Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

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[260] some vicious men in New Orleans had sent him defiant letters about Mumford's fate; that an issue had been raised, that it was “to be decided whether he was to govern in New Orleans or not” --and he decided it by keeping the word he had first pronounced, and sending Mumford to the gallows.

The condemned man was one of humble station in life, and was said to have been of dissipated habits. But he was faultlessly brave. On the gallows the suggestion was made to him that he might yet save his life by a humiliating and piteous confession. He replied to the officer who thus tempted him: “Go away.” He turned to the crowd, and said, with a distinct and steady voice: “I consider that the manner of my death will be no disgrace to my wife and children; my country will honour them.” More than a thousand spectators stood around the gallows; they could not believe that the last act of the tragedy was really to be performed; they looked on in astonished and profound silence.

Before the era of Butler in New Orleans, the Confederates had had a large and instructive experience of the ferocity of their enemies, and their disregard of all the rules of war and customs of civilization. At Manassas and Pensacola the Federals had repeatedly and deliberately fired upon hospitals. In the naval battle in Hampton Roads, they had hung out a white flag, and then opened a perfidious fire upon our seamen. At Newbern they had attempted to shell a town containing several thousand women and children, before either demanding a surrender, or giving the citizens notice of their intentions. They had broken faith on every occasion of expediency; they had disregarded flags of truces; they had stolen private property; they had burned houses, and desecrated churches; they had stripped widows and orphans of death's legacies by a barbarous law of confiscation; they had overthrown municipalities and State Governments; they had imprisoned citizens, without warrant and regardless of age or sex; and they had set at defiance the plainest laws of civilized warfare.

Butler's government in New Orleans, and his “ingenious” war upon the helplessness of men and virtue of women was another step in atrocity. The Louisiana soldiers in Virginia went into battle, shouting: “Remember Butler!” It was declared that the display of Federal authority in the conquered city of New Orleans was sufficient to make the soldiers of the South devote anew whatever they had of life and labour and blood to the cause of the safety and honour of their country. And yet it was but the opening chapter of cruelty and horrours, exaggerated at each step of the war, until Humanity was to stand aghast at the black volume of misery and ruin.