Autograph Letter Signed by Major General Benjamin F. Butler on lined letterhead stationery of Headquarters Department of the Gulf.

Union Major General Benjamin F. Butler, Military Governor of New Orleans, was notorious for his anti-Semitism. The present letter is certainly true to character. Addressing the U.S. District Attorney, New York, Butler writes: "I forward you a translation of a letter from one Schafter, whom I have arrested…who is engaged in smuggling arms into Charleston and Mobile through Nassau…They are Jews who betrayed their Savior; & also have betrayed us. I think the traitors should be arrested and dealt with there as I have dealt with them here, by imprisoning the man and confiscating the property." Historian Bertram W. Korn refers to Butler as a "conniving careerist and political opportunist of major proportions, who was given the title of 'Beast' by the Confederacy for his severity during the early military occupation of New Orleans." Korn has proposed that Butler's animus toward the Jews was designed to divert attention from his own avarice: "He was the one General who was never able to free himself of the suspicion of using his power to amass a fortune for himself, his family, and his intimate friends, while he controlled New Orleans with an iron fist." See B.W. Korn, American Jewry and the Civil War (1951) pp. 64-66. Despite the blockade imposed by the North, the South were able to obtain arms, good and supplies via smuggling routes via the Bahamas.