as to converting them from the error of their minds, that is not possible. General Butler was aware of this from the beginning of the rebellion, and his experience in New Orleans was daily confirmation of his belief. Hence, his attitude toward the ruling class was warlike, and he strove in all ways to isolate that 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 admin-class, and bring the majority of the people to sce istration. 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 who it was that had brought all this needless ruin upon their state; aud thus to array the majority against the few. Throwing the whole weight of his power against the oligarchy, he endeavored to save and conciliate the people, whom it was the secret design of the leaders to degrade and disfranchise. He was in New leans as a general wielding the pow government, and as a democrat re principles. The first month of his administration was signalized by several warlike acts and utterances, aimed at the Spirit of Secession; some of which excited a clamor throughout the whole secession world, on both continents, echoes of which are still occasionally heard. The following requires no explanation: "NEW ORLEANS, May 18, 1862. "It having come to the knowledge of the commanding general that Friday next is proposed to be observed as a day of fasting and prayer, in obedience to some supposed proclamation of one Jefferson Davis, in the several churches of this city, it is ordered that no such observance be had. 666 "Churches and religious houses are to be kept open as in time of profound peace,' but no religious exercises are to be had upon the supposed authority above mentioned." This was General Order No. 27. The one next issued, the famous Order No. 28, which relates to the conduct of some of the women of New Orleans, can not be dismissed quite so summarily. One might have expected to find among the women of the South many abolitionists of the most "radical" description. As upon the white race the blighting curse of slavery chiefly falls, so the women of that race suffer the consequences of the system which are the most degrading and the most painful. It leads their husbands astray, debauches their brothers and their son's, enervates and coarseus their daughters. The wastefulness of the institution, its bungling stupidity, the heavy and needless burdens it imposes upon house-keepers, would come home, we should think, to the minds of all women not wholly incapable of reflection. I am able to state, that here and there, in the South, even in the cotton states, there are ladies who feel all the enormity, and comprehend the immense stupidity of slavery. I have heard them avow their abhorrence of it. One in particular, I remember, on the borders of South Carolina itself, a mother, glancing covertly at her languid son, and saying in the low tone of despair: "You cannot tell me anything about slavery. We women know what it is, if the men do not." But it is the law of nature that the men and women of a community shall be morally equal. If all the women were made, by miracle, perfectly good, and all the men perfectly bad, in one generation the moral equality would be restored, the men vastly improved, the women reduced to the average of human worth. Consequently, we find the women of the South as much corrupted by slavery as the men, and not less zealous than the men in this insolent attempt to rend their country in pieces. In truth, they are more zealous, since women are naturally more vehement and enthusiastic than men. The women of New Orleans, too, all had husbands, sons, brothers, lovers or friends, in the Confederate army. To blame the women of a community for adhering, with their whole souls, to a cause for which their husbands, brothers, sons and lovers are fighting, would be to arraign the laws of But then there is a choice of methods ch that adherence may be manifested. General Butler was passing through way to New Orleans, he ob ture. served the mode in which the Union soldiers stationed there were accustomed to behave when passing by ladies who wore the secession flag on their bosoms. The ladies, on approaching a soldier, would suddenly throw aside their cloaks or shawls to display the badge of treason. The soldier would retort by lifting the tail of his coat, to show the rebel flag doing duty, apparThe general noted the circumstance well. It ently, as a large patch on the seat of his trousers. occurred to him then, that, perhaps, a more decent way could be contrived to shame the heroines of secession out of their silly tricks. The women of New Orleans by no means confined themselves to the display of minute rebel and vulgarly demonstrative. They would leave flags on their persons. They were insolently the sidewalk, on the approach of Union officers, and walk around them into the middle of the the street, with up-turned noses and insulting words. On passing privates, they would make a great ostentation of drawing away their dresses, as if from the touch of pollution. Secession colors were conspicuously worn upon the bonnets. If a Union officer entered a street car, all the ladies in it would frequently leave the vehicle, with every expression of disgust; even in church the same spirit was exhibitedladies leaving the pews entered by a Union officer. The female teachers of the public schools kept their pupils singing rebel songs, and advised the girls to make manifest their contempt for the soldiers of the Union. Parties of ladies upon the balconies of houses, would turn their backs when soldiers were passing by; while one of them would run in to the piano, and thump out the Bonny Blue Flag, with the energy that lovely woman knows how to throw into a performance of that kind. One woman, a very fine lady, too, swept away her skirts, on one occasion, with so much violence, as to lose her balance, and she fell into the gutter. The two officers whose proximity had excited her ire, approached to offer their assistance. She spurned them from her, saying, that she would rather lie in the gutter than be helped out by Yankees. She afterward related the circumstance to a Union officer, and owned that she had in reality felt grateful to the officers for their politeness, and added that Order No. 28 served the women right. The climax of these absurdities was reached when a beast of a woman spat in the faces of two officers, who were walking peacefully along the street. It was this last event which determined General Butler to take public notice of the conduct of the women. At first their exhibitions and affectations of spleen merely amused the objects of them; who were accustomed to relate them to their comrades as the jokes of the day. And so far, no officers or soldiers had done or said anything in the way of retort. No man in New Orleans had been wronged, no woman had been treated with disrespect by the soldiers of the United States. These things were done while General Butler was feeding the poor of the city by thousands; while he was working night and day to start and restore the business of the city; while he was defending the people against the frauds of great capitalists; while he was maintaining such order in New Orleans as it had never known before; while he was maturing measures designed solely for the benefit of the city; while he was testifying in every way, by word and deed, his heartfelt desire to exert all the great powers intrusted to him for the good of New Orleans and Louisiana. That is, she shall be held liable, according to the law of New Orleans, to be arrested, detained over night in the calaboose, brought before a magistrato in the morning, and fined five dollars. When the order had been written, and was about to be consigned to irrevocable print, a leading member of the staff (Major Strong) said to General Butler: "After all, general, is it not possible that some of the troops may misunderstand the order? It. would be a great scandal if only one man should act upon it in the wrong way." It can not be denied that both officers and men became, at length, very sensitive to these annoyances. Complaints to the general were frequent. Colonels of regiments requested to be informed what orders they should give their men on the subject, and the younger staff officers often asked the general to save them from indignities which they could neither resent nor endure. Why, indeed, should he permit his brave and virtuous New England soldiers to be insulted by these silly, vulgar creatures, spoiled by contact with slavery? And how long could he trust the forbearance of the troops? These questions hequered city; we have respected every right, tried had already considered, but the extreme difficulty every means of conciliation, complied with every of acting in such an affair with dignity and effect, reasonable desire; and yet we can not walk the had given him pause. But when the report of streets without being outraged and spit upon by the spitting was brought to him, he determined green girls. I do not fear the troops; but if ag to put a stop to such outrages before they progression must be, let it not be all against us." voked retaliation. "Let us, then," replied the general, "have one case of aggression on our side. I shall know how to deal with that case, so that it will never be repeated. So far, all the aggression has been against us. Here we are, conquerors in a con General Butler was, of course, perfectly aware, his troops to outrage and ravish every woman who insulted them, those men of New England and the West would not have thought of obeying him. If one miscreant among them had attempted it, the public opinion of his regiment would have crushed him. Every one who knows the men of that army feels how impossible it was that any of them should practically misinterpret an order of which the proper and innocent meaning was so palpable. It has been said, that the false construction as we are, that if he had expressly commanded put upon General Order No. 28, by the enemies of the United States, was due to the carelessness with which it was composed. Mr. Seward, in his conversation on the subject with the English chargé, "regretted that, in the haste of composition, a phraseology which could be mistaken or perverted had been used." The secretary of state was never more mistaken. The order was penned with the utmost care and deliberation, and all its probable consequences discussed. The problem was, how to put an end to the insulting behavior of the women without being obliged to resort to arrests. So far, New Orleans had been kept down by the mere show and presence of force; it was highly desirable, for reasons of humanity as well as policy, that this should continue to be the case. If the order had said: Any woman who insults a Union soldier shall be arrested, committed to the calaboose and fined, there would have been women who would have courted the distinction of arrest, to the great peril of the public tranquillity. If anything at all could have roused the populace to resist the troops, surely it would have been the arrest of a well-dressed woman, for so popular an act as insulting a soldier of the United States. It was with the intent to accomplish the object without disturbance, that General Butler worded the order as we find it. The order was framed upon the model of one which he had read long ago in an ancient London chronicle. 66 Head-quarters, DEPARTMENT OF THE GULF, "NEW ORLEANS, Muy 15, 1862. "GENERAL ORDER NO. 28: "As the officers and soldiers of the United States have been subject to repeated insults from the women (calling themselves ladies) of New Orleans, in return for the most scrupulous noninterference and courtesy on our part, it is ordered that hereafter when any female shall, by word, gesture, or movement, insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier of the United States, she shall be regarded and held liable to be treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation. By command of MAJOR-GENERAL BUTLER. "GEO. C. STRONG, A, A. G., Chief of Staff." The order was published. Its success was immediate and perfect. Not that the women did not still continue, with the ingenuity of the sex, to manifest their repugnance to the troops. They did so. The piano still greeted the passing officer with rebel airs. The fair countenances of the ladies were still averted, and their skirts gently held aside. Still the balconies presented a view of the "back hair" of beauty. If the dear creatures did not leave the car when an officer entered it, they stirred not to give him room to sit down, and would not see his polite offer to hand their ticket to the driver. (No conductors in the street cars of New Orleans.) It was a fashion to affect sickness at the stomach on such occasions; which led the Delta to remark, that ladies should remember that but for the presence of the Union forces some of the squeamish stomachs would have nothing in them. But the outrageouз demonstrations ceased. No more insulting words were uttered; and all the affectations of disgust were such as could be easily and properly borne by officers and men. Gradually even these were discontinued. I need not add, that in no instance was the order misunderstood on the part of the troops. No man in the whole world misunderstood it who was not glad of any pretext for reviling the sacred cause for which the United States has been called to contend. So far from causing the women of New Orleans to be wronged or molested, it was that which saved them from the only danger of molestation to which they were exposed. It threw around them the protection of law, not tore it away; and such was the pleteness of its success. that not one a Order No. 28 has ever been mad General Butler was not long in discovering who, so far as I am aware, have only manifested that the order was to be made the occasion of a prodigious hue and cry against his administration. The puppet mayor of New Orleans was the first to lift his little voice against it; which led to important consequences. their displeasure at the occupation of their city To this General Butler replied with promptness and brevity, and sent his reply by the hands of the provost-marshal: "HEAD-QUARTERS, DEPARTMENT OF THE GULF, "NEW ORLEANS, May 16, 1862. "John T. Monroe, late mayor of the city of New Orleans, is relieved from all responsibility for the peace of the city, and is suspended from the exercise of any official functions, and committed to Fort Jackson until farther orders. It had already become apparent to the gen: eral and to the officers aiding him, that two powers so hostile as the city government of New Orleans and the commander of the Department of the Gulf could not co-operate-could not long exist together. The mayor and common council had violated their compact with the general in every particular. They had agreed to clean the streets, and had not done it. They had engaged to enroll two hundred and fifty of the property-holders of the town to assist in keeping the peace, that General Butler might safely withdraw his troops. The two hundred and fifty proved to be men of the "Thug" snecies-the hangers-on of the City Hall. The European Brigade was to be retained in service; the mayor disbanded it. Provisions had been sent out of the starving city to the hungry camp of General Lovell. Confederate notes, which had fallen to thirty cents, were redeemed by the city government at par, thus taxing the city B. F. BUTLER, Major-General Commanding. one hundred cents to give thirty to the favorites of the mayor and council; for the redemption The mayor, however, was indulged with an was not public and universal, but special and interview with the commanding general. Ho private. The tone and style of the city govern- remonstrated against the order for his imprisonment, too, were a perpetual reiteration of the ment. The general told him, in reply, that if assertion, so dear to the deluded people of the he could no longer control the "aroused pascity, that New Orleans had not been conquered sions of the people of New Orleans," it was -only overcome by "brute force." Nothing highly necessary that he should not only be but the general's extreme desire to give the relieved from any further responsibility for the arrangement of May 4th so fair a trial that the tranquillity of the city, but be sent himself to a whole world would hold him guiltless in dissolv-place of safety; which Fort Jackson was. ing it, prevented his seizing upon the government of the city on the ninth of May. On the day on which the order appeared in the newspapers, the mayor sent to General Butler the following letter, which was written for him by his secretary, Mr. Duncan, formerly of the Delta: "STATE OF LOUISIANA, "MAYORALTY OF NEW ORLEANS, "May 16, 1862. "Major-General BENJAMIN F. BUTLER, Commanding United States Forces: The letter, added the general, was an insult which no officer, representing the majesty of the United States in a captured city, ought to submit to. The mayor, whose courage always oozed away in the presence of General Butler, declared that he had had no intention to insult the general; he had only intended to vindicate the honor of the virtuous ladies of New Orleans. "No vindication is necessary," said General Butler, "because the order does not contemplate or allude to virtuous women.' None such, ho believed, could have meant to insult his officers or men by word, look, or gesture, and the order was aimed only at those who had. Finding the mayor pliant and reasonable, as he always was in the absence of his supporters, General Butler expounded the order to him at great length, and with perfect courtesy. The mayor then declared that he was perfectly satisfied, and asked to be allowed to withdraw his offensive letter. General Butler, knowing well the necessity, in all dealings with puppets, of having something to show in writing, wrote the following words at the end of the mayor's letter: SIR:-Your General Order, No. 28, of date 15th inst., which reads as follows, is of a character so extraordinary and astonishing that I can not, holding the office of chief magistrate of the city, chargeable with its peace and dignity, suffer it to be promulgated in our presence without protesting against the threat it contains, which has already aroused the passions of our people, and must exasperate them to a degree beyond control. Your officers and soldiers are permitted, by the terms of this order, to place any construction they may please upon the conduct of our wives and daughters, and, upon such construction, to offer them atrocious insults. The peace of the city and the safety of your officers and soldiers from harm and insult have, I affirm, been successfully secured to an extent enabling them to move through our streets Imost unnoticed, according to the understand- This the mayor signed, and the general rend agreement entered into between your-lieved him from arrest. The mayor then departhe city authorities. I did not, how-ed, and the general hoped he had done with ~ a war upon women and children, Order No. 28 "GENERAL BUTLER: · - - This communication having been sent under a mistake of fact, and being improper in language, I desire to apologize for the same, and to withdraw it." |