While its focus is Confederate music as political culture and propaganda, He discusses it in the context of New Orleans, St. Louis, and Baltimore. While New Orleans was under occupation, St. Louis and Baltimore were Union states but subject to particular scrutiny by Washington because of the dangers of active Confederate collaboration and subversion there. Coleman describes St. Louis, for instance, as being "inhabited by a combustive constituency of Confederate sympathizers, conservative Unionists, Radical Republicans, and representatives of a spectrum of opinion in between."
Federal measures of suppression against civilian activity in support of the Confederacy in such locations became a major theme of propaganda by the Confederacy against the Union. It was aimed at shoring up loyalty in the Confederate states, encouraging pro-Confederate sympathies and actions in Union states, and in foreign diplomacy. By far the most important target foreign diplomacy for the Confederacy was Great Britain. Britain had a very important textile industry that was dependent of Southern supplies. Southern confidence in the power of "King Cotton" was largely based on the commercial connection. But not only was the British government constrained by other great-power considerations. The British working class including the textile workers themselves mounted an active campaign against recognizing the Confederate slave republic.
Coleman's essay gives a good sense of the political and diplomatic complications involved in suppressing non-violent pro-Confederate agitation in those three cities. No one imagined at the time, however, that those measures had permanently converted Southern sympathizers and partisans in proud American Unionists. It was a serious civil war, after all. And its effects echo in some real way even today in contemporary American politics.
Jacqueline Campbell also looks at Benjamin Butler's Women’s Order that I discussed in the previous post in this series in “The Unmeaning Twaddle about Order 28”: Benjamin F. Butler and Confederate Women in Occupied New Orleans, 1862 Journal of the Civil War Era 2:1 Mar 2012. Order 28 is the Woman Order, as Campbell calls it.
She provides some useful insights into how gender issues were used in war propaganda. She quotes a piece called "The Daughter of New Orleans" appealing to Southern men, "For the sake of your sisters, do not leave your women to the mercy of this merciless foe." A formulation which, then as now, aimed at invoking the threat of wanton rape by the supposedly ruthless Unionists.
But Butler had not done anything remotely like declaring open season on the women of New Orleans. On the contrary, Campbell's research found relatively little contemporary documentation that women in New Orleans were especially troubled be the "Woman Order." They were much more concerned about a different directive, Order No. 76, which required women in New Orleans to take an oath of loyalty to the United States or be subject to having their property confiscated. "It stipulated that all people, men and women, who had failed to take the Oath of Allegiance to the United States must now declare themselves enemies of the government and be liable to confiscation of all their property and expulsion from the city."
Confiscation of Rebel property was an entirely legitimate wartime measure. And when we're talking about Rebel property, that also included their human property in the form of slaves. The Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery was also therefore one of the largest confiscations of property without compensation in history, certainly the biggest in American history. Order No. 76 was also a shrewd move on Butler's part, to prevent the paper transfer of Rebel property to wives or daughters to avoid confiscation. (To be clear,, slavery was not formally abolished in Union occupied areas, though slaves were widely permitted to flee behind Union lines.)
Campbell gives us an example of the kind of sputtering rhetorical pathos that was so common in pro-slavery agitation:
Confederate women without [the option of claiming British citizenship, which some did] reacted vehemently to General Order No. 76. Marion Southwood claimed it was the “most detestable” of Butler’s acts. While she dismissed Order 28 as “unmeaning twaddle,” she described Butler as “Satan himself . . . [when he] issued his prying, crushing Order No. 76.” Being compelled to take the oath of allegiance made one’s “brain burn with indignation,” yet she acknowledged that Butler had read the situation correctly. She conceded that, to avoid the “pains and penalties” of confiscation, “many of the more cunning sort sought to cover up their personal and floating property under the broad fold of female crinoline.” Southwood had little doubt that Butler would “shrink from nothing he esteems it his duty to do for the vindication of the violated majesty of the law.” [my emphasis]I'm sure she didn't mean it as a compliment. But declaring that Butler would “shrink from nothing he esteems it his duty to do for the vindication of the violated majesty of the law” sounds like an admission that Butler was doing exactly what a conscientious Union officer should have been doing in that situation.
Campbell credits Butler with considerable sophistication in handling the issues presented by his Woman Order and Order No. 76:
As Butler and the women of occupied Louisiana entered into a dialogue of contempt, class and gender were central issues; but Butler never underestimated female power, he respected it. It was not that he objected to women being in the public sphere, rather, he insisted that such appearances should be on his terms. He was not motivated by a lack of respect for female strength. Butler recognized the deeply rooted class and gender identities at play. As a master of manipulation, he beat these irascible Confederate women at their own game by coercing them into controlling their own behavior. ...And Butler showed some real political talent in defending against the accusation that the Woman Order (General Order No. 28) was offending against the sacredness of Southern womanhood:
General Order No. 28 plunged elite white women of New Orleans into the center of a “prodigious hue and cry” that emanated from men who portrayed them as helpless victims suffering at the hands of a vile oppressor. But Benjamin Butler never viewed Confederate women as powerless. On the contrary, he held them accountable for their actions, not only for their outward behavior on public streets, but for their economic and political standing as citizens of an occupied city. The Woman Order engendered a heated debate among men at the highest levels of the administration, the military, and the diplomatic world and thus obscured the more complex intricacies of what was indeed, in Butler’s words, a “unique but dangerous entanglement.” [my emphasis]
Butler’s own interpretation was that this order would actually protect women’s honor. He believed his own men were well-bred and respectful toward woman however, he pointed out that many scenes of resistance took place on private balconies. Imagine the scenario of soldiers breaking into homes to arrest female rebels in their bedrooms. Think about the scenario had they dragged “screeching women through the streets” and placed them in the Guard House inhabited by “thieves, assassins and drunken soldiers.” Would their honor have been protected in such places? How many riots would this have caused as any so called “gentleman” of the city would have felt himself called upon to protect a southern lady? General Order No. 28, in his view, shamed women into propriety and thus prevented the very thing with which he was now being charged “a war upon women.” [my emphasis]
