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

Having shut the door against our destroying enemy and fastened it securely, I engaged the most competent medical director in the matter of yellow fever there was in the country, Doctor MacCormick, who fought it in New Orleans through the siege of 1853. Before he came I procured a perfectly competent quarantine officer, to whom I was to pay double the salary of the State quarantine officer upon the ground that I did not need his services between the middle of November and the middle of May. This quarantine officer was engaged under a specific contract that he was to have no responsibility for himself and his assistants, except to make true reports of the condition of the vessels, after a full and intelligent examination. And as the health and lives of so many would be dependent upon the truth of those reports, he was notified that any remissness in his duty would be punished with the heaviest punishment known.

The next requirement that complicated the matter was the necessity of doing all this at once. Therefore, on the 4th of June, I sent the following message to the military commandant and the city council of New Orleans:--

New Orleans, June 4, 1862.
to the military commandant and City council of New Orleans:

General Shepley and Gentlemen:--Painful necessity compels some action in relation to the unemployed and starving poor of New Orleans. Men willing to labor cannot get work by which to support themselves and families, and are suffering for food.

Because of the sins of their betrayers, a worse than the primal curse seems to have fallen upon them: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread until thou return unto the ground.”

The condition of the streets of the city calls for the promptest action for a greater cleanliness and more perfect sanitary preparations.

To relieve, as far as I may be able to do, both difficulties, I propose to the city government as follows:

I. The city shall employ upon the streets, squares, and unoccupied lands in the city, a force of men, with proper implements, and under competent direction, to the number of two thousand, for at least thirty working days, in putting those places in such condition as, with the blessing of Providence, shall insure the health as well of the citizens as of the troops.

The necessities of military operations will detain in the city a larger number of those who commonly leave it during the summer, especially women and children, than are usually resident here during the hot