The Spanish Government was represented in New Orleans by Don Juan Callejon.  Early in the summer the strictness of our quarantine of vessels from Cuba produced some ill feeling on his part, which manifested itself in the refusal of a clean bill of health to the steamer Roanoke, about to leave New Orleans for Havana.  In response to a request from the General, Don Juan called immediately at the office; but owing to the unfortunate circumstance of his entire ignorance of the English language, and the consequent necessity of conversing through the medium of an interpreter, a serious misunderstanding ensued, and the General, supposing the Consul to be contemptuously setting our Government at defiance, threatened to send him out of the country; but afterwards learning that their difference had arisen purely from misinterpretation, and that Senor Callejon had proved himself a patriot and hero in his country’s service, the General, with the honest admiration which one brave man always feels toward another, took especial pains to render their intercourse, both official and personal, as agreeable as might be.  And to show the Spanish consul that in the matter of quarantine he was inspired by no dislike toward his Government, he placed more rigid restrictions, if possible, on American vessels from infected ports than on the vessels of Spain.

To Senor Ruiz, the acting consul of the Republic of Mexico, who had the singular consular virtue of sympathizing warmly with the free North, the General’s attentions were something more sincere than the hackneyed “assurances of distinguished consideration” so necessary to diplomatic correspondence and intercourse.

Indeed, I doubt if any of the foreign commercial agents at New Orleans would claim that they ever had cause to complain against General Butler on account of any personal grievance.

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Probably nothing in the history of General Butler’s administration in New Orleans drew from the foes of free government in every land such unmeasured execration as the celebrated “Order No. 28,” relating to the conduct of women in the street, and I wish to give the most decided testimony upon this subject.  That something was necessary to be done to stop the insults to which we were continually subjected by the other sex, I presume no one who is well informed as to their frequency and humiliating character will for a moment doubt.  Upon our arrival in the city I flattered myself that such demonstrations would excite in me no sentiment more serious than pity for the childishness that prompted them; but I confess, that, after a day or two, the sneers and contortions of countenance, the angry withholding of the dress from contact with my person, and the abrupt departure from the sidewalk to the middle of the street to avoid even passing the hated uniform, were too much for my philosophy, and gave me a sense of humiliation more painful than I can express.  And yet the insults I received were slight, compared to those offered to many of our officers and men.