The Sun.
London, England, 1863-01-15 00:00:00

General Butler's Farewell to New Orleans.

Before leaving New Orleans General Butler
issued the following address to the inhabitants of
that city:—
Citizens of New Orleans,—it may not be inappropriate,
as it is not inopportune in occasion, that there should be
addressed to 3 ou a few words at parting, by one whose name
is to be hereafter indissolubly connected with your city.
I shall speak in no bitterness, because I am not conscious
of a single personal animosity. Commanding the army of
the Gulf, I found you captured, but not surrendered ; con-
quered, but not orderly; relieved from the presence of an
army, but incapable of taking care of yourselves. So far
from it, you had called upon a foreign legion to protect you
from yourselves. I restored order, punished crime, opened
commerce, brought provisions to your starving people, re-
formed your currency, and gave you quiet protection, such
as you had not enjoyed for many years. While doing this,
my soldiers were subjected to obloquy, reproach, and insult.
And bw, speaking to you, who know the truth, I here
declare LI-At whoever has quietly remained about his busi-
ness, affording neither aid nor comfort to the enemies of the
United States, has never been interfered with by the soldiers
of the United States.

The men who had assumed to govern you and to defend
your city in arms having fled, some of your women flouted
at the presence of those who came to protect them. By a
simple order (No. 28), I called upon every soldier of this
army to treat the women of New Orleans as gentlemen
should deal with the sex, with such effect that I now call
upon the just-minded ladies of New Orleans to say whether
they have ever enjoyed so complete protection and calm
quiet for themselves and their families as since the advent
of the United States troops.

The enemies of my country, unrepentant and implacable,
I have treated with merited severity. I hold that rebellion
is treason, and that treason persisted in is death, and any
punishment short of that due to a traitor gives so much clear
gain to him from the clemency of the government. Upon
this thesis have I administered the authority of the United
States, because of which I am not unconscious of complaint.
I do not feel that I have erred in too much harshness, for
that harshness has ever been exhibited to disloyal enemies
to my country and not the loyal friends. To be sure, I might
have regaled you with the amenities of British civilisation,
and yet been within the supposed rules of civilised warfare.
You might have been smoked to death in caverns, as were
the covenanters of Scotland by the command of a general of
the royal house of England, or roasted like the inhabitants
of Algiers during the French campaign; your wives and
daughters might have been given over to the ravisher, as
were the un.ortunate dames of Spain in the Peninsular
war ; or you might have been scalped and tomahawked as
our mothers were at Wyoming by the savage allies of Great
Britain in our own revolution; your property could have
been turned over to indiscriminate loot, like the palace of the
Emperor of China; works of art which adorned your
buildings might have been sent away like the paintings of
the Vatican; your sons might have been blown from the
mouths of cannon like the sepoys at Delhi ; and yet all this
would have been within the rules of civilised warfare as
practised by the most polished and the most hypercritical
nations of Europe. For such acts the records of the doings
of some of the inhabitants •f your city towards the friends
of the Union, before my coming, were a sufficient provoca-
tive and justification. .But I have not so conducted. On
the contrary, the worst punishment inflicted, except for
criminal acts punishable by every law, has been banishment
with labour to a barren island, where I encamped my own
soldiers before marching here

It is true I have levied upon the wealthy rebel, and paid
out nearly 600,000 dole to feed 40,000 of the eterving poor
of all nations assembled here, made so by this war.
I saw that this rebellion was a war of the aristocrats
against the middling men ; of the rich against the puor;
a war of the landowner against the labourer ; that it was a
struggle for the retention of power in the hands of the
few against the many ; and I found no conclusion to it save
in the subjugati n of the few, and the disenthralment of the
many. I therefore felt no hesitation in taking the substance
of the wealthy, who had caused the war, to feed the innocent
poor, who had suffered by the war. And I shall now leave
you, with the proud consciousness that I carry with me the
blessings of the humble and loyal, under the roof of the
cottage and in the cabin of the slave, and so am quite con-
tent to incur the sneers of the salon, or the curses of the
rich.

I found you trembling at the terrors of servile insurrec-
tion. All danger of this I have prevented by so treating the
slave that he had no cause to rebel. I found the dungeon,
the chain, and the lash your only means of enforcing obe-
dience in your servants. I leave them peaceful, laborious,
controlled by the laws of kindness and justice. I have de-
monstrated that the pestilence can be kept from your bor-
ders. I have added a million of dollars to your wealth in the
form of new land from the batture of the Mississippi. I
have cleansed and improved your streets, canals, and public
squares, and opened new avenues to unoccupied land. I
have given you freedom of elections greater than you have
ever enjoyed before. I have caused justice to be adminis-
tered so impartially that your own advocates have unani-
mously complimented the judges of ray appointment. You
have seen, therefore, the benefit of the laws and justice of
the government against which you have rebelled. Why,
then, will you not all return to your allegiance to that go-
vernment—not with lip-service, but with the heart? I
conjure you, if you desire ever to see renewed prosperity,
giving business to your streets and wharfs—if you hope to
see your city become again the mart of the Western world,
fed by its rivers for more than three thousand miles, drain
ing the commerce of a country greater than the mind
of man hath ever conceived—return to your allegiance. If
you desire to leave to your children the inheritance you
received of your fathers—•a stable constitutional govern-
ment ; if you desire that they should in the future be a
portion of the greatest empire the sun ever shone upon—
return to your allegiance. There is but one thing that
stands in the way. There is but one thing that at this
hour stands between you and the Government—and that is
slavery. The institution, cursed of God, which has taken
its last refuge here, in His providence will be rooted out, as
the tares from the wheat, although the wheat be torn up
with it. I have given much thought to this subject. I
came among you, by teachings, by habit of mind, by poli
tical position, by social affinity, inclined to sustain your
domestic laws, if by possibility they might be with safety to
the Union.
Months of experience and c. bservation have forced the
conviction that the existence of slavery is incompatible with
the safety either of yourselves or of the Union. As the
system has gradually grown to its present huge dimensions,
it were best if it could b gra ally removed ; but it is
better, far better, that it sh he taken out at once than
that it should longer vitiate ocial, political, and family
relations of your country, lam speaking with no philan-
thropic views as regards the slave, but simply of the effect
of slavery on the master. See for yourselves.
Look around you and say whether this saddening, deaden-
ing influence has not all but destroyed the very framework
of your tv)ciety. lam speaking the farewell words of one
who has shown his devotion to his country at the peril "of
his life and fortune—who in these words can have neither
hope nor interest save the good of those whom he addresses ;
and let me here repeat, with all the solemnity of an appeal
to Heaven to bear me witness, that such are the views
forced upon me by experience.
Come, then, to the unconditional support of the Govern-
melat. Take into your own hands your own institutions,
remodel them according to the laws of nations and of God,
and thus attain that great prosperity assured to you by
geographical position, only a portion of which was hereto-
fore yours. (Signed) BENJAMIN F. BIITyER.
Now Orleans, Dec. 24, 1862.

NEB YORE—
At the inauguration of Mr. Seymour OF THE STATE
o trir As Governor of
remarks
In:ere addressed to him
rem„ar know it will be gratifying
Statei hn nevergStood
higher; that its funded debt i rapidly diminishing, that
i
New York, the following
by his predecessor in office
hat
for you to be assured that th'—e credit of this
diminishing;
min
that its debt is rapidly
its principal and interest have been promptly paid in id
demand
d; that the public funds are adequate for every proper
on them; that the surplus revenues of the canals have in-
creased from 900,000 dole. in 1858, to 4,000,000 dole. in
1562; and that taxation may be largely reduced the pre-
sent year, and this when scarcely less than a quarter of a
million of our people are voluntarily engaged in the mili•
tary service of the country. Of such a State, and with such
a record, we may well be proud."
NEW ELECTRIC CABLE FOR THE ITALIAN Go-
VERNMENT.—The English screw steam-ship Haw-
thorn, chartered by Messrs. Glass, Elliot, and Co., for the
purpose of laying foi the Italian Government an electric
cable from Cagliari to Trapani, arrived in this port on Sun •
day last from the latter place. She had successfully sub-
merged the cable within 13 miles of the coast of Sicily, and
her object in coming here was to supply the deficiency from
the spare cable in deposit at Malta. She left early on the
morning of the sth, to lay the remainder of the cable, and
we are hourly expecting to receive a telegram announcing
the successful completion of the line. The cable is similar
in construction to the deep sea portion of the Malta and
Alexandria one, which has answered so admirably, being
only a little slighter. The new line will givejt more
and
course to telegrams for the continent and England,
nl.a .riio .0
avoid the circuitous route through Italy.--.214(e
Jan, Bth.