Horace Greeley, The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860-65: its Causes, Incidents, and Results: Intended to exhibit especially its moral and political phases with the drift and progress of American opinion respecting human slavery from 1776 to the close of the War for the Union. Volume II.

headquarters, Department of the Gulf, New Orleans, May 15, 1862.
General order no. 28:

As the officers and soldiers of the United States have been subjected to repeated insults from the women (calling themselves ladies) of New Orleans, in return for tile most scrupulous non-interference 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

Maj.-Gen. Butler. Geo. C. Strong, A. A. G., Chief of Staff.

This order was subjected to the worst possible construction, first by Mayor Monroe and his secret prompters; next by the Rebel Governor of Louisiana and the Secessionists generally; and so on, until Lord Palmerston, in the British House of Commons, took occasion to be astonished, to blush, and to proclaim his “deepest indignation” at the tenor of that order; Punch eagerly echoing his perversions. Gen. Butler was finally constrained, after too long enduring his palterings and equivocations, to send Mayor Monroe to prison, abolish his municipality, banish Pierre Soule, and appoint Col. G. F. Shepley military commandant, to the signal improvement of the government of New Orleans and the peace and security of its inhabitants; and all that need be added in explanation or in defense of the hated order is this: that no soldier under Gen. Butler's command ever acted upon the vile construction of that order which his enemies set up; and no woman in New Orleans ever pretended that site was anywise abused or insulted because thereof; while its success in arresting the scandalous behavior at which it aimed was immediate and complete.

The other case, wherein Gen. Butler especially displeased his enemies and those of his country, was that of Wm. B. Mumford, a New Orleans gambler, who had led the Rebel mob who tore down our National flag from the roof of tile Mint, where it had been hoisted by our sailors detailed for that duty by Capt. Morris, of the Pensacola, on the 27th, after Lovell had evacuated the city. and its Mayor and Common Council had officially declared themselves incapable of making any resistance, and that, yielding to physical force alone, they would make none, to the forces of the United States. The outrage thus committed by Mumford and his backers, furtive and riotous as it was, drew a shot from the howitzers in the main-top of the Pensacola, and might have provoked and justified the destruction of the city by our fleet; since the authorities did not disclaim, while the mob vociferously applauded and adopted it. So The Picayune of next morning eulogized its gallantry and patriotism, and proclaimed it an act of the city, and a proof of her “unflinching determination to sustain to the uttermost the righteous cause for which she has done so much and made such sacrifices.”