take such care of them as would be done with other destitute children. If these children were born of female convict slaves possibly the master might have some claim, but I do not see how the State should have any.

I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

BENJ. F. BUTLER,

Major-General, Commanding.

SPECIAL ORDERS,
HDQRS. DEPARTMENT OF THE GULF No. 288.
New Orleans, August 22, 1862.

Edward Le Beau having, in conjunction with Edgar Le Beau, against the orders of the commanding general of this department, destroyed arms belonging to the Confederate States for the purpose of depriving the United States of the use of the arms and having buried arms for the purpose of depriving the United States of them, are sentenced to confinement on Ship Island for the term of one year. The arms will be confiscated, and the negro boy who gave the information of the concealed arms-George Washington Walker-will be emancipated. The proper act of emancipation will be made out by the provost court for that purpose.

By order of Major-General Butler:

R. S. DAVIS,
Captain and Acting Assistant Adjutant-General.

HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE GULF, New Orleans, August 25, 1862.

OFFICER COMMANDING FORCES AT OPELOUSAS:

SIR: I have sent Mr. A. Deslondes to you, a well-known gentleman of this State, who has been captured and held by me under his parole as one of the hostages for the safety of Mr. Burbank and other peaceable citizens of the United States who have been taken by your forces. He has been selected as a messenger because he has peculiar and personal interest in the questions presented by him, and goes under his solemn parole to return in any event.

Mr. Deslondes bears a copy of a letter from the brother of Mr. Burbank to me, disclosing a course of treatment toward a citizen of the State of Louisiana that I can hardly conceive to be true.

One purpose I have in sending this note is to ask you to certify to me officially what is the treatment accorded to Mr. Burbank, so that I may relieve the mind of the brother from what I shall believe, until officially informed to the contrary, must be an exaggeration, and I have also desired the official information so that I might be in condition to act understandingly upon this and like cases.

Mr. Deslondes is further desired to confer with you whether it is not possible that some arrangement be entered into by which the citizens who are quietly at home may be left unmolested.

Of course this is a matter as regards numbers that may be arrested of much more importance to the forces which you command than it can be to me, yet it would seem to be desirable that some convention upon this subject might he had which would relieve the war of its pressure upon the non-combatants on both sides.