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

I gave an order that the Charity Hospital, which was an institution carried on by a board of trustees, should have five thousand dollars a month for its support besides issuing an order forbidding the trustees to resign their trust and abandon it.

I was feeding the poor whites of New Orleans at a cost of fifty thousand dollars a month, and the negroes at a cost which I never knew, because they received their provisions from the supplies of the soldiers.

It was impossible for me to get a request to my government and an answer back in less than thirty days, and usually a much longer time was required, so that I had no control attempted over me, except in the matter of my treatment of “foreign rebels.” By these I mean men who had come here and enjoyed all our privileges and asked the protection of our government, and owed to it local allegiance,--that is, to do nothing against it while within its borders,--and yet while attacking it in every way were always claiming they should be let alone because they were neutral.

Mr. Seward, the Secretary of State, was in distress whenever I did anything that caused a little whipper-snapper emissary from some government in Europe to complain of my just treatment of a man who claimed to be a consul, and this caused perpetual interference and annoyance. Otherwise I was supreme. Having supreme power, I used it in the manner I have set forth.

The poor had to be fed, the streets had to be cleaned, the protection from yellow fever had to be made sure, and able-bodied, idle men had to have employment to keep them from mischief and maintain their families. There was power enough to do all this, but in what manner could it be paid?

To do these things required much money. True, the troops might be ordered to do the labor, and the money furnished by the United States for other necessary purposes might be diverted to that use. There was no appropriation upon which a requisition could be properly answered by the government at Washington from which to take it out of the taxes of the North. But nothing was further from my thoughts than either of these expedients. An attempt had been