Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

[356] a second time with five thousand men, with thirty head of cattle on her guards for fresh meat, and three months provisions for my command in her hold. I relied upon her to be the great transport ship of my expedition. On both voyages she made quick time, landing her troops and provisions with safety. After she had discharged the second time, she lay there some days, under a daily demurrage of three thousand dollars, waiting for me to come. But I was so baffled by the intrigues at Washington, and afterwards by the perils of the sea, that I did not get to Ship Island until the last of March, while I was expected there the first of February.

After waiting some time for me to come, General Phelps thought it a pity that the government should be losing three thousand dollars a day and the boat there doing nothing. Accordingly he ordered her home, never once thinking how, in an emergency, he was to get away from there without any steamer,--for she was the only steamboat he had. Sometime before this he had written a proclamation freeing the negroes. He excused himself for sending the steamboat home on the ground that he was afraid that my expedition had been broken up, never considering, I repeat, how he and his eight thousand men were to get home, if it had been. He would have found himself without any means of transportation by steamer, if I had put my men on sailing vessels, as I had to do afterwards, for I had no steamer there except my little headquarters yacht, the Saxon, and the Mississippi, with a five-inch hole in her nose.

This also stared me in the face: I had sent down food and necessaries for a three months stay. These were rapidly being consumed. I had left orders with my quartermaster and commissary that after I had been two months away from Boston they should send me provisions for ninety days more. But before the time arrived for them to act, they were deprived of their commissions, their appointments being rejected by the Senate. This was done by the influence and the malignity of Governor Andrew and his crew of patriots simply upon political grounds. Although I made requisition for a new quartermaster and commissary to be sent to me as soon as it could be done, they did not get to me until after I had been in New Orleans more than thirty days.

Thus I was left without the services of a quartermaster and commissary who knew anything about the details of the expedition or its