The Daily Empire

Important to War-Plunderers.

Southern papers contain numerous advertisements, offering large rewards to plunderers, who followed the Federal armies, for the spoils which they could pick up, for the return of various valuable articles that were carried or shipped North. One gentleman says there were taken from his house some three hundred volumes, mostly rare French and Spanish books, relating to the early history of Louisiana, which can not be replaced by purchase, and for which he now offers five dollars per volume. A Northern correspondent writes that he saw six or eight boxes of household knick-knacks and women's and children's clothing which were stolen in Pensacola by Neal Dow, and were stopped at the Custom House in New Orleans. This same Dow was convicted of stealing a silver pitcher from Bradish Johnson.

Libraries, wardrobes, plate closets, and picture galleries in New Orleans, and in other cities, were stripped during the war; and the peculiar performances of Butler and his followers in this line, are more notorious in history than are any of their exploits in the field.

It may well be considered that the millennium has surely dawned when such plunderers as Butler, Banks, Dow, and a regiment of like rascals, disgorge their plunder! The remarks of the Chicago Times are pertinent, that

"There is a piano in this house, and a set of silver in that; and in neither of which was there either piano or silver before the war. There is many a fine house in the North whose ownership rests upon the doubtful title of 'confiscation,' There is many a house in New England filled with costly furniture that reached its destination via New Orleans. There is many a daughter and wife of the Puritans whose under-clothing has been reinforced by consignments from closets whose ownership is, or was, vested in the 'lords of the whip and the branding-iron.'"

It is quite a notorious fact that General Neal Dow, apart from his devotion to some up country widow, devoted almost the whole of his valuable time to the selection, confiscation and shipment of furniture while stationed on the gulf. Butler may eat from plates and with forks and spoons of Boston make, but they did duty in the Crescent city between the time of their manufacture and their possession by the gorgon of Lowell.