When Jennie
heard of it, she cried through her tears:
"Show me a dungeon deep enough to keep me from praying for my brothers
who are fighting for us!"
The speech of Butler which had gone farthest and sank deepest into the
outraged souls of the people of Southern Louisiana was his defiant
utterance to Solomon Benjamin on the threat of England to intervene in
our struggle:
"Let England or France dare to try it," Butler swore in a towering rage,
"and I'll be damned if I don't arm every negro in the South and make
them cut the throats of every man, woman and child in it. I'll make them
lay this country waste with fire and sword and leave it desolate."
That Butler was capable of using his enormous power as the Military
Governor of Louisiana to accomplish this purpose, no one who had any
knowledge of the man or his methods doubted for a moment.
On the slightest pretexts he arrested whom he pleased, male and female,
and threw them into prison. Aged men who had incurred his displeasure
were confined at hard labor with ball and chain. Men were imprisoned in
Fort Jackson, whose only offense was the giving of medicine to sick
Confederate soldiers. The wife of a former member of Congress was
arrested and sent to Ship Island in the Gulf of Mexico.
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