Beautiful Crescent: A History of New Orleans

by Garvey, John B.

  General Benjamin Franklin Butler, forty-two years old at the outset of the war, was a fat man with a brilliant mind and a driving political ambition who had made a name for himself in Boston fighting for the rights of labor and later representing men of great wealth. Energetic, shrewd, and often unscrupulous, he had decided from the beginning that he would employ harsh treatment with the Rebels, as he considered them traitors and felt that he had been robbed of the glory he deserved as Occupation Commander of New Orleans, since it was Farragut who had lowered the Confederate flag over City Hall before he left the city. Butler was determined to make his power felt.

  He entered the city as the new Commander of the Department of the Gulf with eighteen thousand troops of mostly infantry but some cavalry and artillery. When urged by General McClellan just to occupy Algiers and the city of Carrollton, since the rest of the city had enough Union sentiment to control it, Butler said:

  I find the city under the dominion of the mob. They have insulted our flag, torn it down with indignity. This outrage will be punished in such manner as, in my judgment, will caution both the perpetrators and the abettors of the act so that they will feel the stripes if they do not reverence the stars of our banner.

  On another occasion, he declared, “New Orleans is a conquered city. It has been conquered by the forces of the United States and by the laws of nations, and lies subject to the will of the conquerors” (Evans 58).

  The municipal government was allowed to continue its many functions, but martial law was to prevail. All persons in arms against the United States were to surrender themselves and their equipment. Those who wished to pledge their Oath of Allegiance to the United States would be protected in person and property; violation of this oath was punishable by death, and those who refused to take the oath would be treated as enemies. The American flag was to be respected by all. Citizens were to go on about their business as usual. All assemblages, private or public, were forbidden. Only US taxes and those for sanitation could be collected. Fire companies were to continue to operate. Military courts would try those accused of major crimes or of interference with the laws of the United States. Minor crimes and civil suits would be handled by city authorities. The press was to submit all copy to military censors. The army took over telegraphic communications. Butler stated that he would prefer to administer the government mildly, but if necessary, he could be ruthless.

  Mayor Monroe wanted to suspend the municipal government at once, but the councilmen objected. There was a division of authority between municipal and military for two weeks, after which the General had the mayor arrested and forced the councilmen out of office by insisting they sign the Oath of Allegiance. After the municipal government of New Orleans was overthrown, Butler appointed federal officers to act as mayors, judges, and provost marshals for the duration of the war.

  The Woman Order

  The women of New Orleans had their own way of protesting the military occupation. If they met federal officers on the sidewalk, they would lift their skirts and move out into the streets. If federal officers got into a streetcar or a church pew they were occupying, they would leave at once. They were also insulting. It was after one woman spat in the face of two officers that Butler passed General Order No. 28 on May 15, 1862. It read as follows:

  As the officers and soldiers of the United States have been subject to repeated insults from the women of New Orleans in return for the most scrupulous non-interference 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 women of the town plying her avocations (Butler 1892, 18-19).

  Southerners considered it an open invitation for Yankee soldiers to ravage women of all ranks, and Butler’s Chief of Staff warned him that his own officers might take the same meaning. Butler referred to the women of New Orleans as “she-adders.” The women responded to the order by restraining themselves but continued to express dedication to the Confederacy by singing the “Bonnie Blue Flag” at every opportunity. It is said that prostitutes in the city put Butler’s picture in the bottom of their “tinkle pots.”

  The Hanging of Mumford

  Three weeks after the Woman Order, on June 7, 1862, Mumford, who had torn down the flag at the US Mint, was hung at the scene of his crime. One week earlier, a military commission had pronounced his execution. Immediately thereafter, criminal elements had threatened to assassinate Butler if he went through with the execution. But Butler had refused all pleas, including that of the prisoner’s wife. Butler was thereafter called the “Beast.”

  By comparison with other cities, New Orleans was not treated as badly as many of its residents thought. The city was never bombarded. It was governed efficiently, and the physical comfort of the citizens was better during the federal administration than it had been under the Confederacy. Mayor Monroe and the city council, by not cleaning the streets, had hoped to hasten the coming of a yellow fever epidemic, which they believed would have killed off many of the federal army, while the Southerners, who were immune, would survive. By not providing food for the poor, they forced Butler to do so. By not restraining crime, they forced him to keep more troops in the city. For the safety of his own men, as well as that of the city, Butler suppressed the crime levels. He allowed food to be brought into the city from Mobile. He allowed the sale of some army provisions to civilians. He relieved the destitute for a time using federal government funds and forced the city to hire two thousand unemployed men to clean the streets. His preventative measures kept the city free of yellow fever during the war and for some time thereafter. He collected “donations” of $350,000 from individuals and firms, which were spent on public works or given to Charity Hospital.

  Another epithet by which the general was known was “Silver Spoons” Butler, referring to the profits he allegedly amassed through confiscation of personal property under the protection of the Confiscation Act. First, he claimed in the name of the government all property belonging to the US government, such as the US Mint and the Custom House. Then, he seized many private homes for the use of the military, usually those of Confederates off fighting in the war.

  The Second Confiscation Act of 1862 provided for the seizure of all property belonging to officers of the Confederacy and to all Rebels who continued to resist signing the Oath of Allegiance for sixty days after the law was passed. When this grace period ended, some three thousand citizens still refused to sign, forfeited their property, and as a result were classified as irreconcilables but were allowed to leave the city if they chose. Their homes and personal effects were sold at auction for low prices.

  Who is to say if Butler’s actions during this brief term of office were legal? A state of war existed, and there were no rules to follow. Laws were made up as the war progressed. They could be enforced only within an occupied territory, and it was always possible that they might be countermanded by the president and his cabinet. The hanging of Mumford (the only New Orleans citizen killed during Butler’s administration) inspired fear as well as hatred, perhaps resulting in the saving of many lives and the prevention of many prison sentences.

  Many New Orleanians had volunteered for military service early in the war and had been sent to Virginia in various troops, such as the Crescent Rifles, the Louisiana Guards, and the Washington Artillery. They were the aristocrats. From the slums and the underworld came the Louisiana Tigers Battalion. The Sixth Louisiana Infantry was composed of Irish laborers and free blacks and were used for militia duty only.

  New Orleans was the recruiting and debarkation center for the state. Troops on their way to somewhere else would stay at Camp Lewis in Carrollton and Camp Walker on the Metairie Race Track. By the fall of 1861, there were twenty-three thousand men in the military from Louisiana. Many men volunteered for military service in the summer of 1861 because there were no jobs to be found in the city.

  No one
knew exactly what to do with the blacks in the occupied territories of the South. These territories were part of the Union, and the Emancipation Proclamation applied to all “slave states.” Butler pleaded with Lincoln for guidance, but Lincoln told him to “get along” with the problems in the best way he could, trying not to insult either the northern abolitionists or the Southern conservatives. Lincoln was having his own difficulties and hoped to win another election in 1964.

  New Orleans, in any case, was no commander’s dream. There were not only blacks slaves, but free blacks as well, to say nothing of the thousands who had rushed into the city as soon as it was captured, seeking security under the flag of the United States. Once here, they could not return to their owners: this had been ordered by an act of Congress. And Butler could not let them starve. He put them to work at rough labor or assigned them to work for his officers. By the fall of 1862, he was supporting ten thousand blacks. Fearing an insurrection among the blacks, he continued the curfew and refused to allow General Phelps to enlist black men in the army and give them weapons. He freed slaves belonging to the French and Spanish aliens and those in jail who had belonged to Confederate soldiers fighting in the war. He allowed them certain civil rights: they could testify in court against white men and ride in all streetcars. He used them as spies against their masters and did not allow jailers to whip black prisoners. In the fall of 1862, he used blacks as free labor on confiscated plantations. It is a matter of record that he handled the situation as wisely as anyone could.

  Father James Ignatius Mullon served the congregation of St. Patrick’s Church as pastor from 1834 to 1866. An ardent Confederate, he often locked horns with Butler, the chief of military occupation. It was a daily custom for the congregation to unite in prayer after Mass for the success of the Confederate cause. Butler sent word for this to cease. Ostensibly, Father Mullon complied, but he told his parishioners to pray in silence. Once, when accused of having refused to bury a Union soldier, Father Mullon told the General that he stood ready to bury the whole Union army, Butler included, whenever the occasion was offered.

  On the evening of December 14, 1862, General Nathaniel P. Banks arrived in New Orleans with papers assigning him as Butler’s replacement. Shattered and disappointed, Butler went home to Lowell, Massachusetts.

  Banks was a man of a different temperament altogether. He thought he could win over the people of New Orleans with conciliation, but the time was past when such an approach would succeed. If it ever had a chance, it would have been at the beginning of the occupation. By the start of 1863, New Orleanians no longer trusted any moves their federal captors made.

  Banks promised fair treatment for all and compensation for losses by acts of the United States, including slaves. The Episcopal churches, which had been closed under Butler, were reopened on Christmas Eve of 1862. The sale of confiscated property was suspended, and more than a hundred political prisoners were released. Federal officers were forced to return houses they had seized, and Banks promised to investigate cases of extortion, confiscation, and speculation. He and his wife began holding balls and inviting the élite of the city in the hope that these entertainments would win them over.

  Taking this leniency as a sign of weakness, the Rebels responded by showing every manner of disloyalty. The women once again began insulting the federal officers. Teachers sang “Dixie” with their students. Newspapers refused to publish information submitted by federal officers.

  In April 1863, Banks was forced to do an about face. He issued severe orders, telling registered enemies of the Union to leave the territory within fifteen days, requiring the Oath of Allegiance of all who remained, and promising the death penalty to all who gave supplies to the Confederate Army.

  From the start of the war, New Orleans was a garrison city. Though it was never attacked, it lay within a combat area. After the falls of Memphis and Baton Rouge, Vicksburg surrendered on July 4, 1863. In April 1864, Banks’s expedition against Shreveport produced the bloodiest fighting in Louisiana, which took place at the Battles of Mansfield and Pleasant Hill. From 1862 to the war’s end, there were two armies and two civil governments in the state.

  It was the Federals who originally blockaded the river, knowing that the Rebels depended for their food and staples on the incoming ships from Europe. By the end of 1862, the port city was on the brink of starvation. In time, however, the Federals saw that they, too, depended on incoming vessels for their survival. They lifted the blockade, after which the Confederates themselves put up a blockade at Vicksburg, prohibiting free commerce on the river because it would have benefited the Union. The Federals depended on cotton and sugar for their economic recovery, and they had not captured enough of the area where those products were raised to bring this recovery about.

  When the first blockade was lifted, merchandise coming from New England could be brought up the river from the Gulf, but there was no cotton or sugar to exchange for it. The Red River Campaign of 1864 had as its purpose the capture of Shreveport, which would be used as a base for a drive into Texas. There, the Union would acquire enough cotton to help bring about a northern victory. But the campaign ended in disaster for the Federals, and Banks was removed from his command.

  As long as the Confederates were able to keep the city cut off from the river, the progress of the Federals was slow, and the Rebels simply continued with their passive resistance to the Union. But once Vicksburg had been captured and the river was open to Federal traffic, economic progress began, and the New Orleanians feared that Federal control of the region would become permanent. Then, when Banks was defeated in the Red River Campaign, hopes of a Southern victory were revived, and hostility sharpened once again.

  In 1864, a free election was held under the supervision of General Banks, and Michael Hahn was elected governor of Louisiana. Lincoln recognized Hahn as chief executive. At last, Louisiana had a civil government, however limited its powers.

  Weaknesses of the South

  The South’s weaknesses during the war were its specialized economy and its dependence on external markets. Cotton, sugar, tobacco, and other staples had, for decades, been sent to Europe and the North in exchange for manufactured goods and food. Cut off from these markets, the South could not long continue to feed its own civilian population, to say nothing of a military force. The blockade hindered the importation of necessary goods, and economic depression spread. Men who worked in trade and transportation were now unemployed.

  Before the war, New Orleans had been the most commercial and least industrial of the large cities of the nation. It had no rice mill, no flour mill, and only one sugar refinery, and even these were destroyed when Farragut was approaching the city in 1862. During the war, New Orleans was a city without industry.

  After the capture of New Orleans, speculators from the North poured into the city expecting to make quick and easy money. Word of Butler’s profits in confiscated property spurred them on, and they came in droves, expecting to be rich within months. Southerners hated them because they took over functions formerly belonging to them. Northerners hated them because they traded with the Rebels, a transaction that only helped their enemies.

  Actually, the only way speculators hurt the economy was by keeping prices high, which was inevitable in a time of war. But speculators were the only businessmen in the community with a supply of capital and the ability to direct business operations. However selfish their motives, they helped New Orleans out of the depression.

  Lincoln had hoped to make Louisiana the model for all the southern states. It was to be the first state to accept his plan for re-entry into the Union. For this reason, he extended leniency whenever possible to the residents of the regions, and life for the people of Louisiana was more comfortable than for most residents of occupied territories.

  The upper classes suffered most, seeing their securities, their businesses, and their other assets diminish in value. Many suffered shortages of food; the ignominy of defeat; the sorrow of deaths of husbands
, sons, and brothers; and the lack of social attractions. Women rarely went out. In 1863, General Banks forbade the observance of Mardi Gras, to the great chagrin of the people.

  The Yankees were no happier about being in New Orleans than the citizens were to have them. They were bivouacked in tents at camps outside the city proper where the terrain was difficult and where they had to suffer heat, rain, and flooded land, all of which brought on diarrhea and fevers. When in good health, soldiers sought relief from their misery and boredom. Food was scarce in the city, but women never were and there was a significant loss of time and services from soldiers with venereal disease.

  Heavy drinking was the rule among laborers and soldiers on leave. Dives were still abundant on Gallatin Street, Girod Street, and Thomas Street. On St. Charles Avenue, between Canal and Lafayette Streets, forty-five places sold liquor within six blocks. In the saloons, if you didn’t continue to drink, the proprietor threw you out; if you did, you usually wound up doped and rolled. Gambling was brisk with games of pitching pennies, shooting craps, or playing poker or three-card Monte.

  On marches from Camp Parapet above the city to Pass Manchac, Yankees saw everything from alligators to mosquitoes to snakes, and back in camp, they were at the mercy of lice. Cheap rooms in the city abounded with bedbugs and cockroaches.

  Yankee officers, who were able to live in a better part of town, got a better impression of the city with its flowers and trees that flourished even in winter, its duck hunting, its theater, its French opera, and its beautiful (though rude) young women.

  The war ended in 1865, and in November of that year, the ex-Confederates were once again in control of the state. In most of the South, political reconstruction did not begin until the end of the war, but in Louisiana the issues had been debated and voted on long before Lee’s surrender. Early in 1865, the blacks, scalawags, and carpetbaggers formed a party which, despite its first defeat, would soon gain control of the state.