Camp, Court and Siege. Wickham Hoffman
1st of May, 1862, the leading transports anchored off the city. Butler sent for Williams, and ordered him to land at once. Williams, like the thorough soldier he was, proposed to wait till morning, when he would have daylight for the movement, and when the other transports, with our most reliable troops, would be up. "No, sir," said Butler, "this is the 1st of May, and on this day we must occupy New Orleans, and the first regiment to land must be a Massachusetts regiment." So the orders were issued, and in half an hour the Thirty-first Massachusetts Volunteers and the Sixth Massachusetts Battery set foot in New Orleans.
As we commenced our march, Williams saw the steamer Diana coming up with six companies of the Fourth Wisconsin. He ordered a halt, and sent me with instructions for them to land at once, and fall into the rear of the column. I passed through the mob without difficulty, gave the orders, and we resumed our march. The general had directed that our route should be along the levee, where our right was protected by the gun-boats. Presently we found that the head of the column was turning up Julia Street. Williams sent to know why the change had been made. The answer came back that Butler was there, and had given orders to pass in front of the St. Charles Hotel, while the band played "Yankee Doodle," and "Picayune Butler's come to Town," if they knew it. They did not know it, unfortunately, so we had one unbroken strain of the martial air of "Yankee Doodle" all the way.
Arrived at the Custom-house late in the evening, we found the doors closed and locked. Williams said to me, "What would you do?" "Break the doors open," I replied. The general, who could not easily get rid of his old, regular-army habits, ordered "Sappers and miners to the front." No doubt the sappers and miners thus invoked would have speedily appeared had we had any, but two volunteer regiments and a battery of light artillery were the extent of our force that night. I turned to the adjutant of the Fourth Wisconsin, and asked if he had any axes in his regiment. He at once ordered up two or three men. We found the weakest-looking door, and attacked it. As we were battering it in, the major of the Thirty-first came up, and took an axe from one of the men. Inserting the edge in the crack near the lock, he pried it gently, and the door flew open. I said, "Major, you seem to understand this sort of thing." He replied, "Oh! this isn't the first door I have broken open, by a long shot. I was once foreman of a fire-company in Buffalo."
We entered the building with great caution, for the report had been spread that it was mined. The men of the Fourth Wisconsin had candles in their knapsacks; they always had every thing, those fellows! We soon found the meter, turned the gas on, and then proceeded to make ourselves comfortable for the night. I established myself in the postmaster's private room—the Post-office was in the Custom-house—with his table for my bed, and a package of rebel documents for a pillow. I do not remember what my dreams were that night. We took the letters from the boxes to preserve them, and piled them in a corner of my room. They were all subsequently delivered to their respective addresses.
Pretty well tired out with the labor and excitement of the day, I was just making myself tolerably comfortable for the night, when the officer of the day reported that a woman urgently desired to see the general on a matter of life or death. She was admitted. She told us that her husband was a Union man, that he had been arrested that day and committed to the "Calaboose," and that his life was in danger. The general said to her, "My good woman, I will see to it in the morning." "Oh, sir," she replied, "in the morning he will be dead! They will poison him." We did not believe much in the poison story, but it was evident that she did. Williams turned to me, and said, "Captain, have you a mind to look into this?" Of course I was ready, and ordering out a company of the Fourth Wisconsin, and asking Major Boardman, a daring officer of that regiment, to accompany me, I started for the Calaboose, guided by the woman. The streets were utterly deserted. Nothing was heard but the measured tramp of the troops as we marched along. Arrived at the Calaboose, I ordered the man I was in search of to be brought out. I questioned him, questioned the clerk and the jailer, became satisfied that he was arrested for political reasons alone, ordered his release, and took him with me to the Custom-house, for he was afraid to return home. Being on the spot, it occurred to me that it would be as well to see if there were other political prisoners in the prison. I had the books brought, and examined the entries. At last I thought I had discovered another victim. The entry read, "Committed as a suspicious character, and for holding communication with Picayune Butler's troops." I ordered the man before me. The jailer took down a huge bunch of keys, and I heard door after door creaking on its hinges. At last the man was brought out. I think I never saw a more villainous countenance. I asked him what he was committed for? He evidently did not recognize the Federal uniform, but took me for a Confederate officer, and replied that he was arrested for talking to "them Lincolnites." I told the jailer that I did not want that man—that he might lock him up again.
Having commenced the search for political prisoners, I thought it well to make thorough work of it; so I inquired if there were other prisons in the city. There was one in the French quarter, nearly two miles off; so we pursued our weary and solitary tramp through the city. My men evidently did not relish it. The prison was quiet, locked up for the night. We hammered away at the door till we got the officers up; went in, examined the books, found no entries of commitments except for crime; put the officers on their written oaths that no one was confined there except for crime; and so returned to our Post-office beds.
The next day was a busy one. Early in the morning I went to the St. Charles Hotel to make arrangements for lodging the general and his staff. With some difficulty I got in. In the rotunda of that fine building sat about a dozen rebels, looking as black as a thunder-cloud. I inquired for the proprietor or clerk in charge, and a young man stepped forward: "Impossible to accommodate us; hotel closed; no servants in the house." I said, "At all events, I will see your rooms." Going into one of them, he closed the door and whispered, "It would be as much as my life is worth, sir, to offer to accommodate you here. I saw a man knifed on Canal Street yesterday for asking a naval officer the time of day. But if you choose to send troops and open the hotel by force, why, we will do our best to make you comfortable." Returning to the rotunda, I found Lieutenant Biddle, who had accompanied me—one of the general's aids—engaged in a hot discussion with our rebel friends. I asked him "What use in discussing these matters?" and, turning to the rebs, with appropriate gesture said, "We've got you, and we mean to hold you." "That's the talk," they replied; "we understand that." They told us that the rebel army was in sight of Washington, and that John Magruder's guns commanded the Capitol. Why they picked out Magruder particularly, I can not say. This news had come by telegraph. We used to call the rebel telegraphic lines "the grapevine telegraph," for their telegrams were generally circulated with the bottle after dinner.
The shop-keepers in New Orleans, when we first landed there, were generally of the opinion of my friend the hotel-clerk. A naval officer came to us one morning at the Custom-house, and said that the commodore wanted a map of the river; that he had seen the very thing, but that the shop-keeper refused to sell it, intimating, however, that if he were compelled to sell it, why then, of course, he couldn't help himself. We ordered out a sergeant and ten men. The officer got his map, and paid for it.
But Butler was not the man to be thwarted in this way. Finding this parti pris on the part of the shop-keepers, he issued an order that all shops must be opened on a certain day, or that he should put soldiers in, and sell the goods for account "of whom it might concern." On the day appointed they were all opened. So, too, with the newspapers. They refused to print his proclamation. An order came to us to detail half a dozen printers, and send them under a staff officer to the office of the True Delta, and print the proclamation. We soon found the men. From a telegraph-operator to a printer, bakers, engine-drivers, carpenters, and coopers, we had representatives of all the trades. This was in the early days of the war. Afterward the men were of an inferior class. The proclamation was printed, and the men then amused themselves by getting out the paper. Next morning it appeared as usual; this was enough. The editor soon came to terms, and the other journals followed suit.
On the 2d of May Butler landed and took quarters at the St. Charles. There has been much idle gossip about attempts to assassinate him, and his fears of it. In regard to the latter, he landed in New Orleans, and drove a mile to his hotel, with one staff officer, and one armed orderly only on the box. When his wife arrived in the city, he rode with one orderly to the levee, and there, surrounded by the crowd, awaited her landing. As regards the former, we never heard of any well-authenticated