Benjamin Butler’s Order No. 28
In Union-occupied New Orleans, a Civil War general attempted to subdue a riotous populace.
Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler commanded Union troops in occupied New Orleans for seven months during the Civil War, beginning in May 1862. Inhabitants of the fallen city, especially women of society who felt themselves immune to retribution, took every opportunity to insult and ridicule Union officers and soldiers. Exasperated, Butler issued General Order No. 28, popularly known as the “Woman Order.” The decree charged that any woman caught disrespecting one of Butler’s men be treated as a “woman of the town plying her avocation,” implying prostitution.
This illustration, from the July 12, 1862, issue of Harper’s Weekly, depicts the change in behavior of the women of occupied New Orleans towards federal troops after Butler’s “Woman Order.” The picture on the left shows women spitting on Union soldiers, while on the right women are seen maintaining decorum as a Union soldier tips his cap to them.
Although the harassment ceased, Butler was denounced by President Jefferson Davis, Confederate generals who read the order to their men, and newspaper editors in the North and the South. Harper’s Weekly printed a cartoon that depicted the situation both before and after Butler’s proclamation. Great Britain’s prime minister, Lord Palmerston, commented in a letterOpens in new tab to US Foreign Minister Charles Francis Adams that he could not fully express the “disgust which must be excited in the mind of every honorable man.”
By Pamela D. Arceneaux, senior librarian and rare books curator
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