A Large Archive of Confederate Martyr William B. Mumford, 1860s-1950s, hundreds of photographs and ephemera from Mumford, his family and later generations, including newspapers, tintype albums, CDVs, cabinet cards advertisements, presented loose and in albums. Note: In a combined land and sea operation initially under the command of Commodore David Farragut and soon involving Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, Federal forces entered the mouth of the Mississippi River and assailed New Orleans, the largest city of the Confederacy, on 25 April 1862 Farragut sent a message from the Union fleet requesting Mayor John T. Monroe to remove the Confederate flags from the Custom House, Mint, and City Hall, as a sign of surrender. Monroe's refusal caused Captain Henry W. Morris of the USS Pocahontas to send ashore an advance team of Marines, to physically remove the Southern flags and substitute Federal ones, while Farragut was still attempting to secure an official surrender from the mayor. As the Marines raised the American flag, an angry crowd gathered; they were warned that the Pocahontas would fire charges of grapeshot on anyone tampering with the Star and Stripes. Notwithstanding that warning, William Bruce Mumford (c. 1820-1862) and six other Confederate sympathizers (including C.S.A. Lieutenant N. Holmes, Sargeant Burns, and James Reed) tore down the Union flag from the Mint. Mumford cut a staff to drop it, and indeed the Pocahontas fired; a sliver of stone dislodged by the shot slightly wounded him, but he carried the flag through rebellious citizens to the mayor at City Hall. By the time he arrived the remnant was almost unrecognizable, and General Butler-who had declared that no activity in support of secession would be tolerated-was incensed: I find the city under the dominion of a mob. They have insulted our flag- torn it down with indignity. ...Both the perpetrators and abettors [will be punished] so that they will fear the stripes, if they do not reverence the stars of our banner. Historians argue that Butler's recent clemency to a group of condemned Confederate enlisted men made his merciful resolution of the Mumford case impossible, lest the city interpret his weakness as a license for lawlessness. Butler took official control of the city on 1 May 1862, and Mumford was arrested for treason (despite his Union patriotism as a Union soldier during the Seminole and Mexican wars). On 30 May he was convicted by a military tribunal, sentenced on 5 June, and hanged "from a flag-staff projecting from one of the windows under the front portico" of the Mint, by now memorable as the scene of his crime, on 7 June 1862 He is buried in a vault at Cypress Grove Cemetery in New Orleans. On 18 June 1862 Thomas Overton Moore, the Confederate governor of Louisiana, declared Mumford a hero and a model. C. S. A. President Jefferson Davis, pointing out (as did Gen. Robert E. Lee) that the city was not yet in Yankee hands when the incident had occurred, issued a proclamation threatening Butler and his officers with death; but Gen. Butler eventually interceded for a job in Washington on behalf of Mumford's widow Mary (c. 1825-1912).