An insurgency with whom much of the population agreed. Butler passed laws saying women who spit on soldiers would be treated as prostitutes and even hanged a man for messing with the American flag.
To act as though Confederate cities were being held hostage by gangs of terrorists whom the population hated is inaccurate.
I always found that first part amusing: When a supposedly genteel southern "lady" acts crudely, you treat her like a crude woman. Is that not justice? Spitting on someone is committing assault, after all. The law actually was treating them more gently than they deserved.
I haven't seen a breakdown of how much of New Orleans favored the insurgency. But to pretend US troops were "occupying" is to buy into Redeemer mythology.
To also pretend that much of the CSA claimed territory was not resisting the insurgency is as false as can be. There were huge areas of the south that were pro Union, including much of Louisiana.
And frankly,
so what if there was lots of secession sentiment? There's plenty of that in Texas going on today, but it doesn't mean the US is "occupying" Texas.
The fact is
there were gangs of terrorists in New Orleans who had to resort to violence to drive away Unionists.This happened during Reconstruction and they (very tellingly) called themselves the White League.
-------------------
http://lsm.crt.state.la.us/cabildo/cab11.htm
[SIZE=+1]Opponents of Reconstruction[/SIZE]
Several terrorist organizations sprang up in Louisiana during the Reconstruction era. They primarily aimed to intimidate Republican voters and officeholders of both races, obstruct implementation of Radical Republican policies, and restore Louisiana to rule by native whites.
The main instruments of white terror in Louisiana were the Knights of the White Camellia, formed in 1868, and their successor group, the White League, which had spread across the state by 1874. The earliest of white supremacy groups was the Ku Klux Klan, formed in Tennessee in 1866, but evidence of the Klan's activity in Louisiana is scanty.
The Lost Cause Worse Than Slavery
Thomas Nast
October 24, 1874
Reproduced from Harper's Weekly
The artist chides the White League and the Klan for creating conditions "worse than slavery" for freed blacks.
Whites, many of them Democrats, joined these terrorist organizations when they began losing power to Radical Republicans, both white and black. The immediate goal of these groups was to keep white and black Republicans away from polling places. Their violent tactics, targeted at black leaders, escalated during Reconstruction. White mobs killed three state legislators during these turbulent times.
[SIZE=+1]Colfax Riot[/SIZE]
The Colfax Riot was the bloodiest single instance of racial violence in the Reconstruction era in all of the United States. Disputes over the 1872 election results had produced dual governments at all levels of politics in Louisiana. Fearful that local Democrats would seize power, former slaves under the command of black Civil War veterans and militia officers took over Colfax, the seat of Grant Parish, and a massacre ensued, including the slaughter of about fifty African Americans who had laid down their arms and surrendered.
[SIZE=+1]Coushatta Massacre[/SIZE]
White League influence spread to northwest Louisiana in the summer of 1873. Its brutal actions targeted whites as well as blacks. One such episode was directed against the family of carpetbagger policitian Marshall Harvey Twitchell. In 1874 the White League, who arrested and executed Twitchell's brother, two brothers-in-law, and three other white Republicans, while Twitchell was in New Orleans. Twitchell returned to Coushatta from New Orleans with two companies of federal troops, his goal to restore Republican rule in the parish. Democratic leaders continued to control local politics, however. In 1876 they assassinated Twitchell's brother-in-law, and tried to kill Twitchell, who lost both arms in the fray.
Marshall Harvey Twitchell
c. 1890
Later, Twitchell was fitted with artificial arms.
[SIZE=+1]First Battle of the Cabildo[/SIZE]
The so-called First Battle of the Cabildo, fought on March 5, 1873, pitted Democrats who supported John McEnery against the Metropolitan Police of New Orleans, an integrated militia that protected the Republican administration under Governor William Pitt Kellogg. Both candidates had claimed victory in the 1872 election and established dual military forces and legislatures, resulting in a McEnery coup attempt directed at Metropolitan Police headquarters in the Cabildo. Kellogg and the Republicans maintained power, although their tenure was unstable throughout the remaining years of Reconstruction.
Bloodshed at New Orleans--The Police Firing on the Militia and Rioters in Jackson Square
March 22, 1873
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper
[SIZE=+1]Battle of Liberty Place[/SIZE]
On September 14, 1874 the Metropolitan Police once again clashed with Democratic militia forces, now organized as the Crescent City White League, in a conflict known as the Battle of Liberty Place. This time the Metropolitan Police, numbering about 600, assisted by an additional 3,000 black militia, lost to the White Leaguers, who numbered about 8,400. Casualties included eleven killed and sixty wounded Metropolitans and sixteen killed and forty-five wounded White Leaguers. Today a controversial monument stands near the site of battle honoring White League members killed in the combat.
General Battle Between the Metropolitan Police and Citizens at the Foot of Canal Street
September 23, 1874
Reproduced from the New York Daily Graphic
President Ulysses S. Grant called in federal troops from Mississippi to restore Governor Kellogg to office. They helped maintain Kellogg in power until the end of Reconstruction.
[SIZE=+1]Second Battle of the Cabildo[/SIZE]
Tensions between Radicals and white supremacists climaxed after the disputed gubernatorial election in 1876, in which both Republican Stephen B. Packard and Democrat Francis T. Nicholls claimed a majority of votes and established separate governments, just as the 1872 candidates had done. In January 1877, on the morning after Nicholls's inauguration, he sent 3,000 men to take the Cabildo, seat of the Louisiana state supreme court and headquarters for the Metropolitan Police. Heavily outmanned, federal and Metropolitan forces offered no resistance. The supreme court justices gave up their courtroom, and Nicholls appointed a new judiciary.