The Sun.
London, England, 1863-01-02 00:00:00

The Tyranny of General Butler.

The following is a copy of a letter to President
Davis, from one of the victims of the brutal rule of
General Butler at New Orleans.

"TO HIS EXCELLENCY JEFFERSON DAVIS, PRESIDENT OF

THE CONFEDERATE STATES.
" Ship Island, State of Mississippi,
Sept. 13, 1862.

" Sir,--A close prisoner on this desolate island,
with some 50 or more of my fellow-citizens, I have
thought it my duty, at every risk, to communicate
to you some at least of the incidents of the adminis-
tration of the brutal tyrant who has been sent by the
United States Government to oppress, rob, insult,
and trample upon our people in every manner which
the most fiendish ingenuity andmost wanton cruelty
could devise, and in gross violation of all the laws
and usages of the most remorseless wars between
civilised and even savage nations and tribes.

" I was consigned to
Ship Island as a close pri-
soner, with seven other respectable citizens, to a
small hut, 15 feet by 20, exposed to rain and sun,
without permission to leave, except for a bathe in
the sea once or twice a week.
" A description of the causes and circumstances
of the imprisonment of our citizens, who are now
held on this island, will afford some of the mildest
illustrations of Butler's brutality.
"There are about 60 prisoners here, all of whom
are closely confined in portable houses, and furnished
with most wretched and unwholesome condemned
soldiers' rations. Some are kept at hard labour on
the fort; several, in addition to labour, are com-
pelled to wear a ball and chain, which are never re-
moved. Among these is Mr. Shepherd, a respect-
able, elderly, and weakly citizen, who is charged
with secreting certain papers belonging to the
naval officer of the Confederate States, which the
latter left in his charge when he departed from
New Orleans. Mr. Shepherd had the proof that the
officer who had deposited these documents after-
wards returned and took them, and that they
had been carried into the Confederate States.
This testimony Butler would not receive, and de-
clared that if it existed it would make no difference
in his case. Dr. Moore, a dealer in drugs, is also
at hard labour with ball and chain, on the charge
of having sent a few ounces of quinine into the Con-
federato States. There are five prisoners condemned,
and employed at hard labour, on the charge of in-
tending to break their parole as prisoners of war,
captured at Fort Jackson. There is also a delicate
youth from the country who is subjected to the
same treatment, on the charge of being a guerilla,'
the terms which Butler applies to the Partisan
Rangers, organised under the Act of Congress of
the Confederate States.

" Alderman Beggs, on the charge of denouncing
those who have taken the oath to the Confe-
derate States afterwards swore allegiance to the
United States, and Mr. Keller, a vendor of
books, stationery, and scientific apparatus, on
the charge of permitting a clerk to placard the
word Chickahominy' on a skeleton which was sus-
pended in his show-window for sale for the use
of students of anatomy, are condemned also to close
imprisonment and hard labour for two years. The
others mentioned above are condemned for a longer
period. A like condemnation and punishment were
imposed upon Judge John W. Andrews, a most re-
spectable citizen, recently a member of the judiciary
of state, of the legislature, and of the city council,
and a prominent merchant. This gentleman is ad-
vanced in years and in very delicate health. There
is little hope that his health can long sustain his
present burdens and hardships.

" The circumstances of Mrs. Phillips's imprison-
ment are probably known to you. As, however
I desire this to be an authentic and studiously ac-
curate statement of facts, I will here relate them.
In the raid of the United States troops near War-
renton, Mississippi, a young officer named Dekay
was mortally wounded. He died in New Orleans,
and an attempt was made by the Federal authori-
ties to get up a pompous funeral ceremony and pro-
cession in honour of so ' gallant and heroic a young
officer,' who had fallen in an expedition which had
no other purpose or object but the pillage of de-
fenceless farms and villages. The effort to excite
the sympathies of our people on this occasion proved
a ridiculous failure, and the funeral ceremony had
no aspect of solemnity or even propriety—a long
line of carriages composing the cortege, designed for
the Union citizens, being all empty. As this pro-
cession passed the residence of Mr. P. Phillips,Mrs.
Phillips, standing on the balcony with several lady
friends was observed by some Federal officers to
smile ; so it was charged. She was then arrested
and taken before Butler, who in the most brutal
and violent manner sought to terrify the heroic
lady. In this he did not succeed. Whilst denying
that her gaiety had any reference whatever to the
funeral ceremony, Mrs. Phillips refused to make
any apologies on concessions to the vulgar tyrant.
Thereupon she was condemned to close imprison-
ment in a filthy guard-room, thence to be trans-
ported to Ship Island, where she was to be held in
close confinement for two years, with no other fare
but soldiers' rations, no intercourse or correspon-
dence with any person, except through Gen. Butler.
This sentence was published is the newspapers,
accompanied by words of :the grossest insult and
most vulgar ribaldry, in which Mrs. Phillips was
denounced not a common, but an uncommon bad
woman,' referring to his proclamation denounced
by Lord Palmerston and the whole civilised world,
as so infamous,' in which his soldiers are autho-
rised to treat as common women plying their pro-
fession' all who may manifest any contempt or dis-
courtesy towards them. To add further insult, in
the order condemning Mr. Keller, it was made a
part of his sentence to permit him to hold con-
verse and intercourse with Mrs. Phillips, to which
condition that honest man was induced to protest,
from the belief that his fellow-prisoner was a no-
torious courtesan of the city, who bore the name
of Phillips. This protest was published in
the papers, with Butler's order granting the re-
quest of Keller, so to convey to the world
the idea that a poor vendor of periodicals
declined association with a lady of the highest
respectability, the wife of a distinguished lawyer
and ex-member of Congress. I can bear personal
testimony to the rigorous execution of the sentence
against Mrs. Phillips, having been imprisoned for
weeks in a building adjoining to that which she
was never allowed to leave. Such was the treatment

of a delicate lady of the highest refinement, the
mother of nine children.
" In his first interview with the authorities of the
city Butler had declared he would take no cognis-
ance of any acts committed before he occupied the
city, and established martial law therein. This
solemn and oft-repeated pledge he has violated in a
thousand instances.

" Of the other prisoners there are three captains
in the Confederate service, who have copies of their
parole as prisoners of war, and who are sent here
upon no specific charge, but as suspicious persons,
who might break the lines and go into the Confe-
derate service. They are Capt. M'Lean, late of the
M'Culloch Rangers; Capt. Losberg, who com-
manded the De Feriet Guards of the Chalmette
Regiment, captured and paroled by Commodore
Farragut in the attack upon the forts below the city ;
and Captain Batchilders, of the 3d Regiment of
Lousiana Regulars. There is also a young creole,
the sole protector of his family, his father having
recently died, who is sentenced to an indefinite
punishment, on the charge, supported by the testi-
mony of his own slave, a negro boy, of having
thrown a revolver into the river after Butler's order
requiring the citizens to give up their arms had
been published. This is the case of Mr. Le Beau,
belonging to one of the oldest and most respectable
creole families in the State. The other prisoners
here are imprisoned upon like frivolous charges;
some eight or ten of them for the publication of
cards denying that they had taken the oath of alle-
giance to the United States, their names having
been published in Butler's journal among those who
had taken that oath.

" In the case of Mr. Davidson, a gallant young
lawyer, who has not yet recovered from a severe
wound received at Shiloh, the offence consisted in
his publishing a card stating that he was not the
person of the same name who was published as
having taken the oath.
" So much for the prisoners at Ship Island, with
the facts of whose cases I am personally acquainted.
I refrain from any reference to my own case, hard
as my doom is, closely confined on this island, with
all my property appropriated by the enemy, and my
family placed under strict espionage, and subjected
to many annoyances, insults, and discomforts.
With all its trials and hardships, the condition of
the prisoners here is quite easy and endurable com-
pared with that of those who are confined in the
damp and unwholesome casemates of Forts Jack-
son and St Phillip, on the Mississippi, and in Fort
Pickens, on Santa Rosa Island.
"Among the latter is the mayor of the city, who
has been imprisoned for foar months for the offence
of writing a letter to Butler, protesting against his
order relative to the treatment of the ladies of the
city, and declaring his inability to maintain the
peace of the city if the Federal soldiers were not
authorised to insult and outrage our women at their
own pleasure and will.

" The secretary of the mayor, who wrote the let-
ter signed by the mayor, was included in the same
committal and imprisonment. Several members of
the council, for like or smaller offences, suffer the
same punishment.
" Dr. Porter, a wealthy dentist and citizen, is im-
prisoned for requiring the Citizens' Bank, the
pet bank and place of deposit of Butler and his
agents, in his vast scheme of corruption and extor-
tion, to pay cheques in the currency which Butler
alone allowed the banks to pay.
" George Laurason, formerly collector of the port
of New Orleans, suffers a like penalty for applying
for a passport to go to Europe, where his family
now is.

" Thomas Murray, as president of that benevolent
institution knawn as the Free Market, which sup-
plied the families of the soldiers with the means of
subsistence; Charles Heidseich, a French citizen,
the owner of the celebrated wine manufactory in
France; Mr. Dacres, and other British citizens;
Mr. Mir, a wealthy and highly respectable Spanish
citizen, the owner of extensive saw-mills in Florida,
and the contractor to supply the French navy with
timber, are all imprisoned at Fort Pickens, for en-
deavouring to pass the lines without taking the
oath prescribed by Butler for foreigners, which oath
' requires them to reveal to the United States all in-
formation they may have respecting the acts and
designs of the Confederate States on pain of being
regarded and treated as enemies and spies. There
are, too, many prisoners who are confined on the
information of political and personal enemies as
dangerous characters, for offences alleged to have
been committed by them months and years before
Butler's arrival in the city. Dr. MiPherson, an
elderly and most respectable citizen, was condemned
to the casemates of Fort Jackson for speaking in a
circle of his friends of Butler's proclamation No.
28, that relative to the ladies of New Orleans, as
infamous'--the very epithet which Lord Palmer-
ston in the House of Commons declared to be the
only appropriate one.
" Dr. Warren Stone, the distinguished surgeon
and philanthropist, was consigned to a like punish-
ment for refusing to recognise an individual who
had been announced as president of a Union Asso-
ciation, and yet who a few months before had made
in public a most violent speech against the Yankees,
and had advised our people to cut the throats of all
invaders.

" Several ladies of the highest social position have
been imprisoned for the expression of sympathy with
the Confederates, and the wearing ribbons of cer•
tain colours.

"Mrs. Dubois, an elderly lady, long engaged in
the business of teaching our children, was impri-
soned on the charge of not being able to account for
certain keys and books belonging to the schools,
which were never in her possession.

" All the members of the finance committee of the
city councils are imprisoned for authorising the sub-
scription of the city to the fund for its defence, and
several hundreds of our citizens who subscribed to
this filed have been compelled to pay 25 per cent.
of their subscription to Butler, under a threat of
imprisonment at hard labour. To swell this exac-
tion to the sum of 300,000 dols., all the cotton
factors of the city who had united in a circular ad-
dress to the planters advising them not to send
their cotton to New Orleans, were assessed fines of
500 dols. and 250 dols., which they had to pay or
go to prison.
"The treatment of a venerable citizen named
Roberts, a farmer, living a short distance from
Baton Rouge, is one of peculiar atrocity. A son of
Mr. Roberts, a soldier of the Confederate army,
having come on sick leave to see his parents, a de-
tachment of the 21st Indiana Regiment was sent to
arrest him. The young man hearing the approach of
armed men, went out to meet them, when several
shots were fired by the Indians, one of which killed
young Roberts. The father, seeing the clinger of his
son, seized a gun and fired through the door,
slightly wounding Col. M'Millan, the commandant
of the detachment. He was then arrested, and
charged with having killed his own son, and was
taken with the rest of his family from his home ;
the body of his son bein 4. brought out and laid on
the ground, the building, all the outhouses, barns,
and stables, were burnt to the ground, and his mules,
horses, and cattle were driven off to the Federal
camp. Old Mr. Roberts was condemned to clos6,
imprisonment for 20 years, and this imprisonment
he is now undergoing at Fort Pickens.
" There are many other cases of equal atrocity
and hardship of citizens of the highest respecta-
bility, who, upon the most frivolous charges, have
been dragged from their homes by a brutal soldiery
and immured in cells or the casemates of forts, and
condemned to hard labour.

~ I have not the time nor the exact information to
state these cases fully. The prisons of Now Orleans
are crowded with citizens, whose highest offence
consists in the expression of opinions and of hopes
for the success of the Confederate cause. Not a few
are confined for repeating reports of Confederate
victories, or for having in their possession news-
papers containing such reports.

"A Mr. Levy, a respectable merchant, was im-
prisoned for one month for stating to a Federal that
he heard that Baton Rouge had been evacuated when
it really had been evacuated.
"Another citizen was arrested in the cars, and
imprisoned for saying that the distress for cotton
in England would soon increase; and another for
repeating what had been published in the Delta,
that 'Richmond had fallen,' such a remarl being

regarded as ironical, after the Confederate victories
in the first days of July.
"A great many have been imprisoned on the in-
formation of their slaves that they had concealed or
destroyed arms, and the informers emancipated.
" Mr. Lathrop, a respectable lawyer, is now un-
dergoing in the parish prison a sentence of two
years' imprisonment for kidnapping his own slave,
who had been appropriated by a Federal officer.
This sentence Butler declared was intended as a
warning to the people not to interfere with the ser-
vants of his officers, meaning the slaves of our citi-
zens appropriated by them.

"A number of our citizens, enrolled as Partisan
Rangers, or in the State Militia, have been closely
imprisoned, and threatened with death as guerillas
or pirates.

W. E. Seymour, late a captain in one of the
regiments in the defence of the State, and honour-
ably paroled, is a close prisoner at Fort St. Philip,
and his property all confiscated on account of an
obituary notice which appeared in his own paper,
the Bulletin, of his father, the late gallant Colonel
J. G. Seymour, of the 6th Louisiana, who fell in
the battle of Gaines Mill. The writer of the article,
Mr. Dennis, an old and infirm citizen, was sub-
jected to a like punishment, and is now a prisoner
at Fort Pickens.

"Besides these instances, there are a great many
citizens who have only escaped imprisonment by
the payment of large prices, and in many cases by
bribing Federal officers of influence. To enumerate
the cases of confiscation by order of Butler, and in
many eases even by the order of hid subordinates,
would exceed the bounds I have affixed to this re-
port. I have, however, kept a record of these cases,
and will communicate them at some other time.
Suffice it to say that nearly all the large and com-
modious houses of our citizens, especially those of
absentees and officers in our army and Government,
have been thus appropriated. Officers of no
higher grade than lieutenants occupy houses which
have cost our citizens 30,000 dollars. Where
furniture has been removed, or when deficient
in any articles which the appropriators may
deem necessary to their comfort, they are purchased
at the expense of the owners of the property. The
wives and families of our citizens are frequently
ejected from these houses to make way for coarse
IFederal officers and the negro women whom they
appropriate as their wives and concubines. Ships
have been loaded with costly articles of furniture
stolen—they say confiscated--from our citizens, and
transmitted north to the families of Federal officers.
Many a house in New England is even now re-
sounding with tones of pianos thus stolen from the
parlours of our citizens. A vast amount of silver has
been appropriated in like manner. The example
set by Butler in appropriating the house of General
Twigg's minor heir, and furnishing it in a most
lavish and luxurious style at the expense of the
estate, and in transmitting the plate and swords of
the deceased veteran to Lowell—the seizure and re-
moval to the North of the statue of Washington by
Powers, and of the State library from the capital of
Baton Rouge—have been extensively followed by
Butler's subordinates.

" Nor have I here space to expose the extortions
of Butler through the agency of his brother, an
abandoned gambler and speculator, who has com-
pelled our citizens, by all kinds of threats, to sell
their property to him at rates fixed by him; who
has monopolised all the shipping employed by the
United States to transport the produce thus forced
from our people, and has acted as broker to obtain
remissions of penalties, and the restoratior. of fugi-
tive slaves, in many cases on condition of the pay-
ment of half their value, and on pledges of half the
growing crops. In this manner have the planta-
tions within 50 miles of New Orleans been taxed.
Many of them, unable to secure even these terms,
have been depopulated.

" You have, doubtless, been made acquainted
with the proceedings of Butler to compel our citi-
zens to take the oath of allegiance to the Union
States, the prohibition Of all trade to those who
have not taken the oath, and the seizure of their funds
in the bank. The last device will be to compel all
those who do not take that oath to register them-
selves as enemies of the United States, when they
will be either imprisoned or driven from the city,
and their tat operty confiscated. These orders, espe-
cially the oath requirement, are applicable as well
to women as to men. Indeed, the malice of Butler
against females is more bitter and insatiable than
that against males. A placard in his office in large
letters—' The venom of the she-adder is as dange-
rous as that of the he-adder.'

" And this is but a feeble and deficient present-
ment of the enormities and brutalities of this
cowardly and brutal monster. It is in vain that
some of his subordinates remonstrate and protest
against many of his acts. He will permit no one to
thwart his two great objects—to bid highest for
the favour of the Northern mob, and to accumulate
a vast fortune by extortion and plunder. The ex-
tent to which this latter purpose is carried will sur-
pass all similar efforts of great robbers, from Verres
down.

"I content myself with this mere epitome of
Butler's crimes. At some other more favourable oc-
casion I will present them in greater detail and
with the authentic proof which I cannot now com-
mand. It would not be becoming in me to solicit
or to suggest that some steps be taken by the Pre-
sident and Government of the Confederate States
to arrest and to avenge these wrongs done our
people. I have full confidence that alt will be done
in that behalf which can be done.

" I beg to subscribe myself faithfully and respect
fully yours, 6 6 -.---."

The Cameroons Mountain.

Captain Burton, the African traveller, recommends that
the Government should try the Cameroons Mountain and
Amboise Bay, in West Africa, as a penal settlement. In a
letter to the limes, he says:—" The Cameroons Mountain,
rising in the depths of the Bight of Biafra, and within 4.25
deg., or about 300 miles, of the Equator, is not, as has been
supposed, an isolated mass breaking the continuity of the
level of the mangrove-growing coast. I believe it to be
the abutment of a great sierra, which, connected by the
Rumbi' and ` Qua' hills—they are visible to the naked eye
from the sea—extends in a north-easterly direction to
Mount Alantika. known to Europe by Dr. Barth's travels.
The Cameroons buttress may contain 500 sq. miles of suc-
cessive bush and jungle, wood and forest, grass and barren
ground. If connected, however, with Alantika, the number
might be multiplied by 50. The first work to be expected
from convicts located at Amboise Bay, at the foot of the
Cameroons, would be a sanitarium, This poisonous coast
calls aloud for some such establishment. During the last
year her Majesty's ship Prometheus, stationed at Lagos,
lost by death and invaliding 84 out of 100 whites. In the
Bonny River it is calculated that, of 280, some 134 died in
78 days. One ship, the Osprey, lost all her crew of 17 men
except the master. The disease was yellow fever, which still
continues in the New Calabar river, while in the Bonny it
has been succeeded by ano less deadly typhus. At Fernando
Po, 76 men died in two months, out of a total of 231 whites.
Returning by the African steamship Athenian, I remarked
that, despite the care of our excellent doctor, every passen-
ger from the coast fell ill ; one officer, who never had had
fever in Africa, suffered from it on board. The first estab-
lishment at Amboise Bay would be on Mondori Island, an
oval rock some 200 feet high at the entrance to the bay, and
catching the pure Atlantic breezes, which at Clarence Town,
Fernando Po, must pass over a long tract of jungly swamp
backing the settlement. The second station—it is unwise
to transport fever patients suddenly from low ground to
high altitudes—would be on Mount Henry, an eminence
about 150 miles from the mission station on the beach, and
upwards of 1,500 feet above sea level. The third would be a
ledge of ground, grass-grown, but not wholly out of the
wooded region, 7,000 ft. high, and sheltered from the N.E.
wind by a formation which my companions and I called the
Black Crater. A stream of degraded lava leads to this, the
highe-t point where European invalids mhzh t be settled, and
cutting and zigzagging would easily render it practicable
for four-footed animals. Above the Black Crater all is grass
and clover, lava and clinker. In places the land is level
enough for pleasant riding ; snow could be stored for the
whole year, and those who enjoy cold can pass a night or
two at Saker's Camp,' where at dawn the mercury stands
below zero, the blankets are stiff, and the noble peak is hoar
with frost. Being unprepared to assert in England that
felony would justify divorce, and not unacquainted with
the horrors of Norfolk Island, I agree with Mr. Laird in
thinking it no small advantage that the convicts who prove
orderly and industrious should be able to intermarry with
the women of the country. With respect to the chances of
escape, a bottle of rum given to the natives would bring in
any fugitive ; and, as the lowlands are deadly, as the high-
lands are healthy, as all the craft upon this coast is so frail
that even the half amphibious negroes often lose their lives
--and, finally, as the mounta'n, though thinly populated
and wholly desert above an altitude of 3,0001 t. is almost
surrounded by populous regions, full of well armed men,
commanded by General Tazo, alias swamp fever—it is not
to be expected that a convict station in Western Africa will
ever breed a race of bushrangers."

Loss of Seven Boats, containing Forty-two

Persons.

(Front the Banffshire Journal.)
A correspondent in the Hebrides writes regard-
ing the late gale, which was severely felt on the
coast of the Hebrides, and which was accompanied
by a great destruction of property and melancholy
loss of life. The morning of the 18th inst., he says,
was tolerably good, considering the season of the
year, and meeting with fair success of late a num-
ber of boats went to the fishing. About mid-day the
wind commenced to blow from the west, and before
night it had increased to a perfect hurricane. On
the following day the wind veered round more to
the north, and continued to blow with increasing
violence, accompanied with showers of hail. At
this time the sea presented the appearance of a huge
boiling cauldron, vomiting up great masses of foam
and spray, so dense and thick that the sea itself be-
came completely obscured. So severe was the gale
that a schooner lying at anchor in the shelter of
Stornoway Loch was drifted on the island that lies
in the middle thereof, and had her keel broken, and
was otherwise damaged. A number of the boats
managed to get in safely before the gale had assumed
its worst, but seven belonging to Ness (Butt of
Lewis) did not return, and no word has since been
heard of any of them, and it is very much feared they
have all foundered at sea, and that all on board have
met with a watery grave. One body came ashore
at a different part of the island in a complete state
of nudity. One of the boats was seen on the fol-
lowing day (Friday) in Broadbay, but has not been
seen since. There were forty-two men in the boats,
six in each, thirty-six of whom are said to have been
married, and in several of the boats there were two
and three members belonging to one family.
It is to be hoped that some of the boats have
reached the opposite mainland; but the violence
of the gale leaves little hope that any of them
would be able to keep them above water in crossing
the Minch. The sad and melancholy state of feel-
ing at present pervading the small fishing village
may be imagined, when nearly one-third of its
grown-up male population have thus to all appear-
ance been cut off at one fell swoop. Much sym-
pathy is at present expressed throughout the island
for the semi-bereaved relatives, and when the worst
is known something more than sympathy will re-
quire to be shown. Intelligence has since been re-
ceived from the opposite mainland that one of the
boats had been driven there, and that one of the
crew had died from fatigue, want, and cold. It is
to be hoped that others of the boats may turn up,
and that the worst fears of the distressed may not
be realised.

COUNTRY MARKETS.

MANCHESTER-JAN. I.

This morning at our market there was a fair sale for
best English wheat, at is advance on the currencies of last
week, while damp sorts were unchanged. American ad-
vanced Id per 1001bs. Flour 6d to Ps up, but moved off
slowly. Indian corn the turn dearer. Oats and oatmeal
n moderate demand. Other articles unchanged.

BIRMINGHAM—JAN. 1.
English wheat was sold at 48s to 56s for white, and Om
to 54s per 36 stone for red, Barley, new malting, 35s to
42s per qr; grinding, 24s to 28s Oats, old, 25s to 300
per 30 stone; Irish, 23s to 255. Beans, 40s to 44s per qr.
Peas, 40s to 48s per 36 stone.