With respect to Hood, I agree.
Again, cholera as well as any pestilence associated with filthiness was an issue for Butler, but the threat of yellow fever was and always has been a major source of panic in the Crescent City and its surrounding areas.
Here are a secondary sources that corroborate what I am saying (Dufour's passages merely represent the constant fear yellow fever played in the minds of the population of New Orleans):
Winters, John D. The Civil War in Louisiana. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991.
pg 127 "Fearing for the health of his men, General Butler ordered an immediate cleanup campaign. Corps of men were hired to scour the streets, to flush sewers, and to clean out the stagnant canals. In addition, Butler insisted upon sanitary conditions in both private and public premises and enforced a rigid yellow-fever quarantine against all incoming ships. As a result, New Orleans, for awhile, became one of America's healthiest cities."
pg 128-129 "The strict quarantine maintained by Butler to guard against yellow fever delayed foreign commerce and brought many complaints to his head quarters from the foreign consuls."
pg 130 "One of the most potent weapons was the threat of yellow fever.One diarist stated: 'The People of the town are frightening them terribly with tales of yellow fever.' So effective was the method that General Butler reported, 'A panic seized many of my officers.' Many of them began to apply for furlough and sick leave to escape the terrors of the dread scourge. To reassure his men, the general enforced rigid sanitation rules and a strict quarantine below the city."
Hearn, Chester G. When the Devil Came Down to Dixie: Ben Butler in New Orleans. Baton Rouge: Louisiana History Press, 1997.
pg 96 "Since his days at Waterville College, Butler had looked into the epidemiology of yellow fever, the tropical disease that killed his father. Aware that the pestilence visited the city about once every three years, he knew it would be overdue during the summer of 1862. His men knew it too, and some became panic-stricken, constantly hounding him for permission to go home. The only known prevention was a rigid quarantine of incoming vessels. Butler researched the disease and became convinced that filth, ore than anything else, had propagated the city's worse epidemics."
Dufour, Charles. The Night the War Was Lost. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc, 1960.
pg 25 "Each year, after yellow fever season, when the first cool weather signaled the retreat of the Bronze John to his pest-laden swamps, wealthy planters from all over the South arrived at New Orleans."
"The good health that had been noted in New Orleans in the summer still prevailed in the fall, and the fact that the blockade had kept out yellow fever was implicit in the vital statistics for 1861, which showed that May to October--the normal yellow-fever season--there were 913 fewer deaths in the city than for the same period in 1860."
"'People of New Orleans are talking confidently of an ally soon to join them in the defense of the city against the Union invaders--Bronze John, Yellow Jack, yellow fever. People everywhere--in the streets, on the exchanges, at the clubs, at home--speak of the approaching yellow-fever season and the effect it will have on the unacclimated Northern soldiers. The
Delta predicted: ' Warm weather is rapidly approaching, and the deadly heat of the Gulf and Lake coasts, combined with pestilence, will soon commit more ravages than a dozen bottles." The other newspapers have picked up the idea and state that if the Federals are going to strike at New Orleans they had better hurry before yellow fever strikes first."
Bell, Andrew McIlwaine. Mosquito Soldiers: Malaria, Yellow Fever, and the Course of the American Civil War . Louisiana State University Press. Kindle Edition.
In New Orleans, for example, Major General Benjamin Butler watched in frustration as a number of officers in his occupation force were "frightened home by fear of yellow fever."
Even so, the rebellious spirit of the city was alive and well six days later, when an army of fifteen thousand bluecoats under the command of Major General Benjamin F. Butler arrived to take control. Butler's troops encountered the same menacing stares and angry insults that Farragut's men had endured. But while the residents of New Orleans were enraged over the Yankee occupation, they also held out hope that nature, or perhaps nature's God, might intervene on their behalf.1 They had good reason to be hopeful. Yellow fever outbreaks had swept through New Orleans nearly every year since 1817, killing more than forty thousand people and establishing the city's reputation as one of the unhealthiest places to live in the United States. The decade just before the Civil War was especially sickly. Back-to-back epidemics in 1853, 1854, and 1855, followed by another one in 1858, produced a staggering eighteen thousand casualties and virtually wiped out the city's nonimmune immigrant population. New Orleans natives knew that when "yellow jack" appeared in their midst, newcomers were especially susceptible to its ravages, giving rise to one of the malady's more fitting sobriquets, "Stranger's Disease." The thousands of Union soldiers tasked with maintaining order in the city were the perfect target for the virus because none of them had ever lived through an epidemic. Yellow fever might succeed where the Confederate military had failed and rid the city of its occupiers.
Butler was certainly worried about yellow fever. He believed the locals were intentionally creating unsanitary conditions in the city in order to increase the likelihood of an epidemic, a scenario that made his men nervous as well. Residents preyed upon these fears. The city's schoolchildren chanted blood-curdling nursery rhymes in the streets about how the pestilence would soon wreak havoc on the Yankees, while parishioners with southern sympathies were said to be praying in the pews for the disease to arrive. Two locals even went so far as to measure and record the height of a group of soldiers; when asked to explain their behavior, they claimed to be taking measurements for the coffins that would become necessary once yellow fever burned through the Union ranks.
Butler's two-pronged approach ultimately proved successful; only two yellow fever deaths occurred within the city of New Orleans during the 1862 sickly season. His stringent sanitation policy eliminated many of the places where Aedes aegypti mosquitoes preferred to breed, such as rain-filled receptacles and stagnant pools, and the quarantine he enacted isolated infected insects and men. The Massachusetts general believed these actions preserved the health of the city, but residents were convinced that their enemies had simply gotten lucky.
Here are some excerpts from Volume XV of the Official Records as well:
Butler's September 1, 1862 letter to General Halleck (pg 558):
"....I learn by the secession newspapers that I am to be relieved of this command. If that be so, might I ask that my successor be sent as early as possible, as my own health is not the strongest, and it will seem but fair that he should take some part in the yellow fever season."
Butler in a letter to Secretary Stanton in reference to the quarantine measures he put into effect in New Orleans to ward off yellow fever on June 17, 1862 (pg 478)
"At the opening of the port, Havana receiving the news first, there was an immediate clearance thence of vessels for New Orleans. But the yellow fever is at Havana, so that I must maintain strict quarantine. The desire for forestalling the market makes all the vessels very uneasy under quarantine regulations, so that I have all manner of complaint and trouble with the foreign consuls representing their countrymen in that regard, but I shall maintain quarantine at all hazards."
Cholera struck anywhere because of its nature. The men from the North were familiar with it, but yellow fever was a completely different animal in their eyes. Butler gave yellow fever as much attention as he possibly could throughout his time in the city.
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