THE WOMEN OF NEW ORLEANS
[J. L. Underwood.]
While the patriotic women of New Orleans saw very little of war’s ravages, yet they endured three years of war’s hardships. The Crescent City fell into the hands of the Federals in 1862, Commodore Farragut commanding the navy, and General B. F. Butler the land forces. The latter was made military governor. Farragut carried on war against combatants, and as an officer is to this day respected and honored by the Southern people. Butler carried on war on civilians and against defenceless women. The history of these women cannot be told without telling of their odious military tyrant.
President Davis in his proclamation said:
The helpless women have been torn from their homes and subjected to solitary confinement, some in fortresses and prisons, and one, especially, on an island of barren sand under a tropical sun, have been fed with loathsome rations that had been condemned as unfit for soldiers, and have been exposed to the vilest insults.
Egress from the city has been refused to those whose fortitude could withstand the test, even to lone and aged women and to helpless children; and after being ejected from their homes and robbed of their property, they have been left to starve in the streets or subsist on charity.
But this does not tell half the story. The civilized world stood aghast when General Butler issued his infamous “Order No. 28,” which reads as follows:
As the officers and soldiers of the United States have been subjected to 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.
Human language cannot describe the cowardice, the meanness, the brutality of such an order. All Europe denounced him, President Davis outlawed him, some of his own Northern newspapers would not at first believe that he had issued such an order.
From that time on the name of “Butler, the Beast,” was fastened to him. In this day we pity women who are in danger of falling into the clutches of the black brute. These women of 1862 were under the heels of a white brute. Every American patriot will hang his head in shame for all time that President Lincoln kept Butler in high military office to the end of the war, and the government never did repudiate his infamous official outrage. Be it recorded to the everlasting honor of the Federal army that none of the soldiers of “The Beast” availed themselves of the license conferred by his order.