Ben Butler's Botched Money Grab: A Tale of Civil War New Orleans

Major General Benjamin F. Butler was a Massachusetts politician noted for his dumpy appearance, crossed eyes, mixed motives, and scandalous mode of operation; he was no battlefield superstar, but he was also a hard-headed administrator, an extraordinarily able attorney, and possessed no love for the Southern traitors who he blamed for destroying his party. A War Democrat, Ben Butler was a useful individual to the Lincoln administration and during the war held several important commands.  His administration of the city of New Orleans, Louisiana is of particular interest because it was in New Orleans where Butler gained much of his notoriety, particularly for his General Order No. 28, which punished women showing disrespect to Union soldiers as liable to be “treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation.”

 

"Beast Ben" in profile from an image taken at Bermuda Hundred during the 1864 campaign. He looks awfully comfy in those camp slippers. (Library of Congress)

His tough treatment of the hardened Rebels of New Orleans earned him the sobriquet of “Beast Ben,” and chamber pots were made and distributed throughout the South with Butler’s image on the bottom, which gives one a clear sense of how “Beast Ben” was perceived by many Southerners. However, Butler gained a more derisive nickname of “Spoons” for his proclivity to pocket silverware from the homes of New Orleans. But in early May 1862, “Spoons” had his eyes on a much bigger prize than stray silverware: he was on the hunt for hundreds of thousands of dollars of coinage he was convinced had been stolen from the New Orleans mint the previous year.

 

The story goes back to the origins of the rebellion in January 1861, when the state of Louisiana passed a secession ordnance and declared itself (for just a short period) the Republic of Louisiana. The U.S. Mint had operated a branch mint in New Orleans that since 1838 had produced both gold and silver coinage, the Gold Rush in California leading to a great increase in bullion flowing into the mint. In 1859 for example, more than $1.6 million of gold and silver had been processed through New Orleans.[1] On January 26, 1861, state authorities seized control of the mint and continued operations under the aegis of the state of Louisiana and later the Confederate government. All told, Louisiana seized control of about $400,000 worth of gold and silver bullion and an unspecified amount of specie, or minted coinage not yet released from the mint’s vaults. The continued operations at New Orleans prompted James Ross Snowden, director of the U.S. Mint, to call upon Congress to declare New Orleans coinage bearing an 1861 mint date and the “O” mint mark as not legal tender, as the New Orleans operations were being conducted “without the authority of law.”[2] The New Orleans Crescent reported in May 1861 that the mint had ceased operations as of January 26th and that “not one single coin of any kind of denomination has been issued from the mint…since its seizure by order of the Louisiana Convention.” Recent numismatic research suggests that this statement was a patently untrue, and the New Orleans operation cranked out hundreds of thousands of silver half dollar coins until the Confederate Congress ordered the mint closed June 1, 1861. At that point, any bullion on hand was transferred to the Confederate treasury then being moved from Montgomery, Alabama to Richmond, Virginia.[3]

 

The capture of the port of New Orleans by the Union in the spring of 1862 delivered one of the pearls of the Confederate economy into Federal hands. Besides being the largest city in the South, New Orleans served as the primary port for much of both the midwestern and southern states with more than $500 million of commerce passing over its wharves each year. The region was also home to extraordinarily profitable sugar and cotton plantations and was literally rolling in wealth. General Butler arrived with 5,000 troops on May 1, 1862 and took formal control of the administration of New Orleans from Admiral David Farragut. “Under the administration of General Butler, we think the Rebels at New Orleans will find the weather even warmer than usual at this season,” crowed the Boston Journal. “He is just the man for the place, if it is desired to make the secessionists there uncomfortable. The more they writhe under his treatment, the more he will apply the screws.”[4]

 

General Butler and his staff in 1864; I believe the bearded gentleman to his left rear is his older brother Andrew Jackson Butler. Andrew handled most of Ben's financial affairs and most likely had some hand in the money grab of May 1862. 

Shortly after his arrival in the city, General Butler set up his headquarters at the St. Charles Hotel. “The city was untamed,” he wrote in his autobiography. He quickly learned that two business establishments in town were hiding hundreds of thousands of dollars of stolen specie. Butler was determined to recover this stolen Federal property, so on May 10th, he dispatched men to gather it in. The first seizure was made at the banking house of Samuel Smith & Co. on Camp Street. Butler had been told that $50,000 of specie had been moved from the mint to this bank, so he sent officers to arrest the members of the bank and take possession of the premises. An initial search failed to produce the missing coins; the bank directors insisted that they only had $14,000 on hand that derived from private deposits. Butler would have none of it. “The General gave Smith & Co. their choice between producing the specie or going to Fort Jackson [Butler had been sending arrested persons to Fort Jackson] and the next morning, the bankers showed where the money was hidden. It was hidden in the air chamber between the vault and the brick wall, $54,000 stowed away there very nicely.”[5]

 

But Butler was after bigger fish than a paltry $54,000. Captain Samuel D. Shipley along with a squad of men marched to the offices of the Hope Insurance Co. of Amsterdam located at 109 Canal Street to investigate a report that a much larger haul of specie was secreted in the vault. Shipley found a Dutch flag flying over the office and inside met Amedie Conturie, a French national then serving as consul of the Netherlands who operated the consul office with that of the insurance company. Captain Shipley told Conturie that he was there to search the premises and to prevent the departure of any property from the office.

 

Conturie protested that he had consular immunity and addressed a note to the French consul Comte Mejan for assistance. Shipley took the note to Butler but shortly thereafter returned, having refused to deliver the note to Mejan (on Butler’s instruction) and proceeded to demand the key for the vault from Conturie. The Dutch consul protested sufficiently that Shipley returned to Butler’s headquarters and then returned with Lieutenant Kinsman of Butler’s staff who roughly accosted the consul. When Conturie again protested his diplomatic immunity, Kinsman ignored him and proceeded to search the office. Conturie told Kinsman not to destroy the office; he had the key on his person. Kinsman directed Captain Shipley and Lieutenant Whitcomb to “search the fellow” and the key was found in his coat pocket.  “On opening the vault, Lieutenant Kinsman discovered nearly a cord of kegs filled with specie. A guard was placed over them for the night and on Sunday they were removed to the custom house. There were 160 kegs each containing $5,000, in the aggregate, $800,000. Each keg was sealed and stamped “Citizen’s Bank, N. O.” The money was of the date of 1861 and each piece had the O which indicated its having been minted in New Orleans. There is the best reason to believe that it is part of the identical specie stolen by the Rebels from the mint at the commencement of the war,” it was reported.[6]

 


In 1861, the New Orleans mint only produced two types of coinage: the silver 50 cent piece and the gold $20 double eagle. More than 2,500,000 of the Liberty Seated half dollars were minted; “330,000 struck under the U.S. government [January 1-26], 1,240,000 for the State of Louisiana after it seceded from the Union, and 962,633 after Louisiana joined the Confederate States of America [March 4],” states the Guide Book of U.S. Coins. Only 17,741 of the $20 Liberty Head double eagles were minted at New Orleans in 1861, so the hoard that was secreted at the Dutch consulate likely was 160 kegs of 50 cent pieces, all told, roughly 1,600,000 of them, or two-thirds of the total minted that year. Each keg held 10,000 pieces and weighed roughly 275 pounds.[7] The second piece of interesting information is who kegged the coins: the Citizen’s Bank of New Orleans. An overly talkative New Orleans resident told the Philadelphia Inquirer back in January 1862 that “New Orleans banks hold a large amount of specie and were upheld in not paying it out by a bill of the legislature” and further stated that “the Citizen’s Bank of New Orleans is supposed to be the strongest of all.” Sitting on $800,000 ($20.58 million in 2020 dollars) of specie certainly would put the Citizen’s Bank in a strong position.[8]

 

1861-O Seated Liberty Half Dollar

An interesting twist on the story was a claim made in late May that the coins seized at the consulate where actually Mexican reales pieces, not U.S. half dollar coins minted in New Orleans. The Citizen’s Bank, upon learning of the impending approach of the Federal army, deposited the money with the consul, apparently in hopes that his diplomatic immunity would secure the money from seizure.[9] Reputedly, the New Orleans mint restamped these coins with a Mexican die to conceal their true origin. The Washington Evening Star reported that “upon microscopic examination of the coin itself, it shows underneath the impression of the Mexican die perfect evidence that it was originally a U.S. coin. It was restamped in New Orleans in order to prevent detection in case it should fall again within reach of Uncle Sam’s clutches. The O, the distinctive mark of the U.S. coinage by the New Orleans mint, still remains visible with the microscope.”[10]

 

Mexican 8 Reales Piece


Regardless, Butler’s money grab kicked up a real fuss with the local consulates and ultimately with the State Department. Two days after the incident with Conturie, Butler received a protest letter signed by 18 consuls located in New Orleans from countries as diverse as Spain to Italy to Russia to England and France, complaining that Butler’s acts violated signed treaties between the U.S. and those nations. Butler denied any intent to insult the flags of those nations, but stated that “the flag of the Netherland was made to cover and conceal property of an incorporate company of Louisiana [Citizen’s Bank], secreted under it from the operation of the laws of the United States.”[11] General Butler doubled down on consul Conturie stating that the Dutch consul “prostituted” his flag by concealing the stolen specie and claiming it was private property and whatever rough treatment Conturie received was well-merited.[12]

 

But the furor kicked up with the consuls led President Lincoln to dispatch former Maryland senator Reverdy Johnson to New Orleans to investigate the complaints. Reverdy Johnson, a slave-owning conservative Democrat, was chosen for this ticklish assignment due to his support for the war effort and his ability to work out troublesome situations. Johnson spent several weeks investigating activities in New Orleans and concluded that “a state of fraud and corruption exists there that it without parallel in the past history of the country. That Major General Butler is cognizant of it or would approve of it if he was is not for a moment to be believed. But if he will exert the acuteness and energy which have heretofore had a different direction into the investigation of the conduct of some of those around him, he will soon discover that the people of New Orleans have been perhaps as much sinned against as sinning.”[13] Other observers, however, noted that Johnson “made himself very obnoxious to the soldiers and Union officers there by his intimacy with the secession aristocrats.”[14]


Reverdy Johnson
Maryland State Archives

 

In August, Johnson submitted his report to Washington and on the basis of the facts, he recommended that the specie seized at the Dutch consulate be returned. Secretary of State William H. Seward addressed a letter to Dutch ambassador Van Limburg on August 20th offering the return of the $800,000 to either the consul, an agent of the Hope Insurance Co. named Forstall, or to the Citizen’s Bank. “The dissatisfaction with Major General Butler’s precipitancy and harshness in the transaction concerned were among the causes of transferring the administration of public affairs to General [George] Shepley,” Seward wrote. “Mr. Conturie has been very ill-used and upon that ground, General Shepley will be directed to invite him at New Orleans to resume his consular functions.”[15]  General Butler’s problematic reign in Louisiana ended completely in December 1862 when Major General Nathaniel P. Banks arrived and took command of the Department of the Gulf.

 


[1] “The Mint at New Orleans,” New York Times (New York), June 29, 1862, pg. 4

[2] “Coinage of the New Orleans Mint,” Natchez Daily Courier (Mississippi), March 14, 1861, pg. 2

[3] “The New Orleans Mint,” The Daily Exchange (Maryland), May 7, 1861, pg. 1; also Charleston Daily Courier (South Carolina), May 21, 1861, pg. 1

[4] “Butler’s Rule in New Orleans,” Charleston Mercury (South Carolina), June 14, 1862, pg. 1

[5] “New Orleans,” Chicago Tribune (Illinois), June 3, 1862, pg. 3

[6] Ibid.

[7] Yeoman, R.S. The Official Red Book: A Guide to United States Coins, 72nd Edition. Pelham: Whitman Publishing Co., 2019, pg. 222

[8] “Adventures of a Rebel Captain,” Detroit Free Press (Michigan), January 28, 1862, pg. 3

[9] Alexandria Gazette (Virginia), May 31, 1862, pg. 1

[10] “Detected,” Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), June 14, 1862, pg. 2

[11] Chicago Tribune, op. cit.

[12] Daily Missouri Republican (Missouri), December 19, 1862, pg. 2

[13] “Hon Reverdy Johnson,” Baltimore Sun (Maryland), December 8, 1862, pg. 2

[14] “Reverdy Johnson and Ben Butler,” Lancaster Inquirer (Pennsylvania), September 30, 1862, pg. 2

[15] Daily Missouri Republican, op. cit.

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