Benjamin Franklin Butler was a major general of the Union Army, politician, lawyer and businessman.
Background
Butler was born on November 5, 1818, in Deerfield, New Hampshire, United States. 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. His mother eventually became proprietor of a boarding house for textile-mill workers in Lowell, Massachusetts.
Education
As a boy, Butler was an eager student and avid reader. 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. He was graduated from Waterville (now Colby) College in 1838 and then studied law.
Career
For extra money, Benjamin Franklin Butler taught at a small school for juvenile delinquents, and gained renown for his track record there in rehabilitating the boys. He was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1840, he began practicing in Lowell and quickly gained a reputation as a tenacious courtroom opponent. He tried to introduce a bill mandating a ten-hour day at the mills, but was unsuccessful.
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 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.
He was sent to occupy Baltimore for a time, then commanded Fortress Monroe, near Richmond, Virginia.
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.
It also gave the Union army a legal basis for providing them food and shelter.
Still, New Orleans remained antagonistic, and Butler seemed to enjoy the near-autocratic powers his post allowed him.
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.
It was the last straw for Butler.
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.
This ended with Lincoln's assassination in April of 1865.
Early in his congressional career, Butler was drawn into the impeachment proceedings against Lincoln's successor Andrew Johnson.
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.
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.
Still, he remained at odds with the Massachusetts establishment, though he managed to serve as governor for a one-year term after several tries.
As a Democrat in heavily Whig (later Republican) Massachusetts he was not successful politically, though he served in the state house of representatives in 1853 and in the state senate in 1859.
Lincoln nevertheless gave him a commission as major general, for Butler was virtually the only prominent Democrat willing to participate in what was regarded as a Republican war. Butler coined the term "contraband" to apply to slaves who sought refuge within his lines and confiscated them as property of the enemy.
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.
Views
However, Butler's subtlety seemed to fail him as the military governor of New Orleans when it came to dealing with its Jewish population, about which the general, referring to local smugglers, infamously wrote, in October 1862: "They are Jews who betrayed their Savior, & also have betrayed us. " Butler was considered "notorious for his anti-Semitism. "
Connections
Benjamin Franklin Butler was married to Sarah Hildreth. They had one daughter, Blanche.