Without, however, descending into particulars, is the profitableness of the investment to be permitted to be alleged as a sufficient apology for aiding the rebellion by money and arms? If so, all their army contractors, principally Jews, should be held blameless, for they have made immense fortunes by the war. Indeed, I suppose another Jew-one Judas-thought his investment in the thirty pieces of silver was a profitable one until the penalty of treachery reached him.

When I took possession of New Orleans I found the city nearly on the verge of starvation-but thirty days" provisions in it-and the poor utterly without the means of procuring what food there was to be had. I endeavored to aid the city government in the work of feeding the poor, but I soon found that the very distribution of food was a means faithlessly used to encourage the rebellion. I was obliged, therefore, to take the whole matter into my own hands.

It became a subject of alarming importance and gravity. It became necessary to provide from some source the funds to procure the food. They could not be raised by city taxation in the ordinary form. Those taxes were in arrears to more than a million of dollars. Besides, it would be unjust to tax the loyal citizen and honestly neutral foreigner to provide for a state of things brought about by the rebels and disloyal foreigners related to them by ties of blood, marriage, and social relations, who had conspired and labored together to overthrow the authority of the United States and establish the very result which was to be met.

Further, in order to have a contribution effective, it must be upon those who had wealth to answer it.

There seemed to me no such fit subjects for such taxation as the cotton brokers, who had brought the distress upon the city by the paralyzing commerce, and the subscribers to this loan, who had money to invest for purposes of war, so advertised and known, as above described.

With these convictions I issued General Orders, No. 55, which will explain itself and is annexed, marked H,* and have raised nearly the amount of the tax therein set forth.

But for what purpose? Not a dollar has gone in any way to the use of the United States. I am now employing 1,000 poor laborers, as matter of charity, upon the streets and wharves of the city from this fund. I am distributing food to preserve from starvation 9,707 families, containing 32,450 souls, daily, and this is done at an expense of more than $70,000 per month. I am sustaining, at expense of $2,000 per month, five asylums for widows and orphans. I am aiding the Charity Hospital to the extent of $call your attention to the exhibits marked I and K, attached hereto. There are synopses of the weekly returns of my relief committee that distributes the food.

Before their excellencies the French and Prussian ministers complain of my exactions upon foreigners at New Orleans I desire they would look at these exhibits and consider for a few moments the facts and figures set forth in these returns and in this report. They will find that out of the 10,490 families who have been fed from this fund, with the raising of which they find fault, less than one-tenth, 1,010, are Americans; 9,480 are foreigners. Of the 32,000 souls, but 3,000 are natives; besides, the charities at the asylums and hospitals are

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*See Series I, Vol. XV, p.538.

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