New Orleans.--Custom-house.--Union Prisoners.--The Calaboose.
--"Them Lincolnites."--The St. Charles.--"Grape-vine Telegraph."
--New Orleans Shop-keepers.--Butler and Soulé.--The Fourth
Wisconsin.--A New Orleans Mob.--Yellow Fever.
On the evening of the 1st of May, 1862, the leading transports
anchored off the city. Butler sent for Williams, and ordered him to
land at once. Williams, like the thorough soldier he was, proposed
to wait till morning, when he would have daylight for the movement,
and when the other transports, with our most reliable troops, would
be up. "No, sir," said Butler, "this is the 1st of May, and on this
day we must occupy New Orleans, and the first regiment to land must
be a Massachusetts regiment." So the orders were issued, and in half
an hour the Thirty-first Massachusetts Volunteers and the Sixth
Massachusetts Battery set foot in New Orleans.
As we commenced our march, Williams saw the steamer _Diana_ coming up
with six companies of the Fourth Wisconsin. He ordered a halt, and
sent me with instructions for them to land at once, and fall into
the rear of the column. I passed through the mob without difficulty,
gave the orders, and we resumed our march. The general had directed
that our route should be along the levee, where our right was
protected by the gun-boats. Presently we found that the head of the
column was turning up Julia Street. Williams sent to know why the
change had been made. The answer came back that Butler was there, and
had given orders to pass in front of the St. Charles Hotel, while the
band played "Yankee Doodle," and "Picayune Butler's come to Town,"
if they knew it. They did not know it, unfortunately, so we had one
unbroken strain of the martial air of "Yankee Doodle" all the way.
Arrived at the Custom-house late in the evening, we found the doors
closed and locked. Williams said to me, "What would you do?" "Break
the doors open," I replied. The general, who could not easily get
rid of his old, regular-army habits, ordered "Sappers and miners to
the front." No doubt the sappers and miners thus invoked would have
speedily appeared had we had any, but two volunteer regiments and a
battery of light artillery were the extent of our force that night. I
turned to the adjutant of the Fourth Wisconsin, and asked if he had
any axes in his regiment. He at once ordered up two or three men. We
found the weakest-looking door, and attacked it. As we were battering
it in, the major of the Thirty-first came up, and took an axe from
one of the men. Inserting the edge in the crack near the lock, he
pried it gently, and the door flew open. I said, "Major, you seem
to understand this sort of thing." He replied, "Oh! this isn't the
first door I have broken open, by a long shot. I was once foreman of
a fire-company in Buffalo."
We entered the building with great caution, for the report had
been spread that it was mined. The men of the Fourth Wisconsin had
candles in their knapsacks; they always had every thing, those
fellows! We soon found the meter, turned the gas on, and then
proceeded to make ourselves comfortable for the night. I established
myself in the postmaster's private room--the Post-office was in the
Custom-house--with his table for my bed, and a package of rebel
documents for a pillow. I do not remember what my dreams were that
night. We took the letters from the boxes to preserve them, and piled
them in a corner of my room. They were all subsequently delivered to
their respective addresses.
Pretty well tired out with the labor and excitement of the day, I
was just making myself tolerably comfortable for the night, when
the officer of the day reported that a woman urgently desired to
see the general on a matter of life or death. She was admitted. She
told us that her husband was a Union man, that he had been arrested
that day and committed to the "Calaboose," and that his life was in
danger. The general said to her, "My good woman, I will see to it
in the morning." "Oh, sir," she replied, "in the morning he will be
dead! They will poison him." We did not believe much in the poison
story, but it was evident that she did. Williams turned to me,
and said, "Captain, have you a mind to look into this?" Of course
I was ready, and ordering out a company of the Fourth Wisconsin,
and asking Major Boardman, a daring officer of that regiment, to
accompany me, I started for the Calaboose, guided by the woman. The
streets were utterly deserted. Nothing was heard but the measured
tramp of the troops as we marched along. Arrived at the Calaboose, I
ordered the man I was in search of to be brought out. I questioned
him, questioned the clerk and the jailer, became satisfied that he
was arrested for political reasons alone, ordered his release, and
took him with me to the Custom-house, for he was afraid to return
home. Being on the spot, it occurred to me that it would be as well
to see if there were other political prisoners in the prison. I had
the books brought, and examined the entries. At last I thought I had
discovered another victim. The entry read, "Committed as a suspicious
character, and for holding communication with Picayune Butler's
troops." I ordered the man before me. The jailer took down a huge
bunch of keys, and I heard door after door creaking on its hinges. At
last the man was brought out. I think I never saw a more villainous
countenance. I asked him what he was committed for? He evidently did
not recognize the Federal uniform, but took me for a Confederate
officer, and replied that he was arrested for talking to "them
Lincolnites." I told the jailer that I did not want that man--that he
might lock him up again.
Having commenced the search for political prisoners, I thought it
well to make thorough work of it; so I inquired if there were other
prisons in the city. There was one in the French quarter, nearly two
miles off; so we pursued our weary and solitary tramp through the
city. My men evidently did not relish it. The prison was quiet,
locked up for the night. We hammered away at the door till we got
the officers up; went in, examined the books, found no entries of
commitments except for crime; put the officers on their written oaths
that no one was confined there except for crime; and so returned to
our Post-office beds.
The next day was a busy one. Early in the morning I went to the
St. Charles Hotel to make arrangements for lodging the general
and his staff. With some difficulty I got in. In the rotunda of
that fine building sat about a dozen rebels, looking as black as a
thunder-cloud. I inquired for the proprietor or clerk in charge, and
a young man stepped forward: "Impossible to accommodate us; hotel
closed; no servants in the house." I said, "At all events, I will
see your rooms." Going into one of them, he closed the door and
whispered, "It would be as much as my life is worth, sir, to offer to
accommodate you here. I saw a man knifed on Canal Street yesterday
for asking a naval officer the time of day. But if you choose to
send troops and open the hotel by force, why, we will do our best to
make you comfortable." Returning to the rotunda, I found Lieutenant
Biddle, who had accompanied me--one of the general's aids--engaged
in a hot discussion with our rebel friends. I asked him "What use in
discussing these matters?" and, turning to the rebs, with appropriate
gesture said, "We've got you, and we mean to hold you." "That's the
talk," they replied; "we understand _that_." They told us that the
rebel army was in sight of Washington, and that John Magruder's guns
commanded the Capitol. Why they picked out Magruder particularly,
I can not say. This news had come by telegraph. We used to call
the rebel telegraphic lines "the grapevine telegraph," for their
telegrams were generally circulated with the bottle after dinner.
The shop-keepers in New Orleans, when we first landed there, were
generally of the opinion of my friend the hotel-clerk. A naval
officer came to us one morning at the Custom-house, and said that
the commodore wanted a map of the river; that he had seen the very
thing, but that the shop-keeper refused to sell it, intimating,
however, that if he were compelled to sell it, why then, of course,
he couldn't help himself. We ordered out a sergeant and ten men. The
officer got his map, and paid for it.
But Butler was not the man to be thwarted in this way. Finding this
_parti pris_ on the part of the shop-keepers, he issued an order
that all shops must be opened on a certain day, or that he should
put soldiers in, and sell the goods for account "of whom it might
concern." On the day appointed they were all opened. So, too, with
the newspapers. They refused to print his proclamation. An order
came to us to detail half a dozen printers, and send them under
a staff officer to the office of the _True Delta_, and print the
proclamation. We soon found the men. From a telegraph-operator to
a printer, bakers, engine-drivers, carpenters, and coopers, we had
representatives of all the trades. This was in the early days of the
war. Afterward the men were of an inferior class. The proclamation
was printed, and the men then amused themselves by getting out the
paper. Next morning it appeared as usual; this was enough. The editor
soon came to terms, and the other journals followed suit.
On the 2d of May Butler landed and took quarters at the St. Charles.
There has been much idle gossip about attempts to assassinate him,
and his fears of it. In regard to the latter, he landed in New
Orleans, and drove a mile to his hotel, with one staff officer, and
one armed orderly only on the box. When his wife arrived in the city,
he rode with one orderly to the levee, and there, surrounded by the
crowd, awaited her landing. As regards the former, we never heard of
any well-authenticated attempt to assassinate him, and I doubt if any
was ever made.
That afternoon Butler summoned the municipal authorities before
him to treat of the formal surrender of the city. They came to
the St. Charles, accompanied by Pierre Soulé as their counsel.
A mob collected about the hotel, and became turbulent. Butler
was unprotected, and sent to the Custom-house for a company of
"Massachusetts" troops. The only Massachusetts troops there were
the Thirty-first, a newly raised regiment. They afterward became
excellent soldiers, but at that time they were very young and very
green. It so happened, too, that the only company available was
composed of the youngest men of the regiment. They were ordered out.
The officer in charge did not know the way to the St. Charles. No
guide was at hand, so I volunteered to accompany them. We drew the
troops up on Common Street, and I entered the hotel to report them
to Butler. I found him engaged in a most animated discussion with
Soulé. Both were able and eloquent men, but Butler undoubtedly got
the better of the argument. Perhaps the fact that he had thirteen
thousand bayonets to back his opinions gave point to his remarks.
Interrupting his discourse for a moment only, he said, "Draw the
men up round the hotel, sir; and if the mob make the slightest
disturbance, fire on them on the spot," and went on with the
discussion. Returning to the street, I found the mob apostrophizing
my youthful soldiers with, "Does your mother know you're out?" and
like popular wit. It struck me that the inquiry was well addressed.
I felt disposed to ask the same question. I reported the matter to
Williams, and he thought that it would be well to counteract the
effect. That evening he sent the band of the Fourth Wisconsin to play
in front of the St. Charles, with the whole regiment, tall, stalwart
fellows, as an escort. In a few minutes the mob had slunk away. An
officer heard one _gamin_ say to another, "Those are Western men, and
they say they _do_ fight like h----." One of the officers told me
that his men's fingers itched to fire.
I suppose that all mobs are alike, but certainly the New Orleans
mob was as cowardly as it was brutal. When we first occupied the
Custom-house, they collected about us, and annoyed our sentries
seriously. The orders were to take no notice of what was said, but
to permit no overt act. I was sitting one day in my office, the
general out, when Captain Bailey, the officer who distinguished
himself so much afterward in building the Red River dam--and a
gallant fellow he was--rushed in, and said, "Are we to stand this?"
I said, "What's the matter, Bailey?" He replied that "One of those
d----d scoundrels has taken his quid from his mouth, and thrown it
into the sentry's face." I said, "No; I don't think that we are to
stand that: that seems to me an 'overt act.' Arrest him." Bailey
rushed out, called to the guard to follow him, and, jumping into
the crowd, seized the fellow by the collar, and jerked him into the
lines. The guard came up and secured him. The mob fell back and
scattered, and never troubled us from that day. The fellow went
literally down upon his knees, and begged to be let off. We kept him
locked up that night, and the next day discharged him. He laid it all
to bad whisky.
As the course of this narrative will soon carry the writer from New
Orleans into the interior, he takes this opportunity to say that he
has often been assured by the rebel inhabitants, men and women of
position and character, that never had New Orleans been so well
governed, so clean, so orderly, and so healthy, as it was under
Butler. He soon got rid of the "Plug-uglies" and other ruffian bands:
some he sent to Fort Jackson, and others into the Confederacy. There
was no yellow fever in New Orleans while we held it, showing as
plainly as possible that its prevalence or its absence is simply a
question of quarantine. (Butler had sworn he would hang the health
officer if the fever got up.) Before we arrived there, the "back
door," as it was called--the lake entrance to the city--was always
open, and for five hundred dollars any vessel could come up. In 1861,
when our blockade commenced, and during the whole of our occupation,
yellow fever was unknown. In 1866 we turned the city over to the
civil authorities. That autumn there were a few straggling cases, and
the following summer the fever was virulent.