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| Benj. F. Butler in 1863. engraved from a life-size bust. |
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Before the war, I had met gentlemen of the South whose word I would take implicitly.
I believed them men of honor, and they were so. But the dire crime of treason seemed to have obliterated the consciences of quite all of them, as well as of the foreign officials who resided among them, just as the man who makes up his mind to dishonor the wife of his friend, also prepares his conscience to permit his perjury to defend himself and her in the crime.
Sir Walter Scott treats this, in a public speech, as the acknowledged duty of a gentleman.
So, in the South, no pledge or engagement made with a Yankee was held to be binding.
The most flagrant instance of this was in the case of the McRae, captured at Fort Jackson.
She was the only Confederate gunboat that had not been destroyed by Farragut's fleet in its passage of the forts.
The enemy asked that she might be sent up under a flag of
truce as a cartel to carry their wounded officers and men to the city.
Of course she was to return and deliver herself up, because, as she was then, with Farragut's fleet above and below her, she could not possibly have escaped.
This arrangement was made between Captain Smith, commanding the Mississippi at the quarantine, and the officers of the Confederate navy.
They deliberately caused holes to be bored in the steamer, as she lay in the river after they had landed
A. M. Thayer and Co. 1892.
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