Benjamin Franklin Butler

For more information on Benjamin Franklin Butler, visit Britannica.com.

A prominent Democratic lawyer in Lowell, Massachusetts, militia Brigadier General Butler was given command of the state's troops in 1861 in order to rally Democrats to the Union cause. After relieving Washington by way of Annapolis, he secured Baltimore, was promoted to major general in command at Fortress Monroe, and won popularity by declaring fugitive slaves used by the enemy against the United States contraband of war. He lost the Battle of Big Bethel, only to recoup his fortunes by participating in the navy's seizure of Fort Hatteras.

In April 1862, Butler accompanied Flag Officer David Farragut in the seizure of New Orleans, a city where he proved his agility as an administrator. Although he maintained order and prevented an outbreak of yellow fever, Southerners called him “Beast” because he hanged a Confederate who had torn down the American flag and issued General Order No. 28 threatening to treat females who insulted his soldiers as “women of the town plying their avocation.” Rumors of corruption and controversies with foreign consuls caused him to be recalled in December. In 1863, he was given command of the Department of Virginia and North Carolina, which he exercised in his usual controversial manner.

In 1864, leading the Army of the James against Richmond from the coast, Butler found himself “bottled up” at Bermuda Hundred and suffered a defeat at Drury's Bluff. After failing to take Fort Fisher (Wilmington, North Carolina) in December, he was finally recalled.

After the war, Butler proved an arch‐radical congressman during Reconstruction and a firm supporter of President Ulysses S. Grant. He was a sharp critic of West Point. Elected Democratic governor of Massachusetts in 1882, he ran as an unsuccessful third‐party candidate for the presidency in 1884. His military career furnishes a good example of the strengths and weaknesses of political generals, while his championship of black troops deserves to be remembered.

Bibliography

• Hans L. Trefousse, Ben Butler: The South Called Him Beast, 1957.
• Richard S. West, Jr., Lincoln's Scapegoat General: A Life of Benjamin F. Butler 1818–1893, 1965

Butler, Benjamin Franklin (1818-93) Union general, U.S. congressman (1867-75, 1877-79), and governor of Massachusetts (1882-84), born in Deerfield, New Hampshire. Early in the Civil War, Maj. Gen. Butler caused a stir by refusing to return three runaway slaves, whom he called “contraband of war, ” and employing them instead as freedmen; in August 1861 Congress passed the first Confiscation Act, in effect making Butler's solution U.S. policy. Butler is perhaps best known as the controversial administrator of New Orleans (captured May 1862). He executed a man who had torn down the U.S. flag, arrested the mayor and other vocal Confederate supporters, and outraged the city with his famous General Order No. 28, which threatened to treat all females who abused Union troops as “women of the town plying their avocation.”

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

History seems to have forgotten Benjamin Franklin Butler (1818-1893), though he was one of the most colorful-and reviled - figures in American politics in his day. A brilliant lawyer from Massachusetts, Butler served in Congress for a number of years, but is best remembered for his Civil War leadership, and the enmity he earned at home and in Washington for his uncompromising views.

Butler was born on November 5, 1818, in Deerfield, New Hampshire. He was the sixth child of a father from whom he inherited his adventurous streak: John Butler captained a company of dragoons during the War of 1812, and later became a privateer-and possibly a pirate - plying the Caribbean seas. When he died of yellow fever on the island of St. Kitts, his ship and its contents were lost, and with it his family's financial resources. His mother eventually became proprietor of a boarding house for textile-mill workers in Lowell, Massachusetts. As a boy, Butler was an eager student and avid reader. He was mesmerized by stories of some elderly neighborhood men who had fought in the Revolutionary War, and dreamed of a military career himself.

Charlotte Seelye Butler, however, hoped her son would become a minister. He was sent to Waterbury College (later renamed Colby College) in Maine instead of his first choice, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. But his experience at the strict Baptist-Calvinist college only increased his distaste for the religion, and he was happy to graduate in 1838. He decided to study law, and clerked at a Lowell practice, as was the custom before law schools came into being. For extra money, he taught at a small school for juvenile delinquents, and gained renown for his track record there in rehabilitating the boys. Admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1840, he began practicing in Lowell and quickly gained a reputation as a tenacious courtroom opponent. His business grew along with his formidable reputation, and he soon opened an office in Boston. Butler defended criminals and injured workers alike, and prepared the patent documents for Elias Howe's sewing machine with such thoroughness that the Singer Sewing Machine Company was later forced to pay Howe lifetime royalties.

Skilled Trial Lawyer

Butler married Sarah Hildreth, the daughter of a scholarly physician, on May 16, 1844. Hildreth was an accomplished actress who had appeared on the New York stage. They had one daughter and two sons. In 1845, the 27-year-old Butler was admitted to the Bar of the U.S. Supreme Court, making him possibly the youngest attorney to argue a case before the High Court. His earliest victory from this part of his career came when the owner of the famous Sutter's Mill, on whose property the California Gold Rush began in 1848, hired him. Butler won the case for the owner, who was given legal title to thousands of acres of land.

Butler was soon drawn into politics. An avowed Democrat in New England, he often found himself in conflict with the conservative Massachusetts establishment, who were usually Whigs or Know-Nothings, two precursors of the Republican Party. In 1853, Butler was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and advanced to a seat in the state Senate in 1859. He courted votes from the Roman Catholic minority in the state, and from the burgeoning labor movement centered around the textile industry in places like Lowell. He tried to introduce a bill mandating a ten-hour day at the mills, but was unsuccessful. In the Boston legislative chambers, Butler's debating skills brought him renown, for he was famous for unleashing biting ripostes upon his political foes.

Press Chronicled His Military Exploits

During the run-up to the 1860 presidential elections, Butler emerged as one of New England's more prominent politicians. He was a confirmed Andrew Jackson Unionist, and at the Democratic national convention that year opposed the party's favored nominee, Stephen Douglas. Butler argued instead for the nomination of Southern Democrat Jefferson Davis, and then gave his support to a New England faction that nominated John Breckinridge, vice president under incumbent James Buchanan. As a member of a national party that was bitterly divided over the slavery issue, Butler remained on the fence about the matter for a time. He provoked some in Massachusetts-an avowedly abolitionist state-by pointing out that the language of the Constitution did indeed protect the Southern states' rights to preserve what was termed "their peculiar institution."

Butler had been elected brigadier-general of militia of Massachusetts, and his regiment left Boston a few days after the first shots of the Civil War were fired in April of 1861. Over the next four years Butler became one of the most colorful personalities of the war, a name as well known at the time as those of generals Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee, or Davis, who became the president of the Confederacy of seceded states. Butler's first great success came with finding a way around the Confederate navy's blockade of Washington. Butler and his forces landed at Annapolis and rebuilt the railroad into the city, thereby restoring a supply line to the Union capital. He was sent to occupy Baltimore for a time, then commanded Fortress Monroe, near Richmond, Virginia.

Refused to Return Escaped Slaves

It was here that Butler, with lawyerly practicality, settled one of the thorniest questions for the Union army: in the midst of war, slaves were escaping from their owners and crossing enemy lines to seek refuge. Most Union generals returned the slaves, who were simply considered property, to their owners. But when three came to Fortress Monroe, Butler fed them and put them to work. When a Confederate major arrived the next day with a truce flag to request their return-they belonged to one of his colonels-Butler refused, citing that the state of Virginia had seceded from the Union, and Butler was not obligated to obey the laws of a foreign country now. He declared the slaves contraband, or illegal goods, which enraged slave owners, since it gave the slaves a new legal status. It also gave the Union army a legal basis for providing them food and shelter. Soon, word spread and Butler's fort was sheltering nearly a thousand escaped slaves.

In the spring of 1862, Butler was named military governor for the city of New Orleans, which had recently been taken by Union ships. The population, under martial law, was unruly and hostile, and the business establishment there had flourished before its subjugation as one of the few ports from which trade with Europe was still possible. In order to avoid an outbreak of the fatal yellow fever that had killed his father, Butler took draconian steps to clean up the city, outlawing litter and pumping out the rudimentary sewer system. Still, New Orleans remained antagonistic, and Butler seemed to enjoy the near-autocratic powers his post allowed him. He did agonize, however, when he ordered the court-martial of a New Orleans man who had hauled down the U.S. flag at the symbolic U.S. Mint building, where the Confederate flag had recently flown. The rebel press hailed the man as a hero, and Butler ignored death threats on his own life and signed the death warrant. Years later, he intervened to help the family keep its house, and found a government job for the man's widow.

The Infamous Order No. 28

Though he was accused of financial misdeeds and drawn into potential scandals that seemed to be the work of his Washington enemies, Butler won praise for maintaining the peace in New Orleans, and his troops were considered impeccable in their demeanor, despite the fact that the spirited women of the city carried out a silent war against them. They held their handkerchiefs to their nose when a Union soldier passed, or lifted a skirt in an exaggerated manner; some made retching noises when Union soldiers were nearby, and finally one spat in a soldier's face. It was the last straw for Butler. He issued his famous Order No. 28: "When any female shall, by word, or gesture, or movement, insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier of the United States," it warned, "she shall be regarded and held liable to be treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation." In other words, the woman would be arrested for prostitution and faced a night in jail. It made Butler one of the most hated men in the Rebel South, and even stirred somewhat of an international outcry, but no woman was ever arrested in New Orleans because of it.

Butler's experience in New Orleans made him a confirmed abolitionist. When his requests to Washington for troop reinforcements went unheeded, he raised three of his own regiments from New Orleans's freed black population. Enmity with Lincoln's Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, ended Butler's tenure as New Orleans military governor in December of 1862. He was sent to command captured districts in Virginia and North Carolina, and supervised a prisoner-of-war exchange program near the border. By early 1865, he was back in Massachusetts, and there was talk that he would be made Secretary of State. This ended with Lincoln's assassination in April of 1865.

Wanted to Erase the South

By this point Butler's political allegiances had moved from the Democratic Party to the newcomer Republican organization, but he became a member of that party's Radical faction. These politicians, bitter foes of the South, advocated civil rights for freed slaves, a trial of the Confederate leaders, and indefinite armed supervision of subdued rebel states. Butler himself went even further, arguing that the entire map of the South should be redrawn into administrative districts that would forever eradicate the states themselves. With the war's end, he retreated to some property he acquired on the Massachusetts shoreline near Gloucester. It was called Bay View for its proximity to Ipswich Bay, and he liked to camp there during the summer months with his sons while his wife and daughter stayed nearby. From this spot Butler decided to declare his residency and run for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1866. He held the seat for four terms, though he eventually replaced the tent with a grand home.

Early in his congressional career, Butler was drawn into the impeachment proceedings against Lincoln's successor Andrew Johnson. Johnson had defied Congress over the issue of Reconstruction; radicals like Butler wanted Congress to control the process of rehabilitating the Southern states, while Johnson claimed presidential authority in the matter. When the House voted to impeach him, it named Butler to serve as the lead speaker for the upcoming trial in the Senate. He delivered a two-hour speech from a brief prepared with his usual lawyerly precision that excoriated the President, but Johnson avoided impeachment by a single vote. Butler's last major Congressional battle, in early 1875, was the passage of a sweeping civil rights bill; instead it passed in severely truncated form, even permitting segregated schools, and was declared unconstitutional eight years later anyway.

Ran for President

Butler espoused the Greenback Party during his post-war career, too, and made it to Congress a final time in 1878 on that party's ticket. The Greenbacks, named for their support of a currency expansion program, allied with labor groups and pushed for a number of progressive causes, including women's suffrage and a graduated income tax. The country's banking and business interests vehemently opposed them. Butler himself was quite wealthy, having made prudent investments in land, a textile mill, railroads, and even a quarry. Still, he remained at odds with the Massachusetts establishment, though he managed to serve as governor for a one-year term after several tries. The job had no real executive power, but he did manage to appoint not only the state's first black judge, but its first Irish Catholic to the bench as well. Butler's last attempt at political office came when he made a bid for the presidency in 1884 after being nominated by the Anti-Monopoly party; he campaigned on a platform of national control of interstate commerce and the eight-hour day, and received 175,370 votes. On his way to Washington to argue a case before the Supreme Court, Butler contracted pneumonia and died in the city on January 11, 1893.

Books

Dictionary of American Biography, American Council of Learned Societies, 1928-1936.

Nolan, Dick, Benjamin Franklin Butler: The Damndest Yankee, Presidio, 1991.

Benjamin Franklin Butler achieved prominence as a politician and military officer.

Butler was born November 5, 1818, in Deerfield, New Hampshire. After graduating in 1838 from Waterbury College, now known as Colby College, Butler was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1840. Elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1853 and the Massachusetts Senate in 1859, he also served a tour of military duty during the Civil War.

At the outbreak of the war, Butler entered the Massachusetts militia as a brigadier general. He participated in the capture of Baltimore, Maryland, in 1861 and led forces against New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1862. After the conquest of New Orleans, Butler became military governor of that city, but his administration was charged with severity, corruption, and graft. After six months, Butler was reassigned to the Eastern Virginia-North Carolina area and commanded the Army of the James in 1863.

Butler acted as administrator for the return of prisoners in 1864, and was assigned to New York to enforce order during the election held in that same year.

After the war, Butler served in the federal government, representing Massachusetts in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1867 to 1875, and from 1877 to 1879. He returned to Massachusetts in 1882 to perform the duties of governor and in 1884 was an unsuccessful nominee for the U.S. presidency, representing two independent parties—the Anti-Monopoly party and the Greenback party.

Butler died January 11, 1893, in Washington, D.C.

For the 19th-century United States Attorney General, see Benjamin Franklin Butler (lawyer).

Benjamin Franklin Butler
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts's 5th, 6th & 7th district
In office March 4, 1867 – March 3, 1873 (5th) March 4, 1873 – March 3, 1875 (6th) March 4, 1877 – March 3, 1879 (7th)
Preceded by	John B. Alley Nathaniel P. Banks John K. Tarbox
Succeeded by	Daniel W. Gooch Charles P. Thompson William A. Russell
33rd Governor of Massachusetts
In office January 4, 1883 – January 3, 1884
Lieutenant	Oliver Ames
Preceded by	John D. Long
Succeeded by	George D. Robinson
Born	November 5, 1818 Deerfield, New Hampshire
Died	January 11, 1893 (aged 74) Washington, D.C.
Resting place	Hildreth Family Cemetery Lowell, Massachusetts 42°39′39″N 71°18′36″W / 42.660798°N 71.309928°W / 42.660798; -71.309928
Political party	Democratic Republican Greenback
Spouse(s)	Sarah Hildreth
Signature
Military service
Allegiance	United States of America Union
Service/branch	Union Army
Rank	Major General
Unit	8th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment
Commands	Fort Monroe, Hampton, Virginia Department of Virginia
Battles/wars	American Civil War Battle of Big Bethel Battle of Hatteras Inlet Battle of New Orleans Bermuda Hundred Campaign Battle of Port Walthall Battle of Proctor's Creek Battle of Ware Bottom Church First Battle of Petersburg Battle of Chaffin's Farm First Battle of Fort Fisher

Benjamin Franklin Butler (November 5, 1818 – January 11, 1893) was an American lawyer and politician who represented Massachusetts in the United States House of Representatives and later served as governor of Massachusetts.

During the American Civil War, his administration of occupied New Orleans, his policies regarding slaves as contraband, his ineffectual leadership in the Bermuda Hundred Campaign, and the fiasco of Fort Fisher rank him as one of the most controversial political generals of the war. He was widely reviled for years after the war by Southern whites, who gave him the nickname "Beast Butler."

Contents 1 Early life 2 Civil War 2.1 Baltimore and Virginia operations 2.2 New Orleans 2.3 Army of the James 2.4 Fort Fisher and the demise of Butler's military service 3 Postbellum political career 4 See also 5 References 6 Notes 7 External links

Early life

Butler was born in Deerfield, New Hampshire, the son of Captain John Butler, who served under Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812 (during the Battle of New Orleans). He was named after Founding Father Benjamin Franklin. After the death of his father, his mother, Charlotte (Ellison) Butler, operated a boarding house in Lowell, Massachusetts. He attended Waterville College (now Colby College) in Maine and graduated in 1838. He was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1840, began practice at Lowell, and soon attained distinction as a lawyer, particularly in criminal cases. He married Sarah Hildreth, a stage actress and daughter of Dr. Israel Hildreth of Lowell, in 1842. Their daughter, Blanche, eventually married Adelbert Ames, a Mississippi senator who had served in the United States Army during the Civil War.

Entering politics as a Democrat, Butler first attracted general attention by his vigorous campaign in Lowell advocating the passage of a law establishing a ten-hour day for laborers. He was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1853, and of the Massachusetts Senate in 1859, and was a delegate to the Democratic National Conventions from 1848 to 1860. In the 1860 Democratic National Convention at Charleston, South Carolina, he advocated the nomination of Jefferson Davis (voting for him on the first 57 ballots) and opposed Stephen A. Douglas, and in the ensuing campaign he supported John C. Breckinridge. His military career prior to the Civil War began with him as a third lieutenant in the Massachusetts Militia in 1839; he was promoted to brigadier general of the militia in 1855. These ranks were closely associated with his political positions and Butler received little practical military experience to prepare him for the coming conflict.

Civil War

Baltimore and Virginia operations

After rioting in Baltimore, Governor John A. Andrew sent Butler with a force of Massachusetts troops to reopen communication between the Union states and Washington, D.C. A major railroad connection from the Northeast passed through Baltimore and immediately after the start of the war it was unclear whether Maryland would stay in the Union. Butler arrived with the 8th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment by steamer at Annapolis on April 20, 1861. He employed his expert negotiation skills with Governor Thomas H. Hicks and, by April 22, his regiment had disembarked and was put to work repairing damaged railroad tracks around Baltimore. At the same time, the 7th New York Infantry arrived and Butler assumed command of the entire force; his military career would be characterized by his eagerness to assume authority in the absence of official instructions. While Butler remained at Annapolis, the New Yorkers were the first Union troops to march into Washington following President Lincoln's initial call for volunteers. On May 13, Butler's remaining force occupied Baltimore without opposition. On May 14, Union artillery and scores of camps crowned Federal Hill and Union troops patrolled the streets, further supported by the heavy artillery in Fort McHenry. Butler's reward for his aggressive but unauthorized premature action was to be relieved of command by a livid General Winfield Scott. However, Lincoln appointed him one of the first major generals of U.S. Volunteers, ranking from May 16, 1861. (Also on that day, appointments were given to John A. Dix and Nathaniel P. Banks. Both appeared on the promotion order before Butler, making him the third highest ranking major general of volunteers.)

Butler was assigned command of Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia, and of the Department of Virginia. In the conduct of tactical operations in Virginia, Butler was almost uniformly unsuccessful. His first action at Battle of Big Bethel was a humiliating defeat for the Union Army. While in command at Fort Monroe, Butler declined to return to their owners fugitive slaves who had come within his lines, on the grounds that, as laborers for building fortifications and other military activities, they were contraband of war, thereby justifying granting these slaves a relative freedom, in spite of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. The U.S. Congress later mandated that other Union commanders refuse to return slaves to their former masters.

New Orleans

General Benjamin Franklin Butler

Later, in 1861, Butler commanded an expeditionary force that, in conjunction with the United States Navy, took Forts Hatteras and Clark in North Carolina. He directed the first Union expedition to Ship Island, off the Mississippi Gulf Coast, in December 1861.^[1] In May 1862, he commanded the force that occupied New Orleans after it was captured by the Navy. In the administration of that city he showed great firmness and severity. New Orleans was unusually healthy and orderly during the Butler regime. Many of his acts, however, 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 some provocation, 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", i.e., a prostitute. 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 from command of the Department of the Gulf on December 17, 1862. He was nicknamed "Beast Butler," and "Spoons," for his alleged habit of pilfering the silverware of Southern homes in which he stayed.

On June 7 he had executed one William B. Mumford, who had torn down a United States flag placed by Admiral Farragut on the United States Mint in New Orleans; for this execution, he was denounced (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.

Army of the James

In November 1863, Butler commanded the Department of Virginia and North Carolina, and, in May 1864, the forces under his command were designated the Army of the James. He was ordered to attack in the direction of Petersburg from the east, destroying the rail links supplying Richmond and distracting Robert E. Lee, in conjunction with attacks from the north by Ulysses S. Grant. Grant had little use for Butler's military skills, but Butler had strong political connections that kept him in positions beyond his competence. Rather than striking immediately at Petersburg as ordered, Butler's offensive bogged down east of Richmond in the area called the Bermuda Hundred, immobilized by the greatly inferior force of Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard, and he was unable to accomplish any of his assigned objectives. But it was his mismanagement of the expedition against Fort Fisher, North Carolina, that finally led to his recall by General Grant.

Fort Fisher and the demise of Butler's military service

Butler's status as a key political ally of President Abraham Lincoln prevented General Grant from removing him from military service prior to the presidential election of November 1864. After the election, however, Grant wrote to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton in early 1865 asking free rein to relieve Butler from military service. Since Stanton was traveling outside Washington, D.C., at the time, Grant appealed directly to Lincoln for permission to terminate Butler. In General Order Number 1, Lincoln relieved Butler from command of the Department of North Carolina and Virginia and ordered him to report to Lowell, Massachusetts.^[2]

Grant informed Butler on January 8, 1865, and named Maj. Gen. Edward O. C. Ord to replace him as commander of the Army of the James. The grounds given by Grant were vague, but Butler focused his defense on his failure to take Fort Fisher, and used his considerable political connections to get a hearing before the Joint Congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War in mid-January 1865. At his hearing Butler produced charts and duplicates of reports by subordinates to prove he had been right to call off his attack of Fort Fisher, despite orders from General Grant to the contrary. Butler claimed the fort was impregnable. To his embarrassment, news of the fall of Fort Fisher came during the committee hearings—a follow-up expedition led by Maj. Gen. Alfred H. Terry captured the fort on January 15—and Butler's career was over.^[2]

Postbellum political career

Benjamin Franklin Butler

Butler's memorial at the Hildreth family cemetery in Lowell, Massachusetts

Butler was a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from 1867 to 1875 and again in 1877 to 1879. Despite his pre-war allegiance as a Democrat, in Congress he was conspicuous as a Radical Republican in Reconstruction legislation, and wrote the Civil Rights Act of 1871 (Ku Klux Klan Act). Along with Republican Senator Charles Sumner, he proposed the Civil Rights Act of 1875, a seminal and far-reaching law banning racial discrimination in public accommodations. The law was declared unconstitutional, and racial minorities in the United States would have to wait nearly a century before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would revive, and expand, the provisions of the law Butler backed.

Butler was one of the managers selected by the House to conduct the unsuccessful trial of impeachment of President Johnson, before the Senate, opening the case and taking the most prominent part.

He exercised a marked influence over President Grant and was regarded as his spokesman in the House. He was one of the foremost advocates of the payment in greenbacks of the government bonds. During his time in the House, he served as chairman of the Committee on Revision of the Laws in the 42nd Congress and the Judiciary Committee in the 43rd Congress.

In 1872, Butler was among the several high-profile investors who were deceived by Philip Arnold in a famous diamond and gemstone hoax.

Butler ran unsuccessfully for governor of Massachusetts as an independent in 1878, and also, in 1879, when he ran on the Democratic and Greenback tickets, but, in 1882, he was elected by the Democrats, who won no other state offices. From 1883 to 1884, he was Governor of Massachusetts. As Governor, he appointed the first Irish-American judge, and the first African-American Judge—George Lewis Ruffin. He also appointed the first woman to executive office, Clara Barton, to head the Mass. Reformatory for Women. As presidential nominee of the Greenback and Anti-Monopoly parties, he polled 175,370 votes in the presidential election of 1884. He had bitterly opposed the nomination by the Democratic party of Grover Cleveland and tried to defeat him by throwing his own votes in Massachusetts and New York to the Republican candidate, James G. Blaine.

Butler's income as a lawyer was estimated at $100,000 per year shortly before his death. He was an able but erratic administrator, 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.

Butler died while attending court in Washington, D.C.. He is buried in his wife's family cemetery, behind the main Hildreth Cemetery in Lowell, Massachusetts. His descendants include the famous scientist Adelbert Ames, Jr., suffragist and artist Blanche Ames Ames, Butler Ames, and George Plimpton.

See also

United States Army portal

American Civil War portal

• List of American Civil War generals

References

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Butler, Benjamin Franklin.

• Butler, Benjamin F., The Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General B. F. Butler: Butlers Book, A. M. Thayer & Co., 1992.
• Catton, Bruce, The Coming Fury: The Centennial History of the Civil War, Volume 1, Doubleday, 1961, ISBN 0-641-68525-4.
• Eicher, John H., and Eicher, David J., Civil War High Commands, Stanford University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8047-3641-3.
• Foote, Shelby, The Civil War: A Narrative, Vol. 3: Red River to Appomattox, Random House, 1974, ISBN 0-394-74913-8.
• Parton, James, Butler in New Orleans, 1863.
• Summers, Mark Wahlgren, Rum, Romanism & Rebellion: The Making of a President, 1884, 2000.
• Trefousse, Hans L., Ben Butler: The South Called Him Beast!, 1957.
• Warner, Ezra J., Generals in Blue: Lives of the Union Commanders, Louisiana State University Press, 1964, ISBN 0-8071-0822-7.
• Benjamin Franklin Butler (politician) at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress Retrieved on 2008-02-12
• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

Notes

1. ^ Mississippi History Now: Union Soldiers on Ship Island During the Civil War
2. ^ ^{a b} Foote, pp. 739-40.

External links

• Story of the bust of Butler at the Smithsonian Institution
• Image of Benjamin Butler from "1888 Presidential Possibilities" card set
• Private and official correspondence of Gen. Benjamin F. Butler : during the period of the Civil War Vol. I at archive.org,Vol. II, Vol. III, Vol. IV, Vol. V

Military offices
Preceded by none	Commander of the Army of the James April 28, 1864-January 8, 1865	Succeeded by Edward Ord
United States House of Representatives
Preceded by John B. Alley	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts's 5th congressional district March 4, 1867 – March 3, 1873	Succeeded by Daniel W. Gooch
Preceded by Nathaniel P. Banks	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts's 6th congressional district March 4, 1873 – March 3, 1875	Succeeded by Charles Thompson
Preceded by John K. Tarbox	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts's 7th congressional district March 4, 1877 – March 3, 1879	Succeeded by William A. Russell
Political offices
Preceded by John D. Long	Governor of Massachusetts January 4, 1883 – January 3, 1884	Succeeded by George D. Robinson
Party political offices
Preceded by James Baird Weaver	Greenback Party presidential candidate 1884 (lost)	Succeeded by (none)

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Persondata
NAME	Butler, Benjamin Franklin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Union Army general, lawyer, politician
DATE OF BIRTH	November 5, 1818
PLACE OF BIRTH	Deerfield, New Hampshire
DATE OF DEATH	January 11, 1893
PLACE OF DEATH	Washington, D.C.

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