Occupied City: New Orleans under the Federals, 1862-1865 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS383 hoped that the publication of the major Grant work m 1967 will not be hampered m its general availability by an excessively high cost. Robert A. Waller University of Illinois Occupied City: New Orleans under the Federals, 1862-1865. By Gerald A. Capers. (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1965. Pp. ix, 248. $6.75.) One of the most difficult problems that a Federal commander could encounter during the Civil War was that of governing a conquered southem city. Not only was such a city disturbed by the traumatic experience of mihtary defeat and occupation by a hostile army; its normal economic life was dislocated, its income through taxation decimated; its public services, streetlighting, transportation, fire prevention, sanitation, suffered want of upkeep; its schools, its press, its churches were fundamentally disturbed . Moreover, special war-connected problems grew out of the presence of hostile troops; the presence often of captured friendly troops on parole ; the enforcement of emergency war restrictions; the epidemic spread of unemployment; the ever-increasing difficulty of procuring food for everyone, and of relieving the indigent; problems related to pohtical rehabilitation , economic recovery and, of course, the special Civil War problem of what to do about the Negro. New Orleans, as the most populous southern city and the most important commercial oudet for the Mississippi Valley, was also during the Civil War die geographic center and chief mihtary base of the Gulf blockade and the southern gateway for mihtary operations extending northward up the Mississippi River. In tackling die large problem of the American experience in mihtary government certainly a logical starting point is a study of New Orleans. A formal book-length beginning is this study by Gerald A. Capers. In his preface Mr. Capers makes clear that his book is not just another mihtary history. He confesses, indeed, that he has "always regarded mihtary history ... as intellectually sterile." "What I have tried to do is to examine . . . the problems of the conqueror and the response of an urban population to mihtary occupation." The first consequence of his limited focus is that he does not consider the main function for which the Federals held New Orleans: namely, as a mihtary and naval base for further operations; and secondly, he treats the "problems of the conqueror" not from the point of view of the commanding Union generals but from the point of view of the conquered inhabitants. His study, nevertheless, is an interesting preliminary exploration. New Orleans came under the control of three Union major generals: Benjamin F. Buder, Nathaniel P. Banks, and Stephen A. Hurlburt. Butler demonstrated considerable genius in administration. Failing in his attempt to leave the city's management to its elected officials, he was eventually compelled to jail the mayor and assign city jobs to various members of his staff. As a veteran lawyer with a taste for detective work, he ferreted out pro-southern actions on the part of bankers, consuls, and preachers of the gospel. His sobriquet "Beast" Butler was given him chiefly because of his famous "Woman Order" and he was eventually recalled by Washington because of his highhanded dealings with the consuls. General Banks (from December 1862 until after his failure in the Red River Campaign in the spring of 1864) at first tried to kill southern recalcitrance by kindness, but "Dancing Master" Banks soon had to return to Butler's arbitrary methods, as did General Hurlburt, who ruled New Orleans during the last year of the war. Gleaning a plethora of facts, primarily from New Orleans newspapers, Mr. Capers, a New Orleanian who is head of the history department at Newcomb College, Tulane University, has surveyed the reactions of wartime New Orleanians to the several aspects of Federal policy in the city. In the reviewer's opinion Capers is most successful in treating wartime efforts at political reconstruction, matters relating to newspapers, churches, schools, and to the situation of the Negro during the occupation . The chief limitation of the book is the author's decision to minimize or ignore the city's role as a great mihtary and naval base. Unfortunately, too, the book assigns less than a page to New Orleans as a center of industry. Several...