After David Farragut’s fleet ran past Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip in late April 1862, New Orleans, the Confederacy’s richest port, fell almost without a fight. On May 1, Major General Benjamin Butler, a Massachusetts lawyer and Democratic politician, arrived as military governor with about 5,000 troops to hold a hostile city of 150,000. This episode explains his background, including the contraband of war ruling at Fort Monroe in 1861, where he used Confederate property law to refuse the return of people who had escaped slavery.

New Orleans women spat on soldiers, left streetcars, and emptied chamber pots from balconies, so on May 15, 1862 Butler issued General Order No. 28, the Woman Order, which drew condemnation in the British House of Lords and earned him the name Beast. He hanged William B. Mumford for tearing down a U.S. flag and was called Spoons over rumors of stolen silver. He also imposed strict sanitation, set a quarantine station 70 miles downriver, and funded food relief by seizing money from Confederate donors. In December 1862 he was replaced by Nathaniel Banks, whose Red River campaign followed.

• The secession convention delegates were said to represent only about 5 percent of Louisiana’s citizens.
• Merchants sold chamber pots with Butler’s face painted on the bottom.
• Jefferson Davis declared Butler an outlaw and a felon.
• When Confederates attacked Baton Rouge in August 1862, the expected civilian uprising in New Orleans never came.
• Farragut later said Butler was the right man in the right place in New Orleans.