John Dimitry , A. M., Confederate Military History, a library of Confederate States Military History: Volume 10.1, Louisiana
Clement Anselm Evans, Ed.

[55] This consisted of six regiments of infantry from Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Michigan and Connecticut. With these came the Fifth and Sixth Massachusetts batteries and Second Vermont battery, with two companies of cavalry. It was a force fully adequate, in the absence of their sons and brothers in Virginia and Tennessee, to overawe a population of women and children. The city, however, was turbulent and its mob unruly. In every sense, armed troops had become an early necessity of the occupation. Butler himself posted and quartered his army of all branches at the custom house, city hall, mint, and on Lafayette square. These were all admirably designed as coigns of vantage to meet and check surprises, bursting from a passion-tossed mob. With armed men around him he was, by his own admission, angered on landing at hearing ‘cheers for Jeff Davis and Beauregard.’ Physical force is a potent factor for a quiet mind. ‘This has been checked,’ he adds, ‘and the last man that was heard to call for cheers for the rebel chief has been sentenced by the provost judge to three months hard labor at Fort Jackson.’

Up to his rule in New Orleans, the civil war was still young. It was unlearned in the meaning of outrages based upon malignity. New Orleans was the first large city in the Confederacy which had been placed at the mercy of a military dictator surrounded by his guards. It had, before that officer had been put over it, borne the terrors of warfare with equal firmness and lightness of heart. Its people, as brave as they were frank, had not lost a reputation for possessing the courage of their convictions. The city and its people had, consequently, become the earliest objects of official despotism. Butler had entered New Orleans as though he alone had conquered it, and maltreated its citizens as though they had been the captives of his spear. A city is like a man—it resents tyranny and is conciliated by kindness. New Orleans chafed under the malice of the ruler set over her. Her citizens