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

[847] destination within the Confederate lines. I saw an opportunity to pay the expenses of the office by collecting these stamps and exchanging our money and stamps for Confederate money or stamps with which to pay Confederate postage to our prisoners. I employed three clerks, paid them out of that fund, and in addition to that I turned over three thousand dollars extra postage, saved by the difference between our postage currency and Confederate currency.

Now what did I do with the money thus gained,--not one cent of which came out of the treasury of the United States? I paid largely the expenses of digging Dutch Gap Canal; I built a hospital at Point of Rocks and furnished it with gas and water, and with cows for milk, and I expended a portion of it in sinking an artesian well, and built barracks for the soldiers at Fortress Monroe.

I found convicts, deserters, and others imprisoned at Fort Norfolk, doing nothing but eating their rations. I got a live Yankee and put him in charge as superintendent, and sent to Massachusetts and got prison uniforms, half black and half gray, and scarlet caps, with which to clothe these convicts, so that they could not easily escape when at work. I gave the superintendent charge of these men and told him to put them to work on the streets of Norfolk. I said to the men: “If you will work well and behave yourselves you shall have so many days deducted from your sentence according to your merits.” In consequence they labored well and did an exceedingly large amount of work. The result of this was that permanent work was done which was charged to the city of Norfolk, for paving, etc., and on the Dismal Swamp Canal to which the United States paid large rents, to the amount of about $38,000, while my whole prison labor cost less than $9,000. Besides this, from the 15th of April to the 15th of June there was taken a thousand loads of filth per week from Norfolk, and by this means the yellow fever was kept out.

The act of Congress had provided for a contraband ration. I found that in the way this had been managed there had been great waste.¹ The system of supplying the negroes was re-adjusted, and the saving of some $84,000 in my district, in the rations issued to contrabands, was made.