'One of the first administrative acts which emanated from Brigadier-General Butler as military Commander of New Orleans was the Order No. 28, commanding that the whole female population of that city should be subjected to outrage and infamy, as common women of the town.'
Rose O'Neal Greenhow, My Imprisonment and the First Year of Abolition Rule at Washington, London: Richard Bentley, (1863), p. 297.
'This hideous, cross-eyed beast [Butler] orders his men to treat the ladies of New Orleans as women of the town - to punish them, he says, for their insolence/'
Mary Boykin Chestnut, A Diary From Dixie, New York, NY: D. Appleton & Co. (1905), p. 165.
As the officers and soldiers of the United States have been subject to repeated insults from the women (calling themselves ladies) of New Orleans in return for the most scrupulous non-interference and courtesy on our part, it is ordered that hereafter 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.
By command of Major-General Butler:
It should also be pointed out that neither Mary Chesnutt nor Rose Greenhow spent any time in New Orleans under Butler's occupation of the city, so your oh-so-outraged quotes are only repeating southern propaganda.
"* While Farragut was struggling upstream, Major General Benjamin Butler was settling into his role as military dictator of New Orleans. The first thing to do was to put the fear of Federal law into the citizens. The women of the city were a particular problem in this respect, since no Southern gentleman would ever treat a proper lady with the slightest public disrespect, and, accustomed to such privilege, the women used it to its full advantage to snub, insult, and generally harass Union men. After a woman dumped a bucket of slop from a window onto Farragut's head, Butler acted. He issued General Order Number 28 on 15 May:
BEGIN QUOTE:
As the officers and soldiers of the United States have been subject to repeated insults from the women (calling themselves ladies) of New Orleans, in return for the most scrupulous non-interference on our part, it is ordered that hereafter, when any female shall, by word, gesture, or movement insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier on the United States, she shall be regarded and held liable to be treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation.
END QUOTE
Wonder what our man GOPcapitalist ever found out about what Butler and Sickles were up to down in Panama?
I'll have to drop him a Freepmail. I think those mailboxes still work, even if you resign an account. Something like that.