with its requirement upon the corporate and individual peril, and inform me within six hours after the receipt of this of their determination.

I have the honor to be, respectfully, your obedient servant,

BENJ. F. BUTLER.

SPECIAL ORDERS,
HDQRS. DEPARTMENT OF THE GULF, No. 42.
New Orleans, May 24, 1862.

The New Orleans Estafette du Sud newspaper, having published an article on the 21st instant which violates the terms of the proclamation of 1st of May from these headquarters, said paper is hereby suppressed.

By command of Major-General Butler:

GEO. C. STRONG,
Assistant Adjutant-General.

HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE GULF,

New Orleans, May 25, 1862.

Hon. E. M. STANTON,

Secretary of War:

SIR: In matters pertaining to the conduct of affairs in my own department which affect that alone I will trouble you for instructions as little as possible, pu in those which affect the administrative policy of the country I beg leave to refer to the head of the War Department for advice and direction. The question now pressing me is the state of negro property here and the condition of the negroes as men. It has a gravity as regards both write and black appalling as the mind follows out the logical necessities of different lines of action. Ethnological in its proportions and demands for investigation, it requires active administrative operations immediately upon the individual in his daily life, his social, political, and religious status as a human being, while some of the larger deductions of political economy are to be at once worked out by any course of conduct. It cannot be solved therefore without thought or discussion by a phrase or a paragraph. The question now comes to me in a different form that in which it has presented itself to any other military commander.

At Fortress Monroe during the last summer I found the negro deserted by his master or having been forced by him into the fortification as the builder and thus made to aid in the rebellion. The rights of property under that condition of things could be easily settled. The man was to be treated as a human being wrecked upon a civilized coast, all his social ties and means of living gone, to be cared for because he was a man. My action thereupon is well known and was approved by the Government.

At Port Royal the same condition of things substantially obtained and I suppose will be dealt with in like manner. Here, however, an entirely different state of the question is disclosed.

The general commanding finds himself in possession of a tract of country larger than some States of the Union. This has submitted to the Government of the United States; a community with whom by proclamation the President is about opening commercial relations with all the word except for that which is contraband of war; rich in