Part 17 (1/2)
CHAPTER V.
DEPARTMENT OF THE GULF.
When Admiral Farragut's fleet anch.o.r.ed at New Orleans, and Butler occupied the city, three regiments of confederate negro troops were under arms guarding the United States Mint building, with orders to destroy it before surrendering it to the Yankees. The brigade, however, was in command of a Creole mulatto, who, instead of carrying out the orders given him, and following the troops out of the city on their retreat, counter-marched his command and was cut off from the main body of the army by the Federal forces, to whom they quietly surrendered a few days after.
General Phelps commanded the Federal forces at Carrolton, about seven miles from New Orleans, the princ.i.p.al point in the cordon around the city. Here the slaves congregated in large numbers, seeking freedom and protection from their barbarous overseers and masters. Some of these poor creatures wore irons and chains; some came bleeding from gunshot wounds. General Phelps was an old abolitionist, and had early conceived the idea that the proper thing to do was for the government to arm the negroes. Now came his opportunity to act. Hundreds of able-bodied men were in his camps, ready and willing to fight for their freedom and the preservation of the Union. The secessionists in that neighborhood complained to General Butler about their negroes leaving them and going into camp with the Yankees. So numerous were the complaints, that the General, acting under orders from Was.h.i.+ngton, and also foreseeing that General Phelps intended allowing the slaves to gather at his post, issued the following order:
”NEW ORLEANS, May 23, 1862.
”GENERAL:--You will cause all unemployed persons, black and white, to be excluded from your lines.
”You will not permit either black or white persons to pa.s.s your lines, not officers and soldiers or belonging to the navy of the United States, without a pa.s.s from these headquarters, except they are brought in under guard as captured persons, with information, and those to be examined and detained as prisoners of war, if they have been in arms against the United States, or dismissed and sent away at once, as the case may be. This does not apply to boats pa.s.sing up the river without landing within the lines.
”Provision dealers and marketmen are to be allowed to pa.s.s in with provisions and their wares, but not to remain over night.
”Persons having had their permanent residence within your lines before the occupation of our troops, are not to be considered unemployed persons.
”Your officers have reported a large number of servants.
Every officer so reported employing servants will have the allowance for servants deducted from his pay-roll.
Respectfully, your obedient servant,
B. F. BUTLER.
”Brig.-Gen. PHELPS, Commanding Camp Parapet.”
This struck Gen. Phelps as an inhuman order, though he obeyed it and placed the slaves just outside of his camp lines. Here the solders, having drank in the spirit of their commander, cared for the fugitives from slavery. But they continued to come, according to divine appointment, and their increase prompted Gen. Phelps to write this patriotic, pathetic and eloquent appeal, knowing it must reach the President:
”CAMP PARAPET, NEAR CARROLLTON, LA., June 16, 1862.
”Capt. R. S. DAVIS, Acting a.s.sistant Adjutant-General, New Orleans.
La.:
”SIR: I enclose herewith, for the information of the major-general commanding the department, a report of Major Peck, officer of the day, concerning a large number of negroes, of both s.e.xes and all ages, who are lying near our pickets, with bag and baggage, as if they had already commenced an exodus. Many of these negroes have been sent away from one of the neighboring sugar plantations by their owner, a Mr. Babilliard La Blanche, who tells them, I am informed, that 'the Yankees are king here now, and that they must go to their king for food and shelter.'
”They are of that four millions of our colored subjects who have no king or chief, nor in fact any government that can secure to them the simplest natural rights. They can not even be entered into treaty stipulations with and deported to the east, as our Indian tribes have been to the west.
They have no right to the mediation of a justice of the peace or jury between them and chains and lashes. They have no right to wages for their labor; no right to the Sabbath; no right to the inst.i.tution of marriage; no right to letters or to self-defense. A small cla.s.s of owners, rendered unfeeling, and even unconscious and unreflecting by habit, and a large part of them ignorant and vicious, stand between them and their government, destroying its sovereignty. This government has not the power even to regulate the number of lashes that its subjects may receive. It can not say that they shall receive thirty-nine instead of forty. To a large and growing cla.s.s of its subjects it can secure neither justice, moderation, nor the advantages of Christian religion; and if it can not protect _all_ its subjects, it can protect none, either black or white.
”It is nearly a hundred years since our people first declared to the nations of the world that all men are born free; and still we have not made our declaration good.
Highly revolutionary measures have since then been adopted by the admission of Missouri and the annexation of Texas in favor of slavery by the barest majorities of votes, while the highly conservative vote of two-thirds has at length been attained against slavery, and still slavery exists--even, moreover, although two-thirds of the blood in the veins of our slaves is fast becoming from our own race.
If we wait for a larger vote, or until our slaves' blood becomes more consanguined still with our own, the danger of a violent revolution, over which we can have no control, must become more imminent every day. By a course of undecided action, determined by no policy but the vague will of a war-distracted people, we run the risk of precipitating that very revolutionary violence which we seem seeking to avoid.
”Let us regard for a moment the elements of such a revolution.
[Ill.u.s.tration: WAs.h.i.+NG IN CAMP]
”Many of the slaves here have been sold away from the border States as a punishment, being too refractory to be dealt with there in the face of the civilization of the North.