Gen. Benjamin Franklin BUTLER
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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 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.
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.