★ ★  Butler, Benjamin F. - Military Gov. of LA

Benjamin Franklin Butler

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Born: November 5, 1818

Birthplace: Deerfield, New Hampshire

Father: Captain John Butler 1786 – 1822

Mother: Charlotte Ellison 1792 – 1870
(Buried: Hildreth Family Cemetery, Lowell, Massachusetts)​

Wife: Sarah Jones Hildreth 1816 – 1876
(Buried: Hildreth Family Cemetery, Lowell, Massachusetts)​

Married: May 16, 1844 at Saint Anne's Episcopal Church, Lowell, Massachusetts

Children:

Blanche Butler Ames 1847 – 1939​
(Buried: Hildreth Family Cemetery, Lowell, Massachusetts)​
Paul Butler 1852 – 1918​
(Buried: Hildreth Family Cemetery, Lowell, Massachusetts)​
Ben – Israel Butler 1855 – 1881​
(Buried: Hildreth Family Cemetery, Lowell, Massachusetts)​

Signature:
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Education:

1838: Graduated from Waterville College​

Occupation before War:

Attorney in Lowell, Massachusetts​
1850: Supporter of the Compromise of 1850​
1853: Massachusetts State Representative​
1853: Delegate to Massachusetts State Constitution Convention​
1859: Massachusetts State Senator​
1859: Unsuccessful Democratic Candidate Governor of Massachusetts​
1860: Delegate to Democratic Party National Convention​
1860: Supporter of Jefferson Davis for Democratic Nomination​
1860: Supporter of John C. Breckinridge for President​
1860: Recommended to President Buchanan he arrest South Carolina Delegation on charges of treason​

Civil War Career:

1861: Brigadier General of Union Army Volunteer Infantry​
1861: Ordered his men to restore rail service between Annapolis and Washington, D.C.​
1861: Threatened he would arrest Maryland legislature if they voted for Secession Butler seized the Great Seal of Maryland​
1861: Occupied Baltimore Maryland with his soldiers​
1861 – 1865: Major General of Union Army Volunteers​
1861: Commander of Fort Monroe in Department of Virginia​
1861: Directed first union expedition to Ship Island​
1862: Successfully led Command at Capture of New Orleans, Louisiana​
1862: Military Governor of Louisiana​
1862: Imposed strict quarantines introduced program for garbage​
1862: Issued General Order Number 26​
1862: Censored all newspapers in New Orleans, Louisiana​
1862: Ordered the execution of William B. Mumford​
1862: Ordered Seizure of $800,000.00 deposited in office of Dutch​
1862: Imprisoned French Champagne Magnate Charles Heidsieck​
1862: Formed first African American Regiment 1st Louisiana Native Guard​
1862: Recalled as Governor in December by President Lincoln​
Sought revenge against Secretary of State William Seward he felt was the one who was responsible for his recall​
1863: Commander of Department of Virginia and North Carolina
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1864 – 1865: Commander Army of the James​
1864: Union Army Commander Battle of Chaffin’s Farm Virginia​
1864: Awarded Soldiers the Butler Medal for their role at battle​
1864: Participated in the Bermuda Hundred Attack​
1864: Was Considered for Vice President of United States​
President Lincoln issued General Order No 1 relieving Butler of Command and ordering him to Lowell Massachusetts​
1865: Informed of his recall by General Grant​
1865: Got a hearing before Joint Congressional Committee on Conduct of the War​
1865: Retained until November that he might as Military Prosecutor for Confederate President Jefferson Davis​

Occupation after War:

1865: Tried to get a position in Lincoln Administration​
1866 – 1879: President National Home for Disabled Soldiers​
1867 – 1875: United States Congressman from Massachusetts​
1868: House Manager to conduct impeachment of Pres. Johnson​
1871 – 1873: Congressional Chairman for revision of the laws​
1871 – 1872: Unsuccessful Candidate Nomination for Governor​
1872: Investor in Diamond Hoax of 1872​
1871: Author of Initial Version Civil Rights Act of 1871​
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1873 – 1875: Congressional Chairman of Judiciary Committee​
1875: Proposed the Civil Rights Act of 1875​
1877 – 1879: United States Congressman from Massachusetts​
1878: Unsuccessful Independent Candidate for Governor​
Founder of Wamesit Power Company & United States Cartridge Co.​
Owner of Confiscated Farms in Norfolk Virginia making Cooperatives​
Sponsor of Scholarship for African Americans Phillips Andover Academy​
Served on the Board of National Home for Disabled Soldiers​
1883 – 1884: Governor of Massachusetts​
1884: Unsuccessful Greenback Anti–Monopolist U.S. Presidential Candidate​
1893: Argued a case before the Supreme Court on January 10th​

Died: January 11, 1893

Place of Death: Washington D.C.

Cause of Death: Bronchial Infection

Age at time of Death: 74 years old

Burial Place: Hildreth Family Cemetery, Lowell, Massachusetts

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This is from an older web site - deerfieldnh.org
Benjamin Franklin Butler
originally published in the Bicentennial Book​
His maternal grandfather was Richard Ellison who had fought the battle of Boyne Water for King William, and had received some reward which enabled him and his wife to come to America. They were Scotch Presbyterians. They moved to Londonderry, later took up a farm at Northfield, on the Pemigewassett. It was here that he had several children, the youngest of whom was Ben Butler's mother. His grandfather and grandmother moved to Canada about the time his mother was married to John Butler. He tells us that they were respectable and honorable people, and were certainly long lived, for his mother's sister lived to exceed the age of one hundred and four years.​



I hadn't heard that story before. It's at least dubious, since the Battle of the Boyne took place in 1690, and granddad would have had to be well over 100 when Ben's mother was born. There may well be some basis, but not as stated.

Actually, Ben created an elaborate Irish genealogy for himself, to appeal to his largely immigrant political base. He was descended, he said, from the Winebearers to the ancient Irish kings -- they carried the "bottles," thus the name "Bottler" (Butler). That was all hoo-ha, of course: the Irish Butlers were of Anglo-Norman origins. They came to Ireland with the English conquest, settled in, intermarried with the local Gaelic aristocracy, and their descendants, as it was said, became "more Irish than the Irish themselves." (Irish mothers rule!)
 
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I didn't know that about his lineage. Well, Deerfield, NH wrote it up in 1976 and they don't source where they got it on their website. Oddly, there is no plaque in the town to him at all. This is all very interesting! Yet, I find it endearing that he took on the fights of the little guy and the downtrodden at a time when it wasn't popular to do so. But Ben was tricky just the same.
 
Some of my favorite Butler bits... while a defense lawyer, he was defending a man who had stolen a shopkeeper's key and robbed the shop. Butler bargained the prosecutor down to simply theft of the key... and then tuned that on its head by demonstrating that in Massachusetts at that time, a key was considered part of real estate and therefore theft (or whatever the specific charge was) should be thrown out on the technicality... and it was.

When running for president on the Greenback ticket after the war, some of his opponents lowered an oversized spoon over his head from above (an obvious reference to his sobriquet of "Spoons" Butler). He feigned a grab for it and said, "I guess that's one I didn't get!"

And, as referenced in a recent thread, Butler purchased the racing yacht America after it had seen some hard times during the Civil War, including being sunk... he sailed it as his personal yacht, commissioning a rebuild and restoration to put her back into good condition.
 
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1869 portrait by Alfred J. Wiggin
[Courtesy, Cape Ann Museum.]​

Butler was elected in 1882 to a one-year term as Governor of Massachusetts (as candidate of both the Democratic and the Greenback parties), over the strident opposition of the state's political establishment.

In is inaugural address, Butler spoke of the relations between labor and capital, reform of the criminal code, of the management of Almshouses and prisons. He advocated woman suffrage, and eliminating the poll tax. Hours of labor should be lowered, wages increased, child labor eliminated, trusts outlawed, and organized labor encouraged. As governor, Butler was active in promoting all such reform and greater competence in administration, in spite of a hostile Republican legislature and Governor's Council. He appointed the state's first Irish-American and African-American judges, and appointed the first woman to executive office, Clara Barton, to head the Massachusetts Reformatory for Women (which she found desperately mismanaged, and left it thoroughly reformed). He also graphically exposed the mismanagement of the state's Tewksbury Almshouse under a succession of Republican governors. Butler was also notoriously snubbed by Harvard University, which traditionally granted honorary degrees to the state's governors. The following year, all the "big names" of the state's Republican Establishment poured money into the campaign against him, and he narrowly lost re-election.
 
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I have the above cited books of which I favor THE DAMNEDEST YANKEE. However, I have a third one which I very much enjoy: ARMY OF AMATEURS: GENERAL BENJAMIN F. BUTLER AND THE ARMY OF THE JAMES, 1863--1865 by EDWARD G. LONGACRE. You can get several set books of his war time correspondence from Amazon.com for reasonable rate as I have for my kindle.
 
The five hefty volumes of Private and official correspondence of Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, during the period of the civil war (1917), are available online at Hathi Trust and at Archive.org. But that collection is dwarfed by the Benjamin F. Butler Papers housed at the Library of Congress -- some 190,000 items filling 90 linear feet of shelf space, including 263 standard, and 4 over-sized document boxes. Ben, it seems, saved just about every scrap of paper that passed through his hands (though many of his prewar legal files were lost in a fire).

Arranged in nine series. Series 1: Personal File, 1778-1893; Series 2: General Correspondence, 1830-1894; Series 3: Legal File, 1841-1891; Series 4: Speeches and Writings, circa 1859-1892; Series 5: Subject File, circa 1830-1909; Series 6: Printed Matter, 1858-1929; Series 7: Letterbooks, 1861-1893; Series 8: Miscellany, 1810-1889; and Series 9: Oversize, 1858-1884.
 
When Ben Butler came to New Orleans he found a City in the mist of near mass death from starvation. The Confederates had removed or destroyed food supplies plus the economy of the City had collapsed. Butler quickly launched the Lafourche River basin expedition which won a battle over the Confederates and seized the river basin from which the City would receive it foodstuff resources for the rest of the War. He gave employment to the working families of the City and the freed/escaped negroes. He successfully eradiated a Yellow Fever by way of a massive cleanup that was very modern in style. Only the wealthy Confederate apologist elite hated him. Thousands enrolled in the Federal forces. Thousands turned out to say a farewell to him upon his exit from New Orleans. He was greatly loved. Glory! Glory!
 
I've never read a whole lot on Him but I can't say that I ever came across any bios or other writings that said he was "loved"by anyone in the South.I've always heard quite the opposite, and there was even a bounty out on Him wasn't there?
 
Using the term "the South" is awfully broad. I'm sure the South didn't love Butler. But he did do those things for New Orleans and it was a good thing for New Orleans otherwise there would have been hundreds if not thousands more dead from Yellow Fever. I'm pretty sure the working class population and Negroes of New Orleans liked him well enough when they saw food coming in, employment and clean-up happening. Those weren't bad things to do, btw.
 
The nickname ”Spoons” is a very interesting topic itself. It was placed there by his numerous political and military enemies. I do not doubt Butler had a personal collection of those trophies from the hated slaveholders. His sources for said silver spoons were several. There existed the lawful procedure of confiscation of wealthy plantations abandoned by their owners; and they have not paid lawful property taxes to the appropriate government authority, thus leaving it open to confiscation and sale. It was usually always the case that these absentee owners were traitorous Confederates/Slaveholders elites; who would not appear at the Tax Office and paid said taxes. Therefore, the lawful confiscation procedures were imposed across the occupied Federal South, with said properties put up for auction sale. An issue developed, when in occupied Louisiana, one of the chief purchasers of these properties was Ben Butler’s civilian brother, who was lawfully present. Another source of silverware were those rich Slaveholder plantations in zones of Federal invasions/raids outside of New Orleans. Very often, the Federals and Southern Unionists on those field operations were harassed by Confederate guerillas with a number killed and wounded on both sides. The retaliation would be to loot and burn the wealthy nearby plantations who supported the insurgency. CSA Richard Taylor’s very wealthy sugarcane slave operated plantation nearby got this treatment. Yet another source for expensive spoons was the Black Market trade that was very active across the South, which involved the secret cooperation between wealthy planters and the Feds. One may rightfully ask who is the greater thief: Ben Butler or the Slaveholder who stole the labor of his slaves for many generations, from which some of that stolen wealth purchased that expensive silverware?
 
Using the term "the South" is awfully broad. I'm sure the South didn't love Butler. But he did do those things for New Orleans and it was a good thing for New Orleans otherwise there would have been hundreds if not thousands more dead from Yellow Fever. I'm pretty sure the working class population and Negroes of New Orleans liked him well enough when they saw food coming in, employment and clean-up happening. Those weren't bad things to do, btw.
It has been said that in 1815 Andy Jackson saved New Orleans from the British, and in 1862 Ben Butler saved it from itself.
 
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