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[259] have been recognized by Butler as a cowardly opportunity for advantage. In his office, in the St. Charles Hotel, the inscription was placed in plain sight: “There is no difference between a he and a she adder in their venom.” His officers were allowed to indulge their rapacity and Just at will; they seized houses of respectable citizens, and made them the shops of infamous female characters; they appropriated the contents of wine-rooms; they plundered the wardrobes of ladies and gentlemen; they sent away from the city the clothing of whole families; they “confiscated” pianos, libraries, and whatever articles of luxury and ornament pleased their fancy, and sent them as presents and souvenirs to their friends at home. It was the era of plunder and ill-gotten gains. Fines were collected at pleasure. Recusants were threatened with ball and chain. A trade was opened in provisions for cotton, and Butler's own brother was made banker and broker of the corrupt operations, buying confiscated property, trading provisions and even military stores for cotton, and amassing out of the distress of an almost starving people fortunes of princely amount and villainous history. No wonder that the principal of these outrages lived in perpetual alarm for the safety of his life. It was said that he wore secret armour. He certainly was never for a moment without an armed guard. Sentinels walked in five paces of him ; and when he sat in his office, several pistols lay beside him, and a chair allotted to the visitor was chained to the wall while a pistol capped but unloaded was placed, as if carelessly, within reach, as a cunning decoy to the supposed assassin. 1 A shocking incident of Butler's despotism in New Orleans was the execution of William B. Mumford, a citizen of the Confederate States, charged with the singular crime of having taken the Federal flag from the United States Mint, which was done before the city had surrendered, and was, in any circumstances, but an act of war. He was condemned to death for an insult to the enemy's ensign. It was scarcely to be believed that on such a charge a human life would be taken, deliberately and in cold blood. Butler was inexorable. The wife and children of the condemned man piteously plead for his life. Butler's answer was cruel and taunting. A number of citizens joined in a petition for mercy. Butler answered that
1 We are indebted to James Parton, a Northern biographer of Butler, for mention of this ingenious device. Parton thus describes the arrangements of his hero's office, while transacting
The office was a large room, furnished with little more than a long table and a few chairs. In one corner, behind the table, sat, unobserved, a short-hand reporter, who, at a signal from the General, would take down the examination of an applicant or an informer. The General began business by placing his pistol upon the table, within easy reach. After the detection of two or three plots to assassinate him, one of the aides caused a little shelf to be made under the table for the pistol, while another pistol, unloaded, lay upon the table, which any gentleman, disposed to attempt the game of assassination, was at liberty to snatch.
1866.
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