John Dimitry , A. M., Confederate Military History, a library of Confederate States Military History: Volume 10.1, Louisiana
Clement Anselm Evans, Ed.

[60] his brutality was, within eight months, to drive him. In a history of Louisiana and her soldiers it would be out of perspective to do more than suggest the absolute failure, beyond his ‘sanitary’ precautions, of General Butler in his capacity of commander in the ‘Department of the Gulf.’ His acts, which being first despotic became shortly afterward crimes against men and women —contributed largely to his lack of successful administration. In the annals of our civil war General Butler will be known as the ‘Man of Two Orders.’ Not such blazing orders as those conferred by royalty upon merit; nor those which, attested by a jewel and a ribbon, distinguishes a man in the presence of his fellows. His ‘Orders,’ flecked with blood and stained with malice, are of more sinister character than those. Twenty-eight and Seventy are the numbers which they bear for posterity. Had General Butler contented himself with issuing No. 70, he might have been called, with the harshness of Draco, pitiless. Had he to No. 70 joined the order prescribing the ‘ironclad oath’ and classifying the ‘registered enemies’ to the United States, he might have been classed with the Duke of Alva in the Low Countries. It was reserved for him, however, by his own act, born of insatiate spite, to fall into a deeper depth than any tyrannical viceroy recorded in the history of courts. That depth is found in the following ‘Order No. 28.’¹

Its issuance was an offense against decency; a crime against the womanhood of a city which is foremost in the land in rendering knightly reverence to the sex. Without it, the story of the Butler regime would be left ‘like the tale of bold Cambustes,’ only ‘half-told.’