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| General Benjamin Franklin Butler |
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 married6,7 Sarah Jones Hildreth 4,5 on 16 May 1844 in St. Anne's Episcopal Church;
Lowell, Massechusetts. Sarah died on 8 Apr 1876/1877.
Appendix A - Sources
1. Compiled
by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Ancestral File (R) (Compiled by: Family History Library;
FamilySearch; (http://familysearch.org)), Family History Library, 35 North West
Temple Street, Salt Lake City, UT 84150-3440.
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.
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