GENERAL ORDERS, No.
25.}
HDQRS. DEPARTMENT OF
THE GULF
New Orleans, May 9,
1862.
The deplorable state of destitution and hunger of the
mechanics and working classes in this city has been brought to the knowledge of
the commanding general.
He has yielded to every suggestion made by the city
government, and ordered every method of furnishing food to the people of New
Orleans that government desired. No relief by those officials has yet been
afforded. This hunger does not pinch the wealthy and influential leaders of the
rebellion, who have gotten up this war and are now endeavoring to prosecute it
without regard to the starving poor, the working man, his wife and child.
Unmindful of their suffering fellow-citizens at home, they have caused or
suffered provisions to be carried out of the city for Confederate service since
the occupation by the United States forces.
Lafayette Square, their home of affluence, was made the
depot of stores and munitions of war for the rebel armies, and not of
provisions for their poor neighbors. Striking hands with the vile, the gambler,
the idler, and the ruffian, they have destroyed the sugar and cotton, which
might have been exchanged for food for the industrious and good, and regrated
the price of that which is left by discrediting the very currency they had
furnished, while they eloped with the specie, as well that stolen from the
United States as the banks, the property of the good people of New Orleans,
thus leaving them to ruin and starvation.
Fugitives from justice many of them, and others their
associates staying because too puerile and insignificant to be objects of
punishment by the clement Government of the United States.
They have betrayed their country; they have been false to
every trust; they have shown themselves incapable of defending the State they
had seized upon, although they have forced every poor man's child into their
service as soldiers for that purpose, while they made their sons and nephews
officers.
They cannot protect those whom they have ruined, but have
left them to the mercies and assassinations of a chronic mob.
They will not feed those whom they are starving.
Mostly without property themselves, they have plundered,
stolen, and destroyed the means of those who had property, leaving children
penniless and old age hopeless.
Men of Louisiana, workmen, property-holders, merchants, and
citizens of the United States, of whatever nation you have had birth, how long
will you uphold these flagrant wrongs and by inaction suffer yourselves to be
made the serfs of these leaders?
The United States have sent land and naval forces here to
fight and subdue rebellious armies in array against her authority. We find
substantially only fugitive masses, runaway property-burners, a whisky-drinking
mob, and starving citizens, with their wives and children. It is our duty to
call back the first, to punish the second, root out the third, feed and protect
the last.
Ready only for war, we had not prepared ourselves to feed
the hungry and relieve the distressed with provisions. But to the extent
possible within the power of the commanding general it shall be done.
He has captured a quantity of beef and sugar intended for
the rebels in the field. A thousand barrels of these stores will be distributed
among the deserving poor of this city, from whom the rebels had plundered it,
even although some of the food will go to supply the craving wants of the wives
and children of those now herding at Camp Moore and elsewhere in arms against
the United States.
Capt. John Clark, acting chief commissary of subsistence,
will be charged with the execution of this order, and will give public notice
of the place and manner of distribution, which will be arranged, as far as
possible so that the unworthy and dissolute will not share its benefits.
By command of Major-General Butler:
GEO. C. STRONG,
Assistant
Adjutant-General, Chief of Staff.
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. 425-6
