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[105] speedily filled his camps with crowds of men, women, and children, destitute of food, and fearing to go outside of his lines lest they should be reduced again to Slavery. Gen. Butler, after anxious consideration, felt obliged to subject the whole district to sequestration, in order to secure the cutting and grinding of the cane, so as to save the remaining inhabitants from death by famine. Maj. Bell, Lt.-Col. Kinsman, and Capt. Fuller, were appointed a commission, who were to take charge of all personal property, and either apply it to the use of the army or transport it to New Orleans and there sell it to the highest bidders, dispensing to loyal citizens and neutral foreigners their just share of the proceeds, and applying the residue to the uses of the Federal service in this military department. Thus were the negroes employed, paid, and subsisted, the crops saved, and a large sum turned over to the support of our armies, while the number of White loyalists in Lafourche was rapidly and largely increased. Two Congressional districts having thus been recovered, Messrs. Benjamin F. Flanders and Michael Hahn were elected1 therefrom to the Federal House of Representatives: the former receiving 2,370 votes, to 173 for others, and the latter 2,581, which was 144 more than were cast against him. The voting was confined to electors under the laws of Louisiana who had taken the Federal oath of allegiance since the repossession of New Orleans; and the aggregate poll in that city outnumbered, it was stated, its total vote for Secession by about 1,000. When Gen. Butler first reached that city, there were not a hundred persons in Louisiana outside of our army and fleet who would have dared take the oath, however willing to do so.

Toward the end of November, Gen. Butler's spies brought him information from the nearest Rebel camps that he had been superseded in his command, and that Gen. N. P. Banks either was or soon would be on his way to relieve him. Some days before information of the purposed change reached our side, Secessionists in New Orleans were offering to bet a hundred to ten that Gen. Butler would be recalled before New Year's. The fact was known to Jefferson Davis before it was to Gen. Banks--long before it was communicated from Washington to Gen. Butler. It is probable that the French Minister, whose Government had not been pleased with Gen. Butler's management in New Orleans, was the immediate source of Rebel assurance on this point. Gen. Banks's assignment to the Department of the Gulf is dated November 9th, but was not made known to him till some weeks afterward.

Gen. Banks reached New Orleans Dec. 14th, was received with every honor, and on the 16th formally assumed the high trust to which lie had been appointed. On the 23d, Gen. Butler took personal leave of his many friends, and next day issued his farewell address to the people of New Orleans; leaving for New York, via Havana, by that day's boat. He was not then aware that he had been honored, the day previous, by a proclamnation from Jefferson Davis, declaring him a felon, outlaw, and common enemy of mankind, and

1 Early in December.

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