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

[436] whose funds are managed by that house. I find M. Paesher & Co., bankers, whose clerks and employees formed a part of the French legion, organized to fight the United States, and who contributed largely to arm and equip that corps. And a Mr. Lewis, whose antecedents I have not had time to investigate.

And these are fair specimens of the “neutrality” of the foreigners, for whom the government is called upon to interfere, to prevent their paying anything toward the relief fund for their starving countrymen.

If the representatives of the foreign governments will feed their own starving people, over whom the only protection they extend, so far as I see, is to tax them all, poor and rich, a dollar and a half each for certificates of nationality, I will release the foreigners from all exactions, fines, and imposts whatever.

I have the honor to be your obedient servant,

Benjamin F. Butler, Major-General Commanding.

The government sustained Order No. 55, and upon that being made known to the commanding general, on December 9, 1862, he issued the following order:--

New Orleans, December 9, 1862.

Under General Order No. 55, current series, from these headquarters, an assessment was made upon certain parties who had aided the rebellion, “to be appropriated to the relief of the starving poor of New Orleans.”

The calls upon the fund raised under that order have been frequent and urgent, and it is now exhausted.

But the poor of this city have the same or increased necessities for relief as then, and their calls must be heard; and it is both fit and proper that the parties responsible for the present state of affairs should have the burden of their support.

Therefore, the parties named in Schedules A and B, of General Order No. 55, as hereunto annexed, are assessed in like sums, and for the same purpose, and will make payment to D. C. G. Field, financial clerk, at his office, at these headquarters, on or before Monday, December 15, 1862.

I was relieved by General Banks six days after. As the time this assessment was to be paid was at the expiration of seven days, and I was relieved before that time, of course nobody paid the assessment according to the order. Within thirty days General Banks found himself under the necessity of renewing the order and