Gen. Benjamin Franklin BUTLER

      1. Gen. Benjamin Franklin BUTLER ^1,2,3  was born on 5 Nov 1818 in Deerfield, New Hampshire. He died on 11 Jan 1893 in Washington D.C..

He was a General in the American Civil war commanding the Sixth Regiment.  He was in

Philadelphia when his Sixth Regiment was attacked in Baltimore with six men killed and thirty

wounded.  The Sixth finally reached the capital, and President Lincoln, as he shook the

colonel’s hand, said: "Thank God you have come: for if you had not, Washington would have

been in the hands of the rebels before morning."

Later in the Civil War, aiming his six thousand troops at New Orleans, and, aided with an

equal number of troops added to his command, co-operating with Faragut to his entire

satisfaction, they opened the Mississippi, captured New Orleans, subdued Louisiana, and

held all of it that was ever held afterwards permanently as part of the United States.  He

enforced there a proper respect for the nation's flag, its laws and power.  By proper sanitary

regulations he rescued New Orleans, the commercial port of the Gulf of Mexico, from its more

potent danger, the yellow fever, from the ravages of which in no year had it ever escape, a

foe which the rebels relied upon to destroy Butler's army, as it surely would have done if left

uncombated.

He enlisted there the first colored troops ever legally mustered into the army of the United

States, thus inaugurating the policy of arming the colored race before Congress of the

President had adopted it, and by so doing pointing the way to recruiting the armies of the

United States by the enlistment of colored men to the number of 150,000 and establishing the

negro soldier as a component and permanent part of the military resources of the country.

He was elected to Congress in 1866.

Elected Governor in 1882.

1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Butler, Benjamin Franklin

BUTLER, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1818-1893), American lawyer, soldier and politician, was

born in Deerfield, New Hampshire, on the 5th of November 1818. He graduated at Waterville

(now Colby) College in 1838, was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1840, began practice

at Lowell, Massachusetts, and early attained distinction as a lawyer, particularly in criminal

cases. Entering politics as a Democrat, he first attracted general attention by his violent

campaign in Lowell in advocacy of the passage of a law establishing a ten-hour day for

labourers; he was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1853, and of

the state senate in 1859, and was a delegate to the Democratic national conventions from

1848 to 1860. In that of 1860 at Charleston he advocated the nomination of Jefferson Davis

and opposed Stephen A. Douglas, and in the ensuing campaign he supported Breckinridge.

After the Baltimore riot at the opening of the Civil War, Butler, as a brigadier-general in the

state militia, was sent by Governor John A. Andrew, with a force of Massachusetts troops, to

reopen communication between the Union states and the Federal capital. By his energetic

and careful work Butler achieved his purpose without fighting, and he was soon afterwards

made major-general, U.S.V. Whilst in command at Fortress Monroe, he declined to return to

their owners fugitive slaves who had come within his lines, on the ground that, as labourers

for fortifications, &c., they were contraband of war, thus originating the phrase "contraband"

as applied to the negroes. In the conduct of tactical operations Butler was almost uniformly

unsuccessful, and his first action at Big Bethel, Va., was a humiliating defeat for the National

arms. Later in 1861 he commanded an expeditionary force, which, in conjunction with the

navy, took Forts Hatteras and Clark, N.C. In 1862 he commanded the force which occupied

New Orleans. In the administration of that city he showed great firmness and severity. New

Orleans was unusually healthy and orderly during the Butler régime. Many of his acts,

however, gave great offence, particularly the seizure of $800,000 which had been deposited

in the office of the Dutch consul, and an order, issued after some provocation, on May 15th,

that if any woman should "insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier of the United

States, she shall be regarded and shall be held liable to be treated as a woman of the town

plying her avocation." This order provoked protests both in the North and the South, and also

abroad, particularly in England and France, and it was doubtless the cause of his removal in

December 1862. On the 1st of June he had executed one W.B. Mumford, who had torn down

a United States flag placed by Farragut on the United States mint; and for this execution he

was denounced (Dec. 1862) by President Davis as "a felon deserving capital punishment,"

who if captured should be reserved for execution. In the campaign of 1864 he was placed at

the head of the Army of the James, which he commanded creditably in several battles. But his

mismanagement of the expedition against Fort Fisher, N.C., led to his recall by General Grant

in December.

He was a Republican representative in Congress from 1867 to 1879, except in 1875-1877. In

Congress he was conspicuous as a Radical Republican in Reconstruction legislation, and

was one of the managers selected by the House to conduct the impeachment, before the

Senate, of President Johnson, opening the case and taking the most prominent part in it on

his side; he exercised a marked influence over President Grant and was regarded as his

spokesman in the House, and he was one of the foremost advocates of the payment in "

greenbacks" of the government bonds. In 1871 he was a defeated candidate for governor of

Massachusetts, and also in 1879 when he ran on the Democratic and Greenback tickets, but

in 1882 he was elected by the Democrats who got no other state offices. In 1883 he was

defeated on renomination. As presidential nominee of the Greenback and Anti-Monopolist

parties, he polled 175,370 votes in 1884, when he had bitterly opposed the nomination by the

Democratic party of Grover Cleveland, to defeat whom he tried to "throw" his own votes in

Massachusetts and New York to the Republican candidate. His professional income as a

lawyer was estimated at $100,000 per annum shortly before his death at Washington, D.C.,

on the 11th of January 1893. He was an able but erratic administrator and soldier, and a

brilliant lawyer. As a politician he excited bitter opposition, and was charged, apparently with

justice, with corruption and venality in conniving at and sharing the profits of illicit trade with

the Confederates carried on by his brother at New Orleans and by his brother-in-law in the

department of Virginia and North Carolina, while General Butler was in command.

Benjamin married^6,7  Sarah Jones HILDRETH ^4,5  on 16 May 1844 in St. Anne's Episcopal Church; Lowell, Massechusetts. Sarah died on 8 Apr 1876/1877.

Sources

  1. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Ancestral File (R)  (Copyright (c) 1987, June 1998, data as of 5 January 1998), Family History Library, 35 N West Temple Street, Salt Lake City, Utah 84150  USA.

  2. William Richard Cutter, William Frederick Adams, Genealogical and Personal Memoirs Relating to the Families of the State Massachusetts, Published 1910 Lewis historical publishing company; Massachusetts.

  3. Benjamin Franklin Butler, Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Franklin Butler.  Butlers' Book., A. M. Thayer & Co. Book Publishers; Boston; 1892, University of Michigan.

  4. William Richard Cutter, William Frederick Adams, Genealogical and Personal Memoirs Relating to the Families of the State Massachusetts.

  5. Benjamin Franklin Butler, Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Franklin Butler.  Butlers' Book.

  6. William Richard Cutter, William Frederick Adams, Genealogical and Personal Memoirs Relating to the Families of the State Massachusetts.

  7. Benjamin Franklin Butler, Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Franklin Butler.  Butlers' Book.