HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE GULF,
New Orleans, May 25, 1862.
Hon. E. M. STANTON,
Secretary of War:
SIR: In
matters pertaining to the conduct of affairs in my own department which affect
that alone I will trouble you for instructions as little as possible, but in
those which affect the administrative policy of the country I beg leave to
refer to the help of the War Department for advice and direction. The question
now pressing me is the state of negro property here and the condition of the
negroes as men. It has a gravity as regards both white and black appalling as
the mind follows out the logical necessities of different lines of action.
Ethnological in its proportions and demands for investigation, it requires
active administrative operations immediately upon the individual in his daily
life, his social, political, and religious status as a human being, while some
of the larger deductions of political economy are to be at once worked out by
any given course of conduct. It cannot be solved therefore without thought or
discussion by a phrase or a paragraph. The question now comes to me in a
different form from that in which it has presented itself to any other military
commander.
At Fortress Monroe
during the last summer I found the negro deserted by his master or having been
forced by him into the fortification as the builder and thus made to aid in the
rebellion. The rights of property under that condition of things could be
easily settled. The man was to be treated as a human being wrecked upon a
civilized coast, all his social ties and means of living gone, to be cared for
because he was a man. My action thereupon is well known and was approved by the
Government.
At Port Royal the
same condition of things substantially obtained and I suppose will be dealt
with in like manner. Here, however, an entirely different state of the question
is disclosed.
The general
commanding finds himself in possession of a tract of country larger than some
States of the Union. This has submitted to the Government of the United States;
a community with whom by proclamation the President is about opening commercial
relations with all the world except for that which is contraband of war; rich
in fertile lands; in it a city of the first class, wherein its inhabitants by a
large majority are attending to their usual avocations and endeavoring in good
faith to live quietly under the laws of the Union, and whoever does not do so
is speedily punished and his compeers thereby admonished.
To this city and
vicinage has been pledged the governmental protection and inviolability of the
rights of property under the laws of the United States so long as these
conditions of peace and quiet shall be preserved, and that pledge has been
accepted by the good, loyal, and peaceful, and the power of the Union is
respected by the wicked, so that they have become peaceful, if not loyal. It is
found that a large portion of property held here is in slaves. They till the
soil, raise the sugar, corn, and cotton, lead and unload the ships; they
perform every domestic office, and are permeated through every branch of
industry and peaceful calling.
In a large degree
the owners of the soil, planters, farmers, mechanics, and small traders have
been passive rather than active in the rebellion. All that had real property at
stake have been the led rather than the leaders in this outbreak against law
and order. In the destruction of cotton and sugar even, which has been so
largely effected, the owners and producers have not been the destroyers, but in
many cases the resistants of destruction.
There is still
another class. Those actively in arms and those who for motives of gain or
worse have aided the rebellion in their several spheres.
The property of
these I am hunting out and holding for confiscation under the laws. There is in
most cases no military necessity for its immediate confiscation. Such act, if
done, would in many instances work injustice to the bona fide loyal
creditor, whose interest the Government will doubtless consider. I am only
confiscating in fact in cases where there is a breach of a positive order, for
the purpose of punishment and example. In all these cases I have no hesitation
as to the kinds of property or rights of property which shall be confiscated,
and make no distinctions, save that where that property consists in the
services of slaves I shall not sell it until so ordered.
Now, many negroes
(slaves) have come within my lines. Many have sought to be kept, fed, and to
live in the quarters with my troops. Loyal and disloyal masters have lost them
alike. I have caused as many to be employed as I have use for. I have directed
all not employed to be sent out of my lines, leaving them subject to the
ordinary laws of the community in that behalf.
I annex all orders
and communications to my officers upon this matter up to the date of the
transmission of this dispatch.
Now, what am I to
do? Unless all personal property of all rebels is to be confiscated (of the
policy of which a military commander has no right to an opinion) it is
manifestly unjust to make a virtual confiscation of this particular species of
property. Indeed it makes an actual confiscation of all property, both real and
personal, of the planter if we take away or allow to run away his negroes as
his crop is just growing, it being impossible to supply the labor necessary to
preserve it. Again, if a portion of these slaves only are to be taken within my
lines, and if to be so taken is a benefit to them, it is unjust to those that
are not taken. Those that come early to us are by no means the best men and
women. With them, as with the whites, it is the worse class that rebel against
and evade the laws that govern them. The vicious and unthrifty have felt
punishment of their masters as a rule, the exception being where the cruel
master abuses the industrious and well-behaved slave, and the first to come are
those that feel particular grievances.
It is a physical
impossibility to take all. I cannot feed the white men within my lines. Women
and children are actually starving in spite of all that I can do. Ay, and they
too without fault on their part. What would be the state of things if I allowed
all the slaves from the plantations to quit their employment and come within
the lines is not to be conceived by the imagination.
Am I then to take
of these blacks only the adventurers, the shiftless, and wicked, to the
exclusion of the good and quiet? If coming within our lines is equivalent to
freedom, and liberty is a boon, is it to be obtained only by the first that
apply?
I had written thus
far when by the Ocean Queen I received a copy of an order
of Major-General Hunter upon this subject in the Department of the South.
Whether I assent or dissent from the course of action therein taken it is not
my province to criticise it.
I desire, however,
to call attention to the grounds upon which it seems to be based and to examine
how far they may be applicable here.
The military
necessity does not exist here for the employment of negroes in arms, in order
that we may have an acclimated force. If the War Department desires, and will
permit, I can have 5,000 able bodied white citizens enlisted within 60 days,
all of whom have lived here many years, and many of them drilled soldiers, to
be commanded by intelligent loyal officers. Besides, I hope and believe that
this war will be ended before any body of negroes could be organized, armed,
and drilled so as to be efficient.
The negro here, by
long habit and training, has acquired a great horror of fire-arms, sometimes
ludicrous in the extreme when the weapon is in his own hand. I am inclined to
the opinion that John Brown was right in his idea of arming the negro with a
pike or spear instead of a musket, if they are to be armed at all. Of this I
say nothing, because a measure of governmental policy is not to be discussed in
the dispatch of a subordinate military officer.
In this connection
it might not be inopportune to call to mind the fact that a main cause of the
failure of the British in their attack on New Orleans was the employment of a
regiment of blacks brought with them from the West Indies. This regiment was
charged with the duty of carrying the facines with which the ditch in front of
Jackson's line was to be filled up and the ladders for scaling the embankment.
When the attacking column reached the point of assault the facines and ladders
were not there. Upon looking around for them it was found that their black
guardians had very prudently laid themselves down upon the plain in the rear
and protected their heads from the whistling shot with the facines which should
have been to the front in a different sense.
I am further inclined
to believe that the idea that our men here cannot stand the climate, and
therefore the negroes must be freed and armed as an acclimated force, admits of
serious debate.
My command has been
either here or on the way here from Ship Island since the 1st of May, some of
them on shipboard in the river since the 17th of April. All the deaths in the
general hospital in this city since we have been here are only 13 from all
causes, 2 of these being accidental, as will appear from Surgeon Smith's
report, herewith submitted. From diseases at all peculiar to the climate I do
not believe we have lost in the last thirty days one-fifth of one per cent. in
the whole command; taking into the account also the infirm and debilitated, who
ought never to have passed the surgeon's examination and come here.
Certain it is, if
we admit the proposition that white men cannot be soldiers in this climate, we
go very far toward asserting the dogma that white men cannot labor here, and
therefore establish the necessity for exclusively black labor, which has ever
been the corner-stone of African slavery.
We have heard much
in the newspapers of the free-negro corps of this city organized for the
defense of the South. From this a very erroneous idea may have been derived.
The officers of that company called upon me the other day upon the question of
the continuance of their organization and to learn what disposition they would
be required to make of their arms; and in color, nay, also in conduct, they had
much more the appearance of white gentlemen than some of those who have favored
me with their presence claiming to be the “chivalry of the South.”
I have satisfied
myself, if I have failed to satisfy the Department, that no military necessity
exists to change the policy of the Government in this respect within my
command.
I have given
hurriedly amidst the press of other cares some of the considerations that seem
to me to bear upon the question. I only add as a fact that those well-disposed
to the Union here represent that the supposed policy of the Government, as
indicated by General Hunter's order, is used by our enemies to paralyze all the
efforts to co-operate with us.
Reared in the full
belief that slavery is a curse to a nation, which my further acquaintance with
it only deepens and widens, from its baleful effects upon the master, because
as under it he cannot lift the negro up in the scale of humanity therefore the
negro drags him down, I have no fear that my views will be anywhere
misunderstood. I only accept the fact of its present existence, the “tares
among the wheat,” and have asked the direction of the Department, “lest while I
gather up the tares I root up also the wheat with them,” or shall I “let both grow
together till the harvest?”
Respectfully, &c.,
BENJ.
F. BUTLER,
Major-General, Commanding.
[lnclossures.]
- Major-General Benjamin F. Butler to Brigadier General John W. Phelps, May 9, 1862
- Major-General Benjamin F. Butler to Brigadier General John W. Phelps, May 10, 1862
- Major-General Benjamin F. Butler to Brigadier General John W. Phelps, May 21, 1862
- Major-General Benjamin F. Butler to Brigadier General John W. Phelps, May 23, 1862
SOURCE: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of
the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, Volume
15 (Serial No. 21), p. 439-42
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