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

I went over twice on purpose to see them after they got to work, and a better gang of workmen I never saw, and as far as they had gone, a cleaner performance was never seen.

I observed only one thing that needed correction. The sidewalk was lined with a committee of citizens who amused themselves by chaffing the laborers. I went home and the next day the commander of the gang had an order that if any man loitered on the streets, talking or interfering with the laborers at work, he should be put into their uniform and set at work among them. That was done and the sidewalk committee adjourned.

The result of it was that the experiment was more successful than in New Orleans. There I kept the yellow fever down at the passes, where whole ship's crews were dying, and where there were very many cases. But they were never allowed to get up beyond the quarantine. At Norfolk, however, military necessity required me to run two steamers a week backward and forward between Norfolk and the fever-stricken town of Newbern, North Carolina, a small country town on the Neuse liver. Newbern is in a region surrounded by resinous pines, and I had always supposed that a more healthy place could not be found in North Carolina. It had never occurred to me that they could have yellow fever down there, although I knew that they had a great deal of congestive fever because of the lowlands in the bottom of which was the river. Indeed, my attention had not been drawn to that question at all, for Newbern was an inland town in a pine region. But to my horror and astonishment in the latter part of July yellow fever struck Newbern, and as my recollection is now,--and it will be of little consequence whether I am right or wrong,--one half of the people, white and black, died or were afflicted with this fell disease. The troops had to be called away from there and we lost many soldiers with the scourge.

I gave orders to have extra care taken that nobody should come up on the boats through Dismal Swamp canal from Newbern until proper means of fumigation and cleansing had been taken, and I was fortunate enough to have no case at Norfolk. I was extremely solicitous to know what was the condition of things which caused the yellow fever in Newbern, and after the frosts came I went down there. When I got within two miles of the place I met an awful