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By Root 6707 0

soldiers marched through rubble and trash-strewn streets to take up positions in the chief public buildings. The residents of the magnificent St. Charles Hotel in the French Quarter were turned out to make way for General Butler and his retinue, while the customs house became his headquarters. Butler let it be known that henceforth every citizen would live and abide by his rules alone. “The hand that cuts your bread can cut your throat,” he announced.17 Butler was one of the first politicians to be made a general in the volunteer army. It was his success in raising regiments—and his support for the war as a Democrat—rather than any previous military experience that won him the rank. He had joined the Massachusetts militia as a twenty-one-year-old, and had risen to become a brigadier general without ever hearing a shot in battle. A successful lawyer by profession, Ben Butler could fight hard and dirty when circumstances demanded. Force of will and astute backroom tactics had won him the military command of the New Orleans operation—a remarkable feat considering that his two previous commands had been marred by breathtaking incompetence.

Among Butler’s first acts was the capture and execution of William Mumford, who was strung up from the same flagpole that had flown the desecrated U.S. flag. He also issued a raft of edicts: Any house used by sharpshooters would be destroyed.18 Shopkeepers who refused to sell to Union officers would have their goods confiscated. Overt displays of partisanship would be judged without mercy—a woman who laughed loudly at a passing Union funeral cortege was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment.19 Almost anyone who wished to do business in the city was first required to take an oath of allegiance.

Nor was Butler troubled in the least by diplomatic niceties. When the foreign consuls protested against their citizens’ having to take loyalty oaths, he invited them to leave the city. He declared all foreign funds in their safekeeping to be Confederate contraband and therefore liable to seizure. Union soldiers forced their way into the Dutch consulate and bullied the hapless consul into opening his vault. When Butler attempted the same with the French consulate, however, Count Mejan reminded him that a French warship was moored on the river. Butler also punished members of the British Guard (a company in the European Brigade) who had sent their uniforms and weapons to friends in the Confederate army. Two were imprisoned and another thirty-seven were forced to leave the city.20

Lord Lyons thought it was “very imprudent” for the British Guard to engage in such partisan behavior, but he was sufficiently alarmed by Consul Mure’s reports to order the Rinaldo to proceed to the city. New Orleans had always been a byword for lawlessness and truculence, and the absence of menfolk did little to cow its abandoned wives and daughters. These female Southerners wore Confederate colors, sang songs, hissed, spat, turned their backs, and on one famous occasion dumped the contents of a chamber pot on Union soldiers. In retaliation, on May 15, Butler issued General Order No. 28, which held 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.” Washington dismissed the document as a crude piece of Southern propaganda, until newspapers from New Orleans confirmed it.21

Butler’s “Woman Order” galvanized the South more effectively than any speech or partial victory might have achieved.22 The Confederate armies in the west had become demoralized after the recent spate of defeats. The loss of Island No. 10 had increased federal control of the Mississippi River to within attacking distance of Memphis, the Confederacy’s fifth-largest city and the river gateway into Mississippi. Many of the regiments in General Beauregard’s army had come to the end of their twelve-month terms and wanted to return home. One of his corps commanders, Braxton Bragg,