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9703_28 | in each direction at a cost of up to $350 million with the option of conversion for electric rail transit in the future. The tunnel was suggested by Metro officials and engineering consultants Parsons Brinckerhoff as a solution to worsening downtown traffic, and was better received than alternative concepts. The proposal gained further support from Metro Transit in its long-term "Metro 1990" plan, adopted in 1981, as a transit mall or tunnel under 3rd Avenue carrying buses that could be converted for a light rail system. The Puget Sound Council of Governments (PSCOG), a regional planning agency, endorsed Metro Transit's proposal and integrated the tunnel into its proposed light rail line connecting Seattle to Snohomish County. |
9703_29 | The Metro Transit Committee debated the inclusion of the bus tunnel in the project's environmental impact assessment well into 1983, Seattle members opposing the tunnel in favor of a transit mall and suburban members supporting a bus tunnel that would be converted to a light rail system. On September 22, UMTA requested that a preferred alternative be declared by the end of November, which prompted the Metro Council to expedite its decision. Metro Council Executive Director Neil Peterson favored the tunnel alternative, while the Seattle City Council and Mayor Charles Royer preferred the transit mall, but stated that a tunnel would be a long-term solution to downtown congestion. The Seattle City Council reversed its decision on their preferred alternative, voting unanimously on October 17 in favor of an electric-only transit tunnel. Along with Mayor Royer, they were willing to compromise on Peterson's proposed dual-mode buses to serve suburban commuters where trolleybuses were not |
9703_30 | feasible. The Metro Council approved the downtown bus tunnel by a unanimous vote on November 3, 1983, estimating a cost of $300 million to build a five-station tunnel under 3rd Avenue and Pine Street to be completed in 1989 along with the conversion of 3rd Avenue into a landscaped transit mall. |
9703_31 | Planning, funding and design |
9703_32 | Metro unveiled its preliminary plans for the bus tunnel in January 1984, selecting five sites for stations along 3rd Avenue and Pine Street: at Union Station, the King County Courthouse, between Seneca and Union streets, at the Westlake Mall, and near the Washington State Convention Center. The Burlington Northern Railroad opposed Metro's preference for the tunnel to cross the existing Great Northern Tunnel by going under it, the agency stating that passing over would require a cut-and-cover tunnel that would disrupt City Hall Park. The following month, Metro announced that it would use a fleet of 200 dual-mode buses for the first decade of tunnel operations, with an eventual switch to subway trains. The bored tunnel would be able to carry 180 buses an hour in each direction, serving either a wide island platform or two smaller side platforms that would be dug out from the surface. In April, Metro published the draft environmental impact statement for the tunnel project, estimating a |
9703_33 | cost of $387 million (equivalent to $ million in dollars) and a completion date of June 1989. The cost of the project drew criticism at public hearings for using a significant portion of Metro's capital budget, a total of $840 million from sales tax revenue approved by voters in 1980, as well as potential disruption to business during the cut-and-cover construction of the stations and Pine Street segment of the tunnel. |
9703_34 | UMTA ranked Metro's bus tunnel project as first among transit projects favored to receive federal funding in 1985, despite its reliance on unproven dual-mode buses. Metro tested a prototype Renault PER 180 dual-mode trolleybus in 1983, describing it as problematic after finding it exceeded freeway axle load limits by and having to replace several parts after several mechanical failures. Congress later appropriated $20 million to the City of Seattle for the bus tunnel project in October 1984, allowing for right-of-way acquisition to begin, but the funds were withheld until restrictions on new transit projects were lifted by the United States Senate the following May. |
9703_35 | The Downtown Transit Project subcommittee unanimously approved Metro recommendations that would reduce the number of bus tunnel stations from six to five, saving $35 million, as well as opting for tunnel boring machines for the 3rd Avenue segment to minimize surface-level disruptions that would be present from cut-and-cover excavation. Stations would be located at Union Station south of Jackson Street, under 3rd Avenue and James Street, under 3rd Avenue and University Street, at the Westlake Mall and at 9th Avenue and Pine Street near the Washington State Convention Center. The Metro Council approved the station sites and use of tunnel-boring machines in July 1985, proceeding with final design by approving a $25.9 million contract with Parsons Brinckerhoff for engineering work related to the project. |
9703_36 | In March 1986, the federal government offered Metro a contract committing $195 million in UMTA funding toward the bus tunnel, requiring that a decision on whether to move forward with the project be made by December 31. A month later, the King County Council asked Metro to consider delaying construction of the bus tunnel while waiting for assurance on federal funding being able to cover half of the $395 million cost of the project; the council was scheduled to begin awarding contracts for utility relocation along 3rd Avenue and Pine Street in preparation for tunnel construction. On May 15, the Reagan administration signed a contract with Metro to commit $197 million of the $395 million required for the bus tunnel project, assuming re-authorization of a mass transit grant program by Congress, while also extending the deadline for a final decision to September 1987. Hours later, the Metro Council awarded the first construction contract for utility relocation, with construction set to |
9703_37 | begin in July. The Metro Council accepted the UMTA contract during their June 5 meeting, allowing for bidding on tunnel construction to begin. The tunnel construction contract was awarded to the joint venture of Guy F. Atkinson Construction and Dillingham Construction in late September for $44.16 million, beating seven competing bids with an estimate far lower than the approximately $61 million predicted by Metro engineers. The contract for the dual-mode trolleybuses was awarded by the Metro Council to Breda Costruzioni Ferroviarie in October, consisting of an order for 236 buses at a cost of $133 million (equivalent to $ million in dollars); it was approved by UMTA in November. |
9703_38 | Construction
Construction on the bus tunnel project began with partial closures of 3rd Avenue in July 1986 for utility relocation, narrowing traffic to one lane in either direction and restricting traffic to buses and emergency vehicles during rush hour. To prepare for extended periods of service disruption on 3rd Avenue, Metro Transit also moved its electric trolleybus routes onto 1st Avenue. |
9703_39 | Excavation of the 3rd Avenue tunnel segment began with the ceremonial launch of the "Mighty Mole", a , tunnel boring machine (TBM), on March 6, 1987. The TBM, designed by Robbins Company of Kent, Washington, and built by Nicholson Manufacturing in Seattle, began digging the western tunnel from Union Station the following May. A second, identical "Mighty Mole" TBM began digging the parallel eastern tunnel on June 29. During tunnel boring under 3rd Avenue between Spring Street and Madison Street on October 21, a small earthflow damaged a water main and caused pavement on 3rd Avenue to drop , shutting down water in the nearby Seattle City Light and 1001 Fourth Avenue Plaza buildings. While repairing the broken water main, electricians working on damaged high-voltage cables caused a small power outage that affected eight downtown buildings on the night of October 28, but were able to restore power by the following morning. Work on the western tunnel was briefly interrupted in November, |
9703_40 | when the TBM hit an unexpectedly large pocket of loose sand under Madison Street that had to be stabilized with grout to prevent damage to the adjacent Seattle City Light building. Boring on both tunnels was stopped in early January 1988, when a pocket of wet sand was encountered before the planned 90-degree turn onto Pine Street. Metro and tunnel contractors Atkinson/Dillingham, who had scheduled tunnel excavation for completion in mid-January, closed 3rd Avenue between Pike and Pine streets and installed 40 drilled wells to remove water from the sand pocket in February. Digging resumed on the western tunnel on March 14, and the TBM reached Westlake station on April 9, completing the first of the two tunnels. The eastern tunnel was completed a month later on May 18, allowing for parts of the TBMs to be salvaged and the steel outer shells to be buried in the tunnel. |
9703_41 | The Pine Street segment of the tunnel was planned to be dug cut-and-cover from the surface. In preparation for utility relocation work on Pine Street, Metro moved 36 bus routes serving the corridor to other east–west streets in February 1987. On April 27, excavation of the tunnel began with the closure of Pine Street, and its offramp to Interstate 5, to automobile traffic between 3rd Avenue and Boren Avenue. Workers finished digging in late August, allowing the project to progress to concrete pouring for the roadway. Pine Street was briefly re-opened for the Christmas shopping season beginning November 1 at the request of downtown merchants, with a temporary surface laid over backfill for automobiles and pedestrians. On January 4, the street was closed to automobile traffic once again, along with the intersection of 5th Avenue and Pine Street and the Pike Street offramp of I-5, to install utility lines and a permanent roadway. Pine Street was fully reopened to traffic on November 1, |
9703_42 | 1988, coinciding with the completion of Westlake Park and the Westlake Center shopping mall, a year ahead of schedule. |
9703_43 | By October 1988, Metro reported that 53% of major construction was complete and anticipated that the tunnel would be completed in May 1990 and opened for service in September 1990. Seattle Mayor Norm Rice and City Council members Paul Kraabel and George Benson recommended a limited opening of the tunnel for the 1990 Goodwill Games to be held in July, but Metro rejected the proposal so that the safety systems of the tunnel could be tested adequately before service began. Testing in the bus tunnel began with a ceremonial first run on March 15, 1989, first with a diesel bus and then one of the Breda dual-mode trolleybuses operating in diesel mode, as the overhead trolley wires had not yet been installed. Wooden planks and steel plates covered slots in the concrete roadway where rails would be installed later. Local media were given a tour the next day. By January 1990, the tunnel stations were declared "nearly complete", with only minor work still left for contractors. Murals and other |
9703_44 | interactive art installations were placed in the nearly complete stations from December 1989 onward, as part of a $1.5 million arts program. Tunnel construction was finished on June 7, 1990, leaving Metro to test safety systems and train personnel for regular service to begin in September. |
9703_45 | The initial cost of the tunnel project was estimated in 1984 to be $334.6 million, but the final costs rose 56% over budget to a total of $468.7 million (equivalent to $ in dollars); the project's cost overruns were blamed on unanticipated soil conditions on the approach to Pine Street from 3rd Avenue, complaints and payouts to downtown businesses disrupted by tunnel construction, and the death of an electrician during construction. Excavated dirt from the project was used as fill for runway expansion at Paine Field in nearby Everett.
South African granite scandal |
9703_46 | A minor scandal involving the bus tunnel project emerged in late 1988, over the discovery that granite to be used by Metro in the tunnel's stations had been sourced from South Africa. The Verde Fontaine granite was quarried in South Africa, which had been under Apartheid rule at the time, but was cut and finished in Italy, allowing for it to be approved despite the Metro Council's ongoing boycott of South African goods. The Verde Fontaine granite was selected for use as benches and interior walls in Westlake and Pioneer Square stations by architecture firm TRA; Metro was unaware that Verde Fontaine was only quarried in South Africa. The granite's origin was discovered by an activist from the Black Contractors Coalition in late 1988, who notified Metro and members of the Metro Council. Metro determined that replacing the of granite would cost $500,000 and delay both stations but would not delay the planned 1990 opening and would be covered by contingency funds in the project's budget. |
9703_47 | During a press conference on January 25, 1989, Metro Director Alan Gibbs confirmed that the granite had been quarried in South Africa and announced that an investigative report would be delivered to the Metro Council Transit Committee the following week. The announcement was met with calls from King County Councilman Ron Sims to fire the responsible Metro officials who knowingly allowed the purchase. Metro's ban on South African goods was stricter than the federal sanctions, which only prohibited importation of specific materials such as steel, coal, uranium and agricultural products, and was used by UMTA to threaten to pull its funding for the bus tunnel project. |
9703_48 | A report by the Metro Council Rules Committee delivered in March stated that the granite's origin was discovered in early 1988, and was authorized by tunnel superintendent David Kalberer with the assumption that only a small amount would be used to furnish University Street station. Kalberer, who received praise for his work on the project before the scandal, admitted that the failure to consult the Metro Council's tunnel subcommittee before signing off on the deal was his mistake. Metro Director Alan Gibbs resigned on February 23 as a result of the scandal and was succeeded by technical director Richard Sandaas in September. The granite was rejected by Metro and was returned to the supplier in Italy. |
9703_49 | Before this discovery, in September 1987, African-American rights groups had forced tunnel contractor Atkinson/Dillingham to return 36 steel beams from South Africa used for temporary shoring at Pioneer Square station. This led Metro Director Alan Gibbs to propose a ban on South African materials by Metro for its projects, which was adopted by a resolution of the Metro Council on September 17.
Opening and bus-only operation
Regular service in the bus tunnel began on September 15, 1990, on five routes serving the University District, North Seattle, and Renton. The limited service was the result of delays in the manufacturing of dual-mode buses from Breda, which were fully delivered in 1991. The opening was preceded by soft openings of each individual station, beginning with Westlake station in August 1989, and ending with Convention Place station the day before the beginning of service. A ceremonial walk and run was held on September 9, 1990, and attracted 5,000 participants. |
9703_50 | In its first year of operations, the bus tunnel carried 28,000 daily passengers on 688 scheduled bus trips. The tunnel reduced the number of buses operated on 3rd Avenue at peak hours from 190 to 86, with 20 Metro routes using the tunnel. The Seattle Times called it a "qualified success", commenting that the tunnel was like a "mini-subway system". The paper's editorial board also requested that Metro expand tunnel hours to keep buses running for late-night workers and entertainment events held on weekends. On December 9, 1991, the SODO Busway opened, extending bus service from the tunnel into SODO and moving southbound routes off Interstate 5. Direct access from Interstate 90 to the bus tunnel was opened in February 1992 as part of a reversible express lane system for the new floating bridge. |
9703_51 | The first use of the tunnel by Sound Transit buses began on September 18, 1999, with the takeover of Metro's Seattle–Bellevue express route, which was renumbered from 226 to 550. To operate buses in the tunnel, Sound Transit leased 20 dual-mode buses from Metro, repainted them in the agency's colors, and contracted with Metro to operate the route along with other Sound Transit Express routes in King County.
Renovation for light rail
From the outset, the bus tunnel was intended to be converted for light rail trains at some point in the future. Metro approved the addition of tracks to the bus tunnel in 1988, appropriating half of the $5 million used to install them during tunnel construction, the remainder coming from federal sources. To save $1.5 million in costs, Metro eliminated most of the rail's electrical insulation, which would later render them unusable for rail service. |
9703_52 | A regional transit authority was formed in the early 1990s to build and operate a light rail system that would use the bus tunnel within Downtown Seattle. The authority, later named Sound Transit, gained voter approval in November 1996 to build a $3.9 billion system between Seattle–Tacoma International Airport, Downtown Seattle, and the University District. In 1998, Sound Transit found that the rails in the tunnel would need to be replaced at a cost of up to $110 million and require a full closure for two years. The plan would also require the purchase of new hybrid electric buses to replace the Breda fleet, as the electrical systems were incompatible. Convention Place station would have to be abandoned as it was too shallow to support a northern extension under Interstate 5. |
9703_53 | Sound Transit approved its route for the light rail project, named Central Link (now Line 1), in November 1999, including four of the five stations in the downtown transit tunnel (excluding Convention Place). King County Executive Ron Sims proposed transferring ownership of the tunnel, along with $130 million in debt and liabilities for maintenance and operations, from King County Metro to Sound Transit in 2004. The two agencies signed an agreement in May 2000 that formally transferred ownership and responsibility for the tunnel to Sound Transit, in exchange for $195.6 million paid to King County Metro. Metro would retain ownership of Convention Place station and other assets, while Sound Transit would convert the tunnel to rail operation after 2004. |
9703_54 | Sound Transit underwent a funding crisis in 2001 after the Central Link light rail project was found to be over budget and would not be able to open until 2009, three years later than planned. The light rail project was truncated to Westlake station in Downtown Seattle and to Tukwila, the sections north of downtown and south to the airport being deferred to a later date. The King County Council called for a new agreement to be negotiated with Sound Transit adding requirements for an adopted plan for light rail service to Northgate, and for a study into new riders that light rail would bring to the tunnel over a conventional bus network. In early 2002, Sound Transit also explored, and ultimately rejected, a proposal to build a parallel, rail-only tunnel under 5th Avenue that would cost $1 billion. |
9703_55 | Sound Transit and the King County Council signed a new joint-operations agreement in June 2002, leaving King County Metro as owners of the tunnel and Sound Transit responsible for paying part of the tunnel's debt service at an estimated cost of $65 million. The agreement would allow for buses and light rail trains to share the tunnel and its stations beginning in 2009, after a two-year closure for renovations. A separate agreement signed in May 2003 selected King County Metro as the operator of the light rail line. |
9703_56 | Metro began testing a fleet of new hybrid diesel-electric buses in 2002, intending to use them in the bus tunnel before and after the conversion to joint bus-rail operations. The first few of a planned fleet of 235 hybrid diesel-electric articulated buses began operating on tunnel bus routes in June 2004. The Breda dual-mode trolleybuses were removed from the tunnel in January 2005 and would later be refurbished into electric-only trolleybuses for use on the city's trolleybus network. The last day of trolleybus operation in the tunnel was January 24, 2005, with only a single dual-mode bus in service on the final day. |
9703_57 | In February 2004, Sound Transit announced that it would begin the closure and renovation of the bus tunnel in September 2005, two years earlier than scheduled, to save money and reduce construction delays. Construction of a stub tunnel under Pine Street near Convention Place station, to be used for light rail train storage and turnback, as well as a future extension to Capitol Hill, began in January 2005. The bus tunnel was closed on September 24, 2005, moving the tunnel's 21 routes and 140 buses per hour to surface streets. 3rd Avenue was converted to a "transit-priority corridor" during peak periods, restricting general traffic to one-block travel. |
9703_58 | The $82.7 million construction contract for the transit tunnel renovation was awarded to Balfour Beatty in August 2004, 12 percent below Sound Transit's estimates. The majority of the cost was paid by Sound Transit and supplemented by $8.1 million from King County Metro. As part of the renovations, the tunnel's roadway was lowered by to allow for level boarding, required by the Americans with Disabilities Act; as a result, Metro added strobe lights to bus mirrors, which were lowered to head height, and added warning signs. New electrical, mechanical, and emergency systems were installed, along with a new communications system connecting to a joint-operations center. The project ended up costing $94 million in total, 3.4 percent over the budget set in 2004. During the closure, Metro found that average travel time through downtown increased only 11 percent during the afternoon peak period, and ridership on popular routes only dropped slightly.
Joint bus and train operations |
9703_59 | The tunnel reopened to service on September 24, 2007, with tunnel routes modified to group common destinations together. Initially, the reopened tunnel was in use only on weekdays, with Saturday operation not yet reinstated. Stations were given new entrance signs, lighting fixtures, electronic passenger information signs, and restored paint. The peak bus-only restrictions on 3rd Avenue remained in place after the reopening, along with the skip-stop service that Metro implemented on the street. The tunnel was temporarily closed for nine days in December after a computer glitch disrupted the tunnel's new emergency-control system, which was repaired and replaced. The tunnel had remained closed on weekends after its reopening, but Saturday operation was reinstated and Sunday operation was introduced in May 2009. |
9703_60 | Simulated light rail testing in the tunnel also began on May 20, 2009, with two-car trains operating alongside in-service buses, making it the first joint bus and rail tunnel with stations in the United States; the Mount Washington Transit Tunnel, a joint bus and rail tunnel in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, had already been in operation but lacked underground stations. Service on the Central Link light rail line began on July 18, 2009, operating from Westlake station in the tunnel to Tukwila International Boulevard station near the airport. Light rail service was extended north from Westlake to University of Washington station (via Capitol Hill station) on March 19, 2016, coinciding with the moving of several bus routes out of the tunnel to accommodate increased train frequencies. The ramp from International District/Chinatown station to the Interstate 90 express lanes was closed in September 2018 as part of preparations for East Link construction.
End of bus service |
9703_61 | In November 2015, King County Metro signed a $147 million agreement to sell Convention Place station to the Washington State Convention Center for redevelopment. The convention center plans to build a new expansion on the property, necessitating the closure of the station and transit tunnel to buses earlier than planned. In 2017, Sound Transit and the Seattle Department of Transportation announced that the tunnel would become rail-only in 2019, two years sooner than the planned switch in 2021 to coincide with the opening of the Northgate Link Extension. Convention Place station was permanently closed on July 21, 2018, and was replaced with a set of bus stops on 9th Avenue and a new tunnel access ramp. |
9703_62 | Bus service in the tunnel ended on March 23, 2019, with a ceremonial trip by a preserved Breda dual-mode bus at 1 a.m. The remaining 830 bus trips through the tunnel, serving approximately 37,000 riders on seven routes, were redirected onto surface corridors on 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th avenues. Metro and the city government also increased surface street capacity for buses by introducing all-door boarding for all 3rd Avenue and Westlake Avenue routes at 31 stops, improving signal timing, and adding a new northbound bus lane on 5th and 6th avenues. |
9703_63 | Sound Transit is expected to take over full ownership of the tunnel in early 2022. During early 2020, Sound Transit built connections to East Link at International District/Chinatown station. Over a ten-week period that began in January 2020, four-car trains ran on a single track within the tunnel, with through-passengers transferring at Pioneer Square station via a temporary center platform, reducing frequency to 13–15 minutes. The tunnel was also closed for four weekends until work was completed in late March, after a week-long delay in testing. Frequency restrictions brought on by the project remained due to the coronavirus pandemic and local shutdowns. Sound Transit also plans to reconstruct the 36 escalators serving the downtown tunnel stations, which suffered from breakdowns and lengthy repairs, under a new contractor to replace Kone.
References
External links
King County Metro: Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel |
9703_64 | 1990 establishments in Washington (state)
Bus rapid transit in Washington (state)
Busways
Link Light Rail
Railroad tunnels in Seattle
Sound Transit Express
Trolleybus transport in the United States
Tunnels completed in 1990
Underground rapid transit in the United States
1500 V DC railway electrification |
9704_0 | A novelty song is a type of song built upon some form of novel concept, such as a gimmick, a piece of humor, or a sample of popular culture. Novelty songs partially overlap with comedy songs, which are more explicitly based on humor, and with musical parody, especially when the novel gimmick is another popular song. Novelty songs achieved great popularity during the 1920s and 1930s. They had a resurgence of interest in the 1950s and 1960s. The term arose in Tin Pan Alley to describe one of the major divisions of popular music; the other two divisions were ballads and dance music. Humorous songs, or those containing humorous elements, are not necessarily novelty songs. |
9704_1 | Novelty songs are often a parody or humor song, and may apply to a current event such as a holiday or a fad such as a dance or TV programme. Many use unusual lyrics, subjects, sounds, or instrumentation, and may not even be musical. For example, the 1966 novelty song "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!", by Napoleon XIV, has little music and is set to a rhythm tapped out on a snare drum, a tambourine, and the bare sides of the musicians' legs.
A book on achieving an attention-grabbing novelty single is The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way), written by The KLF. It is based on their achievement of a UK number-one single with "Doctorin' the Tardis", a 1988 dance remix mashup of the Doctor Who theme music released under the name of 'The Timelords.' It argued that (at the time) achieving a number one single could be achieved less by musical talent than through market research, sampling and gimmicks matched to an underlying danceable groove.
History |
9704_2 | Late 19th century–1960s
Novelty songs were a major staple of Tin Pan Alley from its start in the late 19th century. They continued to proliferate in the early years of the 20th century, some rising to be among the biggest hits of the era. Varieties included songs with an unusual gimmick, such as the stuttering in "K-K-K-Katy" or the playful boop-boop-a-doops of "I Wanna Be Loved By You", which made a star out of Helen Kane and inspired the creation of Betty Boop; silly lyrics like "Yes! We Have No Bananas"; playful songs with a bit of double entendre, such as "Don't Put a Tax on All the Beautiful Girls"; and invocations of foreign lands with emphasis on general feel of exoticism rather than geographic or anthropological accuracy, such as "Oh By Jingo!", "The Sheik of Araby", and "The Yodeling Chinaman". These songs were perfect for the medium of Vaudeville, and performers such as Eddie Cantor and Sophie Tucker became well known for such songs. |
9704_3 | Zez Confrey's 1920s instrumental compositions, which involved gimmicky approaches (such as "Kitten on the Keys") or maniacally rapid tempos ("Dizzy Fingers"), were popular enough to start a fad of novelty piano pieces that lasted through the decade. The fad was brought about by the increasing availability of audio recordings by way of the player piano and the phonograph; whereas much of Tin Pan Alley's repertoire was sold in the form of sheet music and thus had to be simple enough for an amateur pianist to play, novelty piano brought virtuoso-level performance to the home and to those who would not normally attend classical concerts. |
9704_4 | A 1940s novelty song was Spike Jones' 1942 "Der Fuehrer's Face", which included raspberries in its chorus. Tex Williams's "Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette)" topped the Billboard best-sellers chart for six weeks and the country music chart for 16 weeks in 1947 and 1948. Hank Williams Sr.'s "Move It On Over", his first hit song, has some humor and novelty elements (about a man having to share the doghouse when his lover kicks him out of the house), but contemporaries (among them Jerry Rivers) disputed this and noted that many men had been faced with eviction under similar circumstances. The 1953 #1 single "(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window?" became notable both for its extensive airplay and the backlash from listeners who found it increasingly annoying. Satirists such as Stan Freberg, Allan Sherman, and Tom Lehrer used novelty songs to poke fun at contemporary pop culture in the 1950s and early 1960s. |
9704_5 | In 1951, Frank Sinatra was paired in a CBS television special with TV personality Dagmar. Mitch Miller at Columbia Records became intrigued with the pairing and compelled songwriter Dick Manning to compose a song for the two of them. The result was "Mama Will Bark", a novelty song performed by Sinatra with interspersed spoken statements by Dagmar, saying things like "mama will bark", "mama will spank", and "papa will spank". The recording even includes the sound of a dog yowling. It is regarded by both music scholars and Sinatra enthusiasts to be perhaps the worst song he ever recorded. Sinatra would record few others before he left Columbia and joined Capitol Records in 1952. |
9704_6 | Dickie Goodman faced a lawsuit for his 1956 novelty song "The Flying Saucer", which sampled snippets of contemporary hits without permission and arranged them to resemble interviews with an alien landing on Earth. Goodman released more hit singles in the same vein for the next two decades including his gold record RIAA certified hit "Mr. Jaws" in 1975, which charted #1 in Cash Box and Record World and was based on the movie Jaws.
Among the more far out songs of this genre were the two released in 1956 by Nervous Norvus, "Transfusion" and "Ape Call". |
9704_7 | The Coasters had novelty songs such as "Charlie Brown" and "Yakety Yak". "Yakety Yak" became a #1 single on July 21, 1958, and is the only novelty song (#346) included in the Songs of the Century. "Lucky Ladybug" by Billy and Lillie was popular in December 1958. Lonnie Donegan's 1959 cover of the 1924 novelty song "Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour (On the Bedpost Overnight?)" was a transatlantic hit, reaching #5 on the Billboard charts two years after its release; it was one of the earliest top-5 hits to come from the United Kingdom in the rock era, preceding the British Invasion. |
9704_8 | Three songs using a sped-up recording technique became #1 hits in the United States in 1958–59: David Seville's "Witch Doctor" and Ragtime Cowboy Joe, Sheb Wooley's "The Purple People Eater", and Seville's "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)", which used a speeded-up voice technique to simulate three chipmunks' voices. The technique (which Dickie Goodman had also used on "The Flying Saucer") would inspire a number of other knockoffs, including The Nutty Squirrels and Russ Regan's one-off group Dancer, Prancer and Nervous.
In 1960, 16-year-old Brian Hyland had a novelty hit with the song "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini", by Paul Vance and Lee Pockriss, which topped the Billboard single chart. The Trashmen reached the top 5 with "Surfin' Bird", a surf rock medley of two novelty songs originally recorded by The Rivingtons. In 1964, the Grammy for Best Country and Western Album was awarded to Roger Miller. Miller was known to sing novelty songs. |
9704_9 | In 1965, "A Windmill in Old Amsterdam", a song written by Ted Dicks and Myles Rudge, became a UK hit for Ronnie Hilton. The song spent a total of 13 weeks on the UK Singles Chart peaking at No. 23 in the chart of 17 February 1965. The song's composers were granted an Ivor Novello Award in 1966 for the Year's Outstanding Novelty Composition. |
9704_10 | 1970s–2000s
Chuck Berry's "My Ding-a-Ling" reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1972, and Ray Stevens, known for such novelty hits as "Ahab the Arab", "Gitarzan", and "Mississippi Squirrel Revival", had a #1 hit with "The Streak" in 1974. Comedy act Cheech & Chong recorded a number of musical bits that can be classified as novelty songs, including "Basketball Jones"(1973) and "Earache My Eye" (1974). Warren Zevon's lone chart hit was the novelty number "Werewolves of London". Other novelty songs in the '70s are Jimmy Castor Bunch "King Kong"(1975), Rick Dees' "Disco Duck" (1976) and The Fools' "Psycho Chicken" (1978). "Weird Al" Yankovic would emerge as one of the most prolific parody acts of all time in the 1980s, with a career that would span four decades; he would join Cliff Richard in being one of the few acts to have at least one top-40 hit in the U.S. in four consecutive decades (1950s through the 1980s for Richard, 1980s to 2010s for Yankovic). |
9704_11 | Randy Brooks wrote a Christmas novelty song and it was originally recorded by then husband-wife recording duo Elmo Shropshire and his wife Patsy in 1979, called "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer". It tells the tragic-comic story of a family grandmother who meets her end on Christmas Eve. After having drunk too much eggnog and forgetting to take her medicine, she staggers out of her family's house late Christmas Eve, is run over by Santa Claus' entourage, and found trampled at the scene the next morning. It has become a staple of Christmas music playlists on American radio since its original release.
An underground novelty music scene began to emerge in the 1960s, beginning with the homosexually themed songs of Camp Records and the racist humor of Johnny Rebel, then in the 1970s and 1980s with X-rated albums by David Allan Coe and Clarence "Blowfly" Reid. |
9704_12 | Novelty songs have been popular in the UK as well. In 1991, "The Stonk" novelty song raised over £100,000 for the Comic Relief charity. In 1993, "Mr Blobby" became the second novelty song to reach the coveted Christmas number one slot in the UK, following Benny Hill's 1971 chart-topper "Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West)". Many popular children's TV characters would try to claim the Christmas number one spot after this. In 1997, the Teletubbies who reached number one the previous week failed to gain it with their single "Say Eh-oh!". They came second in the charts to The Spice Girls second of three consecutive Christmas number ones, with "Too Much". Later on at the turn of the millennium, Bob the Builder was successful in achieving a Christmas number one in 2000, with "Can We Fix It?". However, Bob the Builder did have another number one single a year later with a cover of Lou Bega's "Mambo No.5", and also had another less successful single in 2008 with "Big Fish Little Fish". |
9704_13 | Some novelty music draws its appeal from its unintentional novelty; so-called "outsider musicians" with little or no formal musical training often will produce comical results (see for instance, Florence Foster Jenkins, Mrs. Miller, the Portsmouth Sinfonia, The Shaggs, and William Hung).
After the fictitious composer P.D.Q. Bach repeatedly won the "Best Comedy Album" Grammy from 1990 to 1993, the category was changed to "Best Spoken Comedy Album". When "Best Comedy Album" was reinstated in 2004, "Weird Al" Yankovic won for Poodle Hat. |
9704_14 | Novelty songs were popular on U.S. radio throughout the 1970s and 1980s, to the point where it was not uncommon for novelty songs to break into the top 40. Freeform and album-oriented rock stations made use of novelty songs; some of the best-known work from progressive rocker Frank Zappa, for instance, is his extensive body of mostly adult-oriented novelty music. Zappa's "Bobby Brown (Goes Down)" was a smash hit in Europe despite its sexually explicit storyline, and Valley Girl was a Top 40 hit in the US, while his "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow" and "Dancin' Fool" also reached the top 100 in his native United States. Beginning in 1970, Dr. Demento's nationally syndicated radio show gave novelty songs an outlet for much of the country; this lasted through the mid-2000s, when the show (mirroring trends in the genre) faded in popularity until its terrestrial cancellation in June 2010.
2010s to date |
9704_15 | In the 21st century, novelty songs found a new audience online; the hit song "The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?)" by Norwegian comedy duo Ylvis was featured on the kids compilation album So Fresh Pop Party 13 in 2014. Likewise, rapper Big Shaq's 2017 hit "Man's Not Hot", which depicts a man who refuses to take off his jacket, received widespread attention and inspired countless memes as a result of its success, with the man behind the song being British comedian Michael Dapaah. The children's novelty song "Baby Shark" received widespread attention when Korean education brand Pinkfong's cover version from an online viral video reached the top 40 in the U.S. and several other countries. |
9704_16 | In the United Kingdom, the novelty hit has mainly become a feature of the "Christmas chart battle" (apart from a few viral hits found earlier in a year), with novelty act LadBaby reaching Number One three times in a row, with cover versions re-recorded on a sausage roll theme. More often than not, these novelty records were recorded for charity, with LadBaby's Christmas chart rivals in 2020 also including The Dancing Binmen (Jack Johnson, Henry Wright and Adrian Breakwell) with their song "Boogie Round The Bins At Christmas Time", and "Merry Christmas, Baked Potato" from comedian Matt Lucas, with fellow chart contender "Raise The Woof!" being promoted as the first ever Christmas record for dogs.
Top 5 chartings in the U.S.
See also
Novelty
Comedy
Notes
References
Bibliography
Aquila, Richard, That Old-time Rock & Roll: A Chronicle of an Era, 1954–1963. University of Illinois Press, 2000. |
9704_17 | Axford, Elizabeth C. Song Sheets to Software: A Guide to Print Music, Software, and Web Sites for Musicians. Scarecrow Press, 2004.
Hamm, Charles (ed.). Irving Berlin Early Songs. Marcel Dekker, 1995.
Tawa, Nicholas E. Supremely American: Popular Song in the 20th Century . Scarecrow Press, 2005.
Otfonoski, Steve, The Golden Age of Novelty Songs. Billboard Books, 2000
Comedy songs
Popular music
Song forms
1950s fads and trends
1960s fads and trends |
9705_0 | The capture of New Orleans (April 25 – May 1, 1862) during the American Civil War was a turning point in the war, which precipitated the capture of the Mississippi River. Having fought past Forts Jackson and St. Philip, the Union was unopposed in its capture of the city itself, which was spared the destruction suffered by many other Southern cities.
Many residents resented the controversial and confrontational administration of the city by its U.S. Army military governor, who caused lasting resentment. This capture of the largest Confederate city was a major turning point and an event of international importance. |
9705_1 | Background
The history of New Orleans contrasts significantly with the histories of other cities that were included in the Confederate States of America. Because it was founded by the French and controlled by Spain for a time, New Orleans had a population who were mostly Catholic, and who had created a more cosmopolitan culture than in some of the Protestant-dominated states of the British colonies. Its population was highly diverse. In the 1810 census only 13 percent of the population was Anglo-American. The population of that time was made up mostly of French-speaking Creoles, refugees from Saint Domingue and the Haitian Revolution, and ethnic French who had migrated here after the British takeover of French territory following the French and Indian War. While Spain had ruled the area briefly, they did not have numerous residents here. In addition, there were numerous enslaved African Americans. |
9705_2 | New Orleans had benefited more than some other cities by the domestic slave trade, Industrial Revolution, international trade, and geographical position. It was a major port near the mouth of the Mississippi River at the Gulf Coast. The river carried freight and traffic from a huge network of rivers and tributaries, making New Orleans one of the most significant transportation centers in the early United States before the establishment of railroad and road systems. Of particular significance were the inventions of the cotton gin in 1793 and steamboat in the early 19th century. |
9705_3 | Before the steamboat, keelboat men bringing cargo downriver would break up their boats for lumber in New Orleans and travel overland back to Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio or Illinois to repeat the process. Steamboats had enough power to move upstream against the strong current of the Mississippi, making two-way trade possible between New Orleans and the cities in the interior river network of the Upper South and Midwest. After the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, which greatly expanded international trade, and the development of the cotton gin, cotton became a valuable export product. It became a major part of the volume of cargo moved through the city. |
9705_4 | Jacksonian democracy and manifest destiny
A formative event in the early history of New Orleans was the 1815 Battle of New Orleans. Fought during the War of 1812, the battle's American victory led by General Andrew Jackson enhanced his political career. Along with Martin Van Buren, he founded the Democratic Party. Jackson began a new political movement now known as the Jacksonian democracy.
This new direction in American politics had a profound influence on the development of New Orleans and the American Southwest. One of these developments was the construction of Fort Jackson, Louisiana, a star fort suggested by and named after Jackson. This fortress was intended to support Fort St. Philip and bar the Mississippi Delta from invasion. |
9705_5 | The presidents of the Jacksonian democracy supported the concept of manifest destiny, greatly expanding acquisition of territory in the American Southwest and the support of international trade, along with the expansion of slavery. This powerful political movement also produced sectional tension between the northern and southern portions of the United States, resulting in the creation of the Whig Party to oppose the new Democratic Party. As the political rivalry between the Jacksonian Democrats and the Whigs intensified, the Republican Party was founded, to counter the spread of slavery into states produced by territorial conquests of the Jacksonian Democrats. The victory of Abraham Lincoln, the Republican presidential candidate, in the election of 1860, resulted in the secession crisis and was a catalyst to the American Civil War. |
9705_6 | By the year 1860, the City of New Orleans was in a position of unprecedented economic, military, and political power. The Mexican–American War, along with the annexation of Texas, had made New Orleans even more of a springboard for expansion. The California Gold Rush contributed another share to local wealth. The electrical telegraph arrived in New Orleans in 1848, and the completion of the New Orleans, Jackson, and Great Northern Railroad from New Orleans to Canton, Mississippi, a distance of over , added another dimension to local transportation. |
9705_7 | The combination of all these factors resulted in an increase in the price of prime field hands of 21 per cent in 1848, and further increases as the value of the domestic slave trade grew through the 1850s. By 1860 New Orleans was one of the greatest ports in the world, with 33 different steamship lines and trade worth 500 million dollars passing through the city. As far as population, the city outnumbered any other city in the South, and was larger than the four next-largest Southern cities combined, with an estimated population of 168,675.
War and battle |
9705_8 | The election of Lincoln in 1860 inspired governor Thomas Overton Moore to interdict an effort to make New Orleans a “free city”, or neutral area in the conflict. A solid Democrat, Moore organized a movement that voted Louisiana out of the Union in a secession convention that represented only 5 percent of the citizens of Louisiana. Moore also ordered the Louisiana militia to seize the Federal arsenal at Baton Rouge, and the Federal forts (Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip that blocked approach upriver to New Orleans, Fort Pike that guarded the entrance to Lake Pontchartrain, the New Orleans Barracks south of the city, and Fort Macomb, which guarded the Chef Menteur Pass). These military moves were ordered on January 8, 1861, before the secession convention. With military companies forming all over Louisiana, the convention voted Louisiana out of the Union 113 to 17. The outbreak of hostilities in the area of Fort Sumter, South Carolina, led to the story of New Orleans in the Civil War. |
9705_9 | The Union's strategy was devised by Winfield Scott, whose "Anaconda Plan" called for the division of the Confederacy by seizing control of the Mississippi River. One of the first steps in such operations was the imposition of the Union blockade. After the blockade was established, a Confederate naval counterattack attempted to drive off the Union navy, resulting in the Battle of the Head of Passes. The Union countermove was to enter the mouth of the Mississippi River, ascend to New Orleans and capture the city, closing off the mouth of the Mississippi to Confederate shipping both from the Gulf and from Mississippi River ports still used by Confederate vessels. In mid-January 1862, Flag Officer David G. Farragut had undertaken this enterprise with his West Gulf Blockading Squadron. The way was soon open except the water passage past the two masonry forts held by Confederate artillery, Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip, which were above the Head of Passes approximately downriver below |
9705_10 | New Orleans. |
9705_11 | From April 18 to 28, Farragut bombarded and then fought his way past these forts in the Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip, managing to get thirteen of his fleet's ships upriver on April 24. Historian John D. Winters in The Civil War in Louisiana (1963) noted that with few exceptions the Confederate fleet at New Orleans had "made a sorry showing. Self-destruction, lack of co-operation, the cowardice of untrained officers, and the murderous fire of the Federal gunboats reduced the fleet to a demoralized shambles." Historian Allan Nevins argues the Confederate defenses were defective:
Confederate leaders had made a tardy, ill-coordinated effort to muster at the river barrier. Fortunately for the Union, both the naval and military auxiliaries were weak. In all their work of defense, the Southerners had been hampered by poverty, disorganization, lack of skilled engineers and craftsmen, friction between State authorities and Richmond, and want of foresight. |
9705_12 | Major General Mansfield Lovell, Commander of Department 1, Louisiana, was left with one tenable option after the Union Navy broke through the Confederate ring of fortifications and defense vessels guarding the lower Mississippi: evacuation. The inner ring of fortifications at Chalmette was only intended to resist ground troops; few of the gun batteries were aimed toward the river. Most of the artillery, ammunition, troops, and vessels in the area were committed to the Jackson/St. Phillips position. Once this defense was breached, there remained to face Union troops and warships only three thousand militiamen with sundry military supplies and armed with shotguns. The city itself was a poor position to defend against a hostile fleet. With high water outside the levees, Union ships were elevated above the city and able to fire down into the streets and buildings below. Besides the ever-present danger of weather-caused breaks in the levees, now an even greater threat to New Orleans was |
9705_13 | the ability of the Union military to cause a break in a major levee that would lead to flooding most of the city, possibly destroying it within a day. |
9705_14 | Lovell loaded his troops and supplies aboard the New Orleans, Jackson, and Great Northern railroad and sent them to Camp Moore, north. All artillery and munitions were sent to Vicksburg. Lovell then sent the last message to the War Department in Richmond, “The enemy has passed the forts. It is too late to send any guns here; they had better go to Vicksburg.” Military stores, ships, and warehouses were then burned. Anything considered useful to the Union, including thousands of bales of cotton, were thrown into the river. |
9705_15 | Despite the complete vulnerability of the city, the citizens along with military and civil authorities remained defiant. At 2:00 p.m. on April 25, Admiral Farragut sent Captain Bailey, First Division Commander from the , to accept the surrender of the city. Armed mobs within the city defied the Union officers and marines sent to city hall. General Lovell and Mayor Monroe refused to surrender the city. William B. Mumford pulled down a Union flag raised over the former U.S. mint by marines of the and the mob destroyed it. Farragut did not destroy the city in response but moved upriver to subdue fortifications north of the city. On April 29, Farragut and 250 marines from the removed the Louisiana State flag from the City Hall. By May 2, US Secretary of State William H. Seward declared New Orleans "recovered" and "mails are allowed to pass".
Occupation and pacification |
9705_16 | On May 1, 1862, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler occupied the city of New Orleans with an army of 5,000, facing no resistance. Butler was a former Democratic party official, lawyer, and state legislator. He was one of the first Major Generals of Volunteers of the Civil War appointed by Abraham Lincoln. He had gained glory as a Massachusetts state militia general who had anticipated the war and carefully prepared his six militia regiments for the conflict. At the start of hostilities he immediately marched to the relief of Washington, D.C., and, despite a lack of orders, had occupied and restored order to Baltimore, Maryland. As a reward Butler was made commander of Fortress Monroe, on the Virginia Peninsula. There he gained further political renown as the first to practice confiscation of fugitive slaves as contraband of war. This practice was later made a policy of war by Congress. Due to these and other astute political maneuvers, Butler had been chosen to command the army expedition to |
9705_17 | New Orleans. Because of his lack of military experience and military success, many were happy to see him go. |
9705_18 | Challenge of occupation |
9705_19 | The United States War Department under Edwin M. Stanton expected Butler to hold eastern Louisiana and the cities of Baton Rouge and New Orleans, maintain communications up river to Vicksburg, and support Farragut's forces for the siege of Vicksburg. In addition, the city of New Orleans itself was just as indefensible for the Union as for the Confederates. Surrounded by a fragile network of levees and lower in elevation than the river around it, New Orleans was extremely vulnerable to flooding, bombardment, and insurrection. In addition, the city was generally unhealthy and subject to devastating epidemics. Defense of the city against attacks from Confederate forces depended on an extensive outer ring of fortifications requiring a garrison of thousands of troops. As a conquered territory, Louisiana had a potential for becoming a serious logistical drain on Union forces, and an unsustainable front if contested by well-organized resistance movements. It was popularly assumed that the |
9705_20 | Confederacy would launch a major counteroffensive to retake New Orleans. As the largest population center of the Confederacy, and commanding formidable industrial and shipping resources, its permanent loss would be politically intolerable to the Confederacy. |
9705_21 | Butler's command of the city |
9705_22 | Butler was one of the most controversial and volatile personalities of the Civil War. He became infamous in New Orleans for his confrontational proclamations and for alleged corruption. The impression had been created by Confederate officials and sympathizers that New Orleans and Louisiana were held by brute military force and terror. Butler was a political general, awarded his position by political connections and this political background made his position in New Orleans tenable until outrage forced his withdrawal in 1862. Butler faced a difficult challenge securing the Confederacy's largest city with a relatively small force. His total military command numbered 15,000 troops. He was not sent reinforcements during the time he commanded in Louisiana, between May and December 1862. Butler stated, "We were 2,500 men in a city... of 150,000 inhabitants, all hostile, bitter, defiant, explosive, standing literally in a magazine, a spark only needed for destruction." His methods of |
9705_23 | preserving order were radical and totalitarian, even in the North and Europe, with the issue of Butler's General Order No. 28." |
9705_24 | Butler's General Order No. 28
The residents of New Orleans, and notably many women, did not accept the Union occupation very well. Butler's troops faced "all manner of verbal and physically symbolic insults" from women, including obvious physical avoidance such as crossing the street or leaving a streetcar to avoid a Union soldier, being spat upon, and having chamber pots being dumped upon them. The Union troops were offended by the treatment, and after two weeks of occupation, Butler had had enough. He issued his General Order No. 28, which instructed Union soldiers to treat any woman who offended a soldier "as a woman of the town plying her avocation". |
9705_25 | The reaction to Butler's General Order No. 28 was swift and the outrage against it highly vocal. Southern women were highly offended by the order. He was heavily criticized both domestically and overseas, which was a problem as the Union sought to avoid European intervention in the war on the behalf of the Confederacy. Butler became known as "The Beast." The British House of Lords called it a "most heinous proclamation" and regarded it as "one of the grossest, most brutal, and must unmanly insults to every woman in New Orleans." The Earl of Carnarvon proclaimed the imprisonment of women a "more intolerable tyranny than any civilized country in our day [has] been subjected to." The Saturday Review criticized Butler's rule, accusing him of "gratifying his own revenge" and likening him to an uncivilized dictator: |
9705_26 | If he had possessed any of the honourable feeling which is usually associated with a soldier's profession, he would not have made war on women. If he had even been endowed with the ordinary magnanimity of a Red Indian, his revenge would have been satiated before now. It required not only the nature of a savage, but of a very mean and pitiful kind of savage, to be induced by indignation at a woman's smile to inflict an imprisonment so degrading in its character as that which seems to constitute his favourite punishment, and accompanied by privations so cruel.... It is only a pity that so unadulterated a barbarian should have got hold of an Anglo-Saxon name. |
9705_27 | Butler tried to defend his command in New Orleans in a letter to the Boston Journal, claiming "the devil had entered the hearts of the women of [New Orleans]... to stir up strife" and falsely claimed that the order had been very effective. He said, in essence, the effective way to deal with a Confederate-sympathizing woman who is defiant was to be treat her as one would an undignified prostitute, that is to ignore her. But many thought the language of the order was too ambiguous and feared that Union troops would treat New Orleans women like prostitutes in regards to soliciting them for sex and perhaps even rape. Butler's inflammatory order was so controversial that it caused a significant public relations problem for the Union and he was withdrawn from New Orleans in December 1862, just 8 months after taking command of the city. |
9705_28 | Building a political power base in New Orleans
The most valuable asset Butler commanded in New Orleans was not his army but his formidable political heritage. Butler was a Jacksonian Democrat in all senses, and a populist and reformer. He had a great gift for identifying with the issues of the broadest levels of the voters, and turning them to his political advantage. Here the Jacksonian political legacy had come full circle in 47 years, from defending New Orleans from the British, to securing it from secession. Butler's inscription on the base of Jackson’s statue, “The Union Must and Shall be Preserved,” was symbolic of his political identity. The inscription echoed Andrew Jackson's 1830 toast in response to a speech endorsing "nullification," during what was called the Nullification Crisis. Jackson stated, "Our Federal Union! It must be preserved!" That statement defined Jackson's position against any threat to the Union. |
9705_29 | The spoils system created by the Democratic Party was also part of Butler's political heritage. Butler believed the advantages of political office should be used to the advantage of friends and supporters, and to suppress political opponents. In general, Butler used these political abilities to play the various factions and interests in New Orleans, as a virtuoso conductor would inspire an orchestra, to ensure his control and reward Union supporters while isolating and marginalizing hostile pro-confederate factions. |
9705_30 | The poorer classes as the key to the city
Butler began his rule of martial law in New Orleans by sentencing anyone calling for cheers for Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Confederate Major General P. G. T. Beauregard to three months hard labor at Fort Jackson. He also issued order number 25, which distributed captured Confederate food supplies of beef and sugar in the city to the poor and starving. The Union Blockade and the King Cotton embargo had done damage to the port economy, leaving many without work. The value of goods passing through New Orleans had gone from $500 million to $52 million during the period 1860 to 1862. |
9705_31 | Butler raised three regiments of infantry, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Louisiana Native Guards, the Corps D'Afrique, from existing free black militia units which were supervised by Gen. Daniel Ullmann. These black units were unusual in having black officers. They served both to add to his forces and to confront the former ruling classes of the city with the bayonets of their former slaves. Butler also used his commercial contacts in the northeast and Washington to revive commerce in the city, exporting 17,000 bales of cotton to the northeast and re-establishing international trade. He employed many local citizens in logistics support of the Union military and in cleaning up the city, including an expansion of the existing city sewer system and setting up pumps to empty the system into the river. This policy helped free the city from the anticipated summer yellow fever epidemic, possibly saving thousands of lives. He extensively taxed the wealthy of the city to set up social programs for the |
9705_32 | lower classes. These "Robin Hood" aspects of his programs provided a broad base of political support, an extensive informal intelligence and counter-espionage organization, and provided law and order. |
9705_33 | The impact of the occupation on slaves and slavery |
9705_34 | Butler had already done the institution of slavery in the Confederacy considerable damage by instituting his "contraband of war" policy while commanding Fort Monroe on the Virginia peninsula. This policy rationalized the retention of slaves fleeing the seceding states by claiming that the Confederate military was using slave labor for military use in the construction of fortifications, moving military supplies, and constructing roads and railroad grades of use to the Confederate army. Slaves within areas of Confederate control rapidly spread the word that Union military forces were not enforcing the fugitive slave laws, and that slaves could find refuge within Union military lines and employment as laborers for the Union armies. As a result, the use of slaves in the proximity of Union forces became extremely difficult and expensive, since these slaves would flee at first opportunity to Union lines, depriving the Confederate armies of their labor and their former masters of what they |
9705_35 | regarded as their valuable property. Since the Confederate government was counting on slave labor to offset the greater numbers of Union soldiers, Butler's innovative policy struck the Confederacy at a strategic level, destroying an asset counted on to win the military struggle for independence. |
9705_36 | The flight of the slaves in the direction of the Union also diverted the resources of the Confederate military and its government in defense of the plantations and the discipline of their labor forces. The planters of Louisiana even appealed for aid from Union authorities, to quote one of them, "Our family has owned negroes for generations... we have no one but yourself and Genls Shepley and Butler to protect us against these negroes in a state of insurrection." The plantations of Jefferson Davis, located in the state of Mississippi on Davis Bend downriver from Vicksburg, were also disrupted by the Union invasion. After Davis' older brother Joseph fled the area with some of the slaves in May 1862, the rest revolted, took possession of the property, and betrayed the location of valuables to Union forces and resisted any efforts by Confederate forces to recapture the area. The slaves in rebellion armed themselves with guns and newspapers, and fought to the death any attempts to |
9705_37 | infringe upon their newfound freedom. This rebellion within a rebellion began to erode Confederate authority within Louisiana the instant Butler's troops appeared in New Orleans and, as a political fifth column, was invaluable to his occupation. |
9705_38 | The Confederate counterstroke |
9705_39 | The expected rebel counteroffensive came on August 5 in the form of a naval and army assault on Baton Rouge, led by Maj. Gen. John C. Breckinridge, resulting in the Battle of Baton Rouge. After a hard-fought battle, the Confederate forces were driven out of the city, and both Confederate and Union forces withdrew after the battle. The significant aspect of the battle was that it did not result in a popular uprising nor widespread support for Confederate forces in Louisiana. As a result, Rebel forces were not able to mount a sustained campaign to retake New Orleans or the rest of the state. This can be considered a tribute to the Union consensus building wrought by Butler's political manipulation and broad-based political support. Chester G. Hearn summed up the basis of this support: “The huge, illiterate majority – the poorer classes of blacks and whites – would have starved had Butler not fed and employed them, and thousands may have died had his sanitation policies not cleansed the |
9705_40 | city of disease.” |
9705_41 | Reputation vs. results |
9705_42 | Butler's generally abrasive style and heavy handed actions, however, caught up with him. Many of his acts gave great offense, such as the seizure of $800,000 that had been deposited in the office of the Dutch consul and his imprisonment of the French champagne magnate Charles Heidsieck. Most notorious was Butler's General Order No. 28 of May 15, issued after many provocations and displays of contempt by women in New Orleans. It stated that if any woman insulted or showed contempt for any officer or soldier of the United States, she would be regarded and shall be held liable to be treated as a "woman of the town plying her avocation," a prostitute. The order provoked protests both in the North, the South and abroad, particularly in Britain and France, and many considered it the cause of his removal from command of the Department of the Gulf on December 17, 1862. He was also nicknamed "Beast Butler" and "Spoons" for his alleged habit of pilfering the silverware of Southern homes in |
9705_43 | which he stayed. He became so reviled in the city that merchants began selling chamber pots with his likeness at the bottom. |
9705_44 | On June 7, he executed one William B. Mumford, who had torn down a US flag placed by Farragut on the New Orleans Mint. For the execution, Butler was denounced in December 1862 by Confederate President Jefferson Davis in General Order 111 as a felon deserving capital punishment, who, if captured, should be reserved for execution. Butler's administration did have benefits to the city, which was kept both orderly and healthy. The Butler occupation was probably best summed up by Admiral Farragut, who stated, "They may say what they please about General Butler, but he was the right man in the right place in New Orleans." |
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