Benjamin Butler
Benjamin Franklin Butler (November 5, 1818 – January 11, 1893) was an American major general of the Union Army, politician, lawyer, and businessman from Massachusetts. Born in New Hampshire and raised in Lowell, Massachusetts, Butler was a political major general of the Union Army during the American Civil War and had a leadership role in the impeachment of U.S. President Andrew Johnson. He was a colorful and often controversial figure on the national stage and on the Massachusetts political scene, serving five terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and running several campaigns for governor before his election to that office in 1882.
For other uses, see Benjamin Butler (disambiguation).
Benjamin Butler
6th district (1867–1873)
7th district (1873–1875)
Arthur Bonney
Ephraim Patch
January 11, 1893 (aged 74)
Washington, D.C., U.S.
- Democratic (Before 1861, 1889–1893)
- Republican (1861–1874)
Greenback (1874–1889)
4, including Blanche
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Butler, a successful trial lawyer, served in the Massachusetts legislature as an antiwar Democrat and as an officer in the state militia. Early in the Civil War he joined the Union Army, where he was noted for his lack of military skill and his controversial command of New Orleans, which made him widely disliked in the South and earned him the "Beast" epithet. Although freeing an enemy's slaves had occurred in previous wars, Butler came up with the idea of doing so by designating them as contraband of war,[1] an idea that the Lincoln administration endorsed and that played a role in making emancipation an official war goal. His commands were marred by financial and logistical dealings across enemy lines, some of which may have taken place with his knowledge and to his financial benefit.
Butler was dismissed from the Union Army after his failures in the First Battle of Fort Fisher, but he soon won election to the United States House of Representatives from Massachusetts. As a Radical Republican he considered President Johnson's Reconstruction agenda to be too weak, advocating harsher punishments of former Confederate leadership and stronger stances on civil rights reform. He was also an early proponent of the prospect of impeaching Johnson. After Johnson was impeached in early 1868, Butler served as the lead prosecutor among the House-appointed impeachment managers in the Johnson impeachment trial proceedings. Additionally, as Chairman of the House Committee on Reconstruction, Butler authored the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 and coauthored the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1875.
In Massachusetts, Butler was often at odds with more conservative members of the political establishment over matters of both style and substance. Feuds with Republican politicians led to his being denied several nominations for the governorship between 1858 and 1880. Returning to the Democratic fold, he won the governorship in the 1882 election with Democratic and Greenback Party support. He ran for president on the Greenback Party and the Anti-Monopoly Party tickets in 1884.
Early years[edit]
Benjamin Franklin Butler was born in Deerfield, New Hampshire, the sixth and youngest child of John Butler and Charlotte Ellison Butler. His father served under General Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812 and later became a privateer, dying of yellow fever in the West Indies not long after Benjamin was born.[2] He was named after Founding Father Benjamin Franklin. His elder brother, Andrew Jackson Butler (1815–1864), served as a colonel in the Union Army during the Civil War and joined him in New Orleans.[3] Butler's mother was a devout Baptist who encouraged him to read the Bible and prepare for the ministry.[2] In 1827, at the age of nine, Butler was awarded a scholarship to Phillips Exeter Academy, where he spent one term. He was described by a schoolmate as "a reckless, impetuous, headstrong boy", and regularly got into fights.[4]
Butler's mother moved the family in 1828 to Lowell, Massachusetts, where she operated a boarding house for workers at the textile mills. He attended the public schools there, from which he was almost expelled for fighting, the principal describing him as a boy who "might be led, but could not be driven."[5] He attended Waterville (now Colby) College in pursuit of his mother's wish that he prepare for the ministry, but eventually rebelled against the idea. In 1836, Butler sought permission to go instead to West Point for a military education, but he did not receive one of the few places available. He continued his studies at Waterville, where he sharpened his rhetorical skills in theological discussions and began to adopt Democratic Party political views. He graduated in August 1838.[6] Butler returned to Lowell, where he clerked and read law as an apprentice with a local lawyer. He was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1840 and opened a practice in Lowell.[7]
After an extended courtship, Butler married Sarah Hildreth, a stage actress and daughter of Dr. Israel Hildreth of Lowell, on May 16, 1844. They had four children: Paul (1845–1850), Blanche (1847–1939), Paul (1852–1918) and Ben-Israel (1855–1881).[8] Butler's business partners included Sarah's brother Fisher, and her brother-in-law, W. P. Webster.[9]
In 1844, Butler was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society.[10]
Law and early business dealings[edit]
Butler quickly gained a reputation as a dogged criminal defense lawyer who seized on every misstep of his opposition to gain victories for his clients, and also became a specialist in bankruptcy law.[7] His trial work was so successful that it received regular press coverage, and he was able to expand his practice into Boston.[11] George Riley worked at his Boston law office.[12]
Butler's success as a lawyer enabled him to purchase shares in Lowell's Middlesex Mill Company when they were cheap.[13] Although he generally represented workers in legal actions, he also sometimes represented mill owners. This adoption of both sides of an issue manifested itself when he became more politically active. He first attracted general attention by advocating the passage of a law establishing a ten-hour day for laborers,[14] but he also opposed labor strikes over the matter. He instituted a ten-hour work day at the Middlesex Mills.[15]
Pre-Civil War political career[edit]
During the debates over the ten-hour day a Whig-supporting Lowell newspaper published a verse suggesting that Butler's father had been hanged for piracy. Butler sued the paper's editor and publisher for that and other allegations that had been printed about himself. The editor was convicted and fined $50, but the publisher was acquitted on a technicality. Butler blamed the Whig judge, Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, for the acquittal, inaugurating a feud between the two that would last for decades and significantly color Butler's reputation in the state.[16]
Butler, as a Democrat, supported the Compromise of 1850 and regularly spoke out against the abolition of slavery. At the state level, he supported the coalition of Democrats and Free Soilers that elected George S. Boutwell governor in 1851. This garnered him enough support to win election to the state legislature in 1852.[15] His support for Franklin Pierce as president, however, cost him the seat the next year. He was elected a delegate to the 1853 state constitutional convention with strong Catholic support, and was elected to the state senate in 1858, a year dominated by Republican victories in the state.[17] Butler was nominated for governor in 1859 and ran on a pro-slavery, pro-tariff platform. He lost to incumbent Republican Nathaniel Prentice Banks.[13][18]
In the 1860 Democratic National Convention at Charleston, South Carolina, Butler initially supported John C. Breckinridge for president but then shifted his support to Jefferson Davis, believing that only a moderate Southerner could keep the Democratic party from dividing. A conversation he had with Davis prior to the convention convinced him that Davis might be such a man, and he gave him his support before the convention split over slavery.[19] Butler ended up supporting Breckinridge over Douglas against state party instructions, ruining his standing with the state party apparatus. He was nominated for governor in the 1860 election by a Breckinridge splinter of the state party, but trailed far behind other candidates.[20]
Postbellum business and charitable dealings[edit]
Butler greatly expanded his business interests during and after the Civil War, and was extremely wealthy when he died, with an estimated net worth of $7 million ($240 million today). Historian Chester Hearn believed "The source of his fortune has remained a mystery, but much of it came from New Orleans...."[100] However, Butler's mills in Lowell, which produced woolen goods and were not hampered by cotton shortages, were economically successful during the war, supplying clothing and blankets to the Union Army, and regularly paying high dividends.[101] Successful postwar investments included a granite company on Cape Ann and a barge freight operation on the Merrimack River. After learning that no domestic manufacturer produced bunting, he invested in another Lowell mill to produce it, and convinced the federal government to enact legislation requiring domestic sources for material used on government buildings. Less successful ventures included investments in real estate in Virginia, Colorado, and the Baja Peninsula of western Mexico, and a fraudulent gold mining operation in North Carolina.[102] He also founded the Wamesit Power Company and the United States Cartridge Company,[103] and was one of several high-profile investors who were deceived by Philip Arnold in the famous Diamond hoax of 1872.
Butler put some of his money into more charitable enterprises. He purchased confiscated farms in the Norfolk, Virginia area during the war and turned them over to cooperative ventures managed by local African Americans, and sponsored a scholarship for African-Americans at Phillips Andover Academy.[104] He also served for fifteen years in executive positions of the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, including as its president from 1866 through 1879.[105]
His law firm also expanded significantly after the war, adding offices in New York City and Washington. High-profile cases he took included the representation of Admiral David Farragut in his quest to be paid by the government for prizes taken by the Navy during the war, and the defense of former Secretary of War Simon Cameron against an attempted extortion in a salacious case that gained much public notice.[106]
Butler built a mansion immediately across the street from the United States Capitol in 1873–1874, known as the Butler Building.[107][108][109] One unit of the building was constructed to be fireproof so that it could be rented as storage for valuable and irreplaceable survey records, maps, and engraving plates of the United States Coast Survey (renamed the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1878), whose headquarters in the Richards Building was directly next door.[109][110] The building was used by President Chester A. Arthur while the White House was being refurnished.[108][111] On April 10, 1891, the Department of the Treasury purchased the building from Butler for $275,000, (~$8.43 million in 2023) and it became the headquarters of the U.S. Marine Hospital Service, with its Hygienic Laboratory (the predecessor of the National Institutes of Health) occupying its top floor.[109][112]
Early postbellum political activities[edit]
At the urging of his wife, Butler actively sought another political position in the Lincoln administration, but this effort came to an end with Lincoln's assassination in April 1865.[113] Soon after he became president, however, Andrew Johnson sought Butler's legal advice as to whether he could prosecute Robert E. Lee for treason, even though General Grant had granted Lee parole at Appomattox. "On April 25, 1865, Butler wrote a lengthy memorandum to Johnson explaining why the parole Lee received from Grant did not protect him from being prosecuted for treason.... Butler argued that parole was merely a military arrangement that allowed a prisoner 'the privilege of partial liberty instead of close confinement.... Indeed the Lieutenant General [Grant] had not authority to grant amnesty or pardon even if he had undertaken to do so.'"[114]
In March 1866, Butler argued in the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the United States in Ex parte Milligan, in which the Court held, against the United States, that military commission trials could not replace civilian trials when courts were open and where there was no war.[115]
Butlerism
Benjamin Butler
- Stalwart faction of the Republican Party (during the Rutherford B. Hayes presidency)