If the Confederacy had taken a poll of the most hated Union general, New Hampshire native Benjamin Butler would have taken the laurels hand down. Short, stoop-shouldered, and cross-eyed, Butler looked the part of a consummate stage villain, and during his controversial seven-month reign as military governor of Louisiana in 1862, he played the role to the hilt, deliberately provoking New Orleans residents with a barrage of high-handed orders aimed at restoring Federal control over the famously insouciant city.
Butler’s most notorious act was known officially as General Order No. 28, but outraged Southerners dubbed it “the Woman Order.” Aimed at stopping the open abuse of Union soldiers by New Orleans’ fairer sex, the order declared, in part, that “when any female shall, by word, gesture, or movement, insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier of the United States, she shall be regarded and held liable to be treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation”—in other words, a prostitute.
The order had the anticipated effect on Southern tempers. Confederate President Jefferson Davis immediately declared Butler “an outlaw and common enemy of mankind,” to be hanged outright if captured. The fact that there was no legal justification for the declaration—and certainly no military might to back it up at the time—did not unduly trouble Davis or his supporters. South Carolina poet Paul Hamilton Haynedenounced the general as “a fiend of lust” and demanded for him “a swift cord and a felon grave.” Piteous appeals, supposedly from the ladies of New Orleans but more likely from male writers on various Southern newspapers, filled editorial pages from Richmond to Charleston. Even British lawmakers got into the act, protesting the order in Parliament until Butler pointed out with some glee that he had taken his wording almost verbatim from a similar London municipal ordnance.
No arrests were ever made under Butler’s order, and he noted that “all the ladies forebore to insult our troops, because they didn’t want to be deemed common women, all the common women forebore to insult our troops because they wanted to deemed ladies.” Instead, the ladies took their protests indoors, using chamber pots with Butler’s frowning visage painted on the bottom.
A second Butler ultimatum, Special Order No. 70, concerned the fate of one William Mumford, a New Orleanian arrested for desecrating the American flag. The 42-year-old Mumford was no common street thug; instead he was an accomplished gambler and bon vivant, with a wife and three children. His very prominence led to Mumford’s downfall. The New Orleans Picayune singled him out as a “patriot” for his role in tearing down the American flag from the roof of the U.S. Mint as Union warships were approaching the city. Mumford publicized his role by going around town with a piece of the ripped-up flag dangling from his pocket.
As military governor, Butler had to review the prisoner’s pending death sentence in June 1862. Earlier that same month he had commuted the death sentences of six Confederate soldiers who had violated their paroles by joining in the defense of New Orleans. Worried that his earlier leniency would be mistaken for weakness, Butler upheld Mumford’s sentence, despite receiving dozens of threatening letters with sketches of pistols, coffins, skulls, and crossbones etched across their margins. “The question was now to be determined,” said Butler, “whether I commanded that city or whether the mob commanded it.” At 10:47 am on June 7, Mumford was hanged on a special gallows erected on the second story of the Mint, directly below the flagstaff he had defamed.
Mumford’s execution had a surprisingly unbeastly aftermath. In 1869, the slain man’s widow contacted Butler, then serving as member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and asked him to relieve her “destitute” condition. Butler used his influence to get her clerkship at the Treasury Department—an ironic position for a woman whose husband had been hanged for desecrating the U.S. Mint. Butler kept his action secret. Sometimes, even a “beast” can have a softer side.
—Roy Morris Jr.
There was a television series in 1958-59 named Yancy Derringer that featured General Butler as the Yankee protagonist. His portrayal was a bit less harsh than described in this article but did make the point that his administration did have something of an edge about it. All things considered, most of the population appears to have adapted to the occupation reasonably well according to most accounts of the time.