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

[429] made by me to call upon the city at least to clean the streets and pay therefor from the taxes, but that resource had been futile because the taxes could not be collected. And besides, when my order was published in that regard saying that the laborers should be paid a dollar a day, the city council, then in session,--but very soon after put out because of an invitation by it for the French fleet to come to New Orleans,--passed a resolution declaring that “when the city had had control of its affairs it paid one dollar and a half a day to its laborers; but since the United States had taken charge of the city, it proposed to pay only a dollar a day.” To which I answered that in administering the affairs of the city, to be paid for by its tax, I thought I ought to be economical; but as that was to be paid for by taxation of the city, and the city government wanted to pay fifty cents more, I would raise the price to one dollar and fifty cents, although plenty of good labor had been employed at a dollar a day. I believe that was my last communication made to the city government with the expectation that they would do anything.

I had the documents to show me that not long before we came, there had been a “city defence fund” committee organized to receive subscriptions and issue bonds to the amount of a million dollars to the subscribers to that fund, which bonds were to bear quite a rate of interest. These subscriptions had been paid.

A large portion of them were those of rich foreign-born men, some of whom had taken the oath of allegiance to the United States, but almost all of whom had taken the oath of allegiance to the Confederacy. And there was another class of citizens, cotton planters, who had issued a paper advising that no cotton should be brought to the city as a matter of merchandise.

I assumed that I should need for my expenditure a sum between $500,000 and $700,000, and I ordered that an assessment equal to one half of the subscriptions to the “fund,” and a sum equal to one hundred dollars for each of the offenders of the other class should be paid to my financial agent forthwith, with which to pay for this work that had been and was being done. I held that these men had made the expenditure necessary and therefore these men should pay for it. That order, it is needless to say, was enforced, and it is also needless to say, was the cause of protests of the foreign consuls in