Chapter 10: the woman order, Mumford's execution, etc.
- Conduct of women of New Orleans toward Northern soldiers described -- some examples -- Butler's personal experience -- Spitting in officers' faces -- “I'll put a stop to this” -- General order no. 28 comes out -- it does put a stop to it -- how it affected the wife-whippers of England -- Honi soit qui mal y pense -- reward offered for Butler's head -- the other side: the noble women of New Orleans -- trouble with “neutrals” and whipper-snapper consuls -- Assessing wealthy Confederates to support the poor -- Mumford tears down the stars and Stripes -- is arrested and sentenced to death -- Butler threatened with assassination -- the wife's appeal -- Mumford hanged -- eight years later -- Depredation harshly punished -- Butler's wonderful spy system -- a spy in every family -- negro servants tell all -- some amusing instances -- “I want that Confederate flag, Madam, for a Fourth of July celebration in Lowell”
It must not be inferred that the several matters of which I treat at so much length followed one another in point of time. They were all going on at once, each pressing upon the other and each interfering with doing the other, and requiring the utmost industrious diligence. Crowding in upon us from the first moment of our occupation came a matter which at first seemed would be an annoyance only, but which speedily grew into an affair of most serious consequence, and one causing much discussion. This discussion was generally in the shape of animadversion, for the critics had not the slightest idea of the merits of the question at issue. From the second day after we landed, we had the men of New Orleans so completely under our control that our officers and soldiers could go anywhere in the city without being interfered with. I may say here, and challenge contradiction, in behalf of my gallant comrades, that from the time we landed until the time I left New Orleans, no officer or soldier did any act to interfere with life, limb, or property of any person in New Orleans, unless acting under perfectly explicit orders so to do. One result of our conduct was that any of us, from the highest to the lowest, went where he pleased without insult or hostile act by any man in New Orleans. Insomuch was this true that for myself, I walked or rode by day or by night through the streets of New Orleans anywhere I chose between Chalmette and Carrollton without any attendant or guard, or pretence of one, save a single orderly in attendance. But not so with the women of New Orleans. On the evening of the third day after our occupation of the city, the colonel of the Thirty-First Massachusetts Regiment called upon me and said:--
