Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

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With these convictions, I issued General Order No. 55, which will explain itself, and have raised nearly the amount of the 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 go 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 actively 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 securities of his correspondents 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,