Interesting assertion, Titus. Your "effective" general's exploits are legendary to say the least. Take his attempted invasion of Texas, for example. A mere 44 confederate dock workers under the command of a lieutenant thoroughly routed and repulsed Butler's invasion army of over 5,000 on two dozen warships. They did so with only six cannons in an earthen fort and suffered not a casualty of their own.
His political skills became so popular in New Orleans that they earned him the nickname of "the beast" - largely a result of his order to his troops to treat the women of the city as prostitutes. Sounds like quite a guy. Not to worry, he's in good company among uncultured yankee blowhards like Charles Sumner that you consider among your heroes.
Some of his troops apparently did just that. Here is a court report appropriately entitled "Beastly Outrages" in the New Orleans newspaper The Daily Picayune (the paragraph breaks are mine to make it more readable):
Eleven soldiers belonging to the 159th New York Regiment were tried for marauding and committing outrages too gross for public mention. Of these, two were perhaps 25 years of age, and the others were mere boys, varying from 17 to 20. One of the youngest of these boys turned State’s witness and pointed out those of his companions who were engaged in the outrage; the part he took being simply that of stealing fowls of which he obtained about fifteen.
According to the story of this witness, the young men went to the plantation of Mr. R. D. Darden, in Lafourche, and while he and another of his companions were engaged in stealing chickens from the negro cabins, some of the crowd broke into one of the cabins. Who broke the door in he did not know and what was done therein he did not witness. The inmates of the cabin were a negro of about 40 years in age, his wife, and his daughter, a dusky damsel of 18 or 20 summers.
For the credit of humanity we will suppose that illegal foraging was all that they first intended. When the negro found that his hen house was being despoiled of his pretty chickens, he mustered up a sufficiency of courage to put his head out of the window and beg that a few at least of the brood should be spared to him for breed. Thereupon he was assailed by foul speeches and rude threats; brickbats were sent flying against his windows, and some of them threatened to enter the house and kill the old son of _____ .
Finding that there was a movement to carry these threats into execution, the old negro climbed up into his loft where he could look down on them, as he said, “like a eagle looking down on carrion.” About the time that he got up on the loft the door was burst open and a demand was made for the man who had spoken to them from the window. The women, to shield husband and father, declared that there was no man there.
In an instant the cabin was filled, a light was struck, and as the man was no where to be seen, a purpose more fiendish than that which had induced them to enter the dwelling, took possession of the marauders. The girl was at once seized, and with violence, alike criminal and brutal, they accomplished their fiendish purposes, one after another, in the presence of the father and the mother.
They then stripped the girl of their jewelry, ear rings, finger rings, a bracelet, and some of her choicest articles of apparel, as trophies of their diabolical achievement, and having done so, left.
The Judge, in disposing of the case, said that the ringleader, one H. B. Hopkins, should be drawn and quartered, but he would only sentence him to Tortugas for life, there to labor with ball and chain; Jordan M. Lee, a youth who took an active part in the proceedings and stood at the girl’s head with the bayonet at her throat, was sent to Tortugas for ten years; the others were all sent to the same place for three years each. Their names are Henry Dennis, James Lee, D. Rafften, John Thorpe, R. Wheeler, R. Coons, J Horan and H. C. Nelson. J Reil, the boy who turned State’s witness, and G. W. Scoefield, who was proved not to have been in the crowd, were sent back to their regiments.
From The Daily Picayune, March 3, 1864. OK to steal chickens I guess, but not to ravage women. Funny, I didn't find any mention of this incident on web pages referring to the 159th New York Regiment.
That he became the toast of every chamber-pot. His image was everywhere -- everywhere that there was a new chamber-pot.