Hatred of General Butler

The loss of New Orleans was a terrible blow for the Confederates. "It annihilated us in Louisiana," wrote a Confederate historian, "diminished our resources and supplies by the loss of one of the greatest grain and cattle countries within the limits of the Confederacy, gave to the enemy the Mississippi River with all its means of navigation for a base of operations, and finally led, by plain and irresistible conclusions, to our virtual abandonment of the great and fruitful valley of the Mississippi."

The loss of New Orleans produced the greatest irritation in the public mind throughout the Confederacy, and the rigor of Butler's rule there excited the most violent personal hatred of the general. When he was about to leave New Orleans, Jefferson Davis, the chief of the Confederacy, issued a proclamation in which he pronounced Butler to be "a felon deserving of capital punishment;" and he ordered that he should not be "treated simply as a public enemy of the Confederate States of America, but as an outlaw, and common enemy of mankind;" and that, "in the event of his capture, the officer in command of the capturing force, do cause him to be immediately executed, by hanging." He also ordered that the same treatment should be awarded to all commissioned officers serving under Butler. A "Georgian" offered a reward of $10,000 "for the infamous Butler." Richard Yeadon, a prominent citizen of Charleston, publicly offered a reward of $10,000 "for the capture and delivery of the said Benjamin F. Butler, dead or alive, to any Confederate authority." A "Daughter of South Carolina," in a letter to the Charleston Courier, said: "I propose to spin the thread to make the cord to execute the order of our noble President Davis, when old Butler is caught; and my daughter asks that she may be allowed to adjust it around his neck." And Paul R. Hayne, a South Carolina poet, wrote: