‘I Had the Men from the Start’: General Benjamin Butler's occupation of New Orleans

Existing historiography asserts that General Benjamin Butler manipulated conceptions of gender in his issuance of General Order 28 in Union-occupied New Orleans during the American Civil War. This article examines how women were prosecuted under General Order 28, using the imprisonment of Eugenia Phillips as a case study. Furthermore, the article proposes that Butler's manipulation of gender in General Order 28 must be considered alongside his manipulation of race in ‘Butler's Fugitive Slave Law’ in order to more fully understand the interplay between the politics of identity and the politics of occupation in the American Civil War.