Benjamin
Franklin Butler was
born in Deerfield, New Hampshire on 5th November, 1818. After graduating
from Waterville College in 1838 he became a successful criminal lawyer
in Lowell, Massachusetts. As a member of the Democratic
Party, Butler served two terms in the state legislature, where
he developed a reputation for being sympathetic to the plight of the
poor.
Butler supported John
Beckenridge against Abraham Lincoln
in the 1860 presidential election but immediately gave his support
to the Union on the outbreak of the American
Civil War.
Butler was a brigadier general in the Massachusetts militia and during
the Fort Sumter crisis rushed his unit
to protect Washington. On 13th May,
1861, Butler used his troops to capture Baltimore.
Impressed by his loyalty and initiative, Abraham
Lincoln promoted Butler to the rank of major general and sent
him to command Fort Monroe in Virginia. Soon afterwards, runaway
slaves began to appear at the fort seeking protection. The slaveowners
demanded that the runaways should be returned. Butler refused, issuing
a statement that he considered the slaves to be "contraband of
war".
In the autumn of 1861 Butler was given permission to organize six
New England regiments. This led to a conflict with John
Andrew, the governor of Massachusetts. As a member of the Republican
Party, Andrew was concerned about the number of Democratic
Party supporters who were being recruited as officers. Abraham
Lincoln supported Butler in this as he was anxious to unite the
two parties in defence of the Union.
Butler's army was sent to the Mississippi coast and in May, 1862,
they captured New Orleans. Butler
was accused of treating Rebels very harshly and after ordering the
execution of a man who had torn down the United States flag, he was
nicknamed the "beast". Alexander
Walker, a pro-Confederate journalist who was one of those arrested,
complained that the prisoners were: "closely confined in portable
houses and furnished with the most wretched and unwholesome condemned
soldiers' rations." He added that some were "compelled
to wear a ball and chain, which is never removed."
President Jefferson Davis accused Butler
of "inciting African slaves to insurrection" in New
Orleans by arming them for war. Davis issued a statement ordering
that Butler "no longer be considered or treated simply as a public
enemy of the Confederate States of America, but as an outlaw and common
enemy of mankind, and that, in the event of his capture, the officer
in command of the captured force do cause him to be immediately executed
by hanging."
In November, 1863, Edwin M. Stanton,
the Secretary of War, sent Butler to New
York City with 5,000 troops. Stanton feared that during the presidential
elections the city might see a return to the Draft
Riots that had taken place that summer. The move was successful
and the city remained securely under the control of the Union
Army.
Abraham Lincoln decided he wanted Butler
as his running mate in the 1864 presidential election. It was argued
that this would help Lincoln win the votes of the War Democrats. Simon
Cameron was sent to talk to Butler about joining the campaign.
However, Butler rejected the offer, jokingly saying that he would
only accept if Lincoln promised "that within three months after
his inauguration he would die".
The American Civil War radicalized Butler.
He became a strong opponent of slavery
and refused to return fugitive slaves.
He was also one of the few military commanders who favoured the recruitment
of black regiments. He established
a unit of African American soldiers called the First Regiment Louisiana
Native Guards. In December, 1864, he united thirty-seven black regiments
to form the Twenty-Fifth Corps. He also arranged for these soldiers
to be taught to read and write. These actions made him very popular
with the Radical Republicans in Congress.
General Ulysses S. Grant had doubts about
Butler's abilities as a military commander and was very disappointed
with his unsuccessful operations against Richmond
and Petersburg. When Butler failed
to capture Wilmington, North Carolina, in December, 1864, Grant and
Lincoln decided to relieve Butler of his command.
After the war Butler joined the Republican
Party and was elected to the 40th Congress. Butler soon associated
himself with the group that became known as the Radical
Republicans. Butler opposed the policies of President Andrew
Johnson and argued in Congress that Southern plantations should
be taken from their owners and divided among the former slaves. He
also attacked Johnson when he attempted to veto the extension of the
Freeman's Bureau,
the Civil Rights Bill and the Reconstruction
Acts.
In 1867 Butler joined with Benjamin Loan
and James Ashley in claiming that Andrew
Johnson had been involved in the conspiracy to murder Abraham
Lincoln. Butler asked the question: "Who it was that could
profit by assassination (of Lincoln) who could not profit by capture
and abduction? He followed this with: "Who it was expected by
the conspirators would succeed to Lincoln, if the knife made a vacancy?"
He also implied that Johnson had been involved in tampering with the
diary of John Wilkes Booth. "Who
spoliated that book? Who suppressed that evidence?"
In November, 1867, the Judiciary Committee voted 5-4 that Andrew
Johnson be impeached by high crimes and misdemeanors. The majority
report written by Thomas Williams
contained a series of charges including pardoning traitors, profiting
from the illegal disposal of railroads in Tennessee, defying Congress,
denying the right to reconstruct the South and attempts to prevent
the ratification of the Fourteenth
Amendment.
On 30th March, 1868, Johnson's impeachment trial began. Johnson was
the first and only president of the United States to be impeached.
The trial, held in the Senate in March, was presided over by Chief
Justice Salmon Chase. During the trial
Butler was one of Johnson's fiercest critics.
Although a large number of senators believed that Johnson was guilty
of the charges, they disliked the idea of Benjamin
Wade becoming the next president. Wade, who believed in women's
suffrage and trade union rights, was considered
by many members of the Republican Party
as being an extreme radical. James Garfield
warned that Wade was "a man of violent passions, extreme opinions
and narrow views who was surrounded by the worst and most violent
elements in the Republican Party." Others Republicans
such as James Grimes argued that Johnson
had less than a year left in office and that they were willing to
vote against impeachment if Johnson was willing to provide some guarantees
that he would not continue to interfere with Reconstruction.
When the vote was taken all members of the Democratic
Party voted against impeachment. So also did those Republicans
such as Lyman Trumbull, William
Fessenden and James Grimes, who
disliked the idea of Benjamin Wade becoming
president. The result was 35 to 19, one vote short of the required
two-thirds majority for conviction. A further vote on 26th May, also
failed to get the necessary majority needed to impeach Johnson. The
Radical Republicans were angry that
not all the Republican Party voted
for a conviction and Butler claimed that Johnson had bribed two of
the senators who switched their votes at the last moment.
Butler became very concerned about the activities
of the Ku Klux Klan in the Deep South. He
urged President Ulysses S. Grant to take
action and in 1870 he instigated an investigation into the organization
and the following year a Grand Jury reported that: "There has
existed since 1868, in many counties of the state, an organization
known as the Ku Klux Klan, or Invisible Empire of the South, which
embraces in its membership a large proportion of the white population
of every profession and class. The Klan has a constitution and bylaws,
which provides, among other things, that each member shall furnish
himself with a pistol, a Ku Klux gown and a signal instrument. The
operations of the Klan are executed in the night and are invariably
directed against members of the Republican Party. The Klan is inflicting
summary vengeance on the colored citizens of these citizens by breaking
into their houses at the dead of night, dragging them from their beds,
torturing them in the most inhuman manner, and in many instances murdering."
Congress passed the Ku Klux Act and became
law on 20th April, 1871. This gave the president the power to intervene
in troubled states with the authority to suspend the writ of habeas
corpus in countries where disturbances occurred. Although Ulysses
S. Grant used this legislation several times, the Ku
Klux Klan was not destroyed.
Butler was reelected to Congress four times and served from March,
1867 to March, 1875 and March, 1877 to March, 1879. Chairman of the
Committee on Revision of the Laws, Butler played a leading role in
the passing of the Civil Rights Act (1875).
Disillusioned with the Republican Party
Butler rejoined the Democratic Party
and in 1882 he was elected as Governor of Massachusetts. Two years
later he became the presidential candidate of the Greenback-Labor
Party and the Anti-Monopoly Party. His program included plans for
graduated income tax, the direct election of Senators, the establishment
of a Department of Labor, and financial assistance to farmers. However,
at the polls he was easily defeated by Grover
Cleveland.
Butler's memoirs, Autobiography
and Personal Reminiscences,
was published in 1892. Benjamin
Franklin Butler died in Washington
on 11th January, 1893. Butler's grand daughter, Blanche
Ames, was a leading activist in the struggle for woman's
suffrage.
Thomas Nast, The Cradle of Liberty in
Danger, Harper's Weekly (11th
April, 1872)
(1)
Benjamin F. Butler, report published on 30th July, 1861.
In
the village of Hampton there were a large number of Negroes, composed
in a great measure of women and children of the men who had fled thither
within my lines for protection, who had escaped from marauding parties
of rebels who had been gathering up able-bodied blacks to aid them
in constructing their batteries on the James and York rivers. I have
employed the men in Hampton in throwing up entrenchments, and they
were working zealously and efficiently at that duty, saving our soldiers
from the labor under the gleam of the midday sun.
I have seen it stated that an order had been issued by General McDowell,
in his department, substantially forbidding all fugitive slaves from
coming within his lines or being harbored there. Is that order to
be enforced in all military departments? If so, who are to be considered
fugitive slaves? Is a slave to be considered fugitive whose master
runs away and leaves him? Is it forbidden to the troops to aid or
harbor within the lines the Negro children who are found therein,
or is the soldier, when his march has destroyed their means of subsistence,
to allow them to starve because he has driven off the Rebel masters?
In a loyal state, I would put down a service insurrection. In a state
of rebellion. I would confiscate that which was used to oppose my
arms, and take all the property which constituted the wealth of that
state and furnished the means by which the war is prosecuted, besides
being the cause of the war; and if, in so doing, it should be objected
that human beings were bought to the free enjoyment of life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness, such objection might not require much
consideration.
(2)
Alexander Walker, a journalist, was arrested and sent to Ship Island,
Mississippi, when he complained about Benjamin F. Butler after he
occupied New Orleans (13th September,
1862)
Previous to my committal to Ship Island as a close prisoner,
where I was consigned with seven other respectable citizens to a small
hut, fifteen feet by twenty, exposed to rain and sun, without permission
to leave except for a bath in the sea once or twice a week, I had
prepared an elaborate statement of the outrages perpetrated by Butler
upon our people.
A description of the causes and circumstances of the imprisonment
of our citizens who are now held on this island will afford some of
the mildest illustrations of Butler's brutality. There are about sixty
prisoners here, all of whom are closely confined in portable houses
and furnished with the most wretched and unwholesome condemned soldiers'
rations. Some are kept at hard labor on the fort; several, in addition
to labor, are compelled to wear a ball and chain, which is never removed.
(3)
Benjamin F. Butler, statement about the occupation of New
Orleans (24th December, 1862)
I saw that this Rebellion was a war of the aristocrats
against the middling men, of the rich against the poor; a war of the
land-owner against the laborer; that it was a struggle for the retention
of power in the hands of the few against the many; and I found no
conclusion to it, save in the subjugation of the few and the disenthrallment
of the many. I therefore felt no hesitation in taking the substance
of the wealthy, who had caused the war, to feed the innocent poor,
who had suffered by the war.
(4)
President Jefferson Davis, statement
about the occupation of New Orleans
(December, 1862)
Repeated pretexts have been sought or invented for plundering
the inhabitants of a captured city, by fines levied and collected
under threats of imprisoning recusants at hard labor with ball and
chain. The entire population of New Orleans have been forced to elect
between starvation by the confiscation of all their property and taking
an oath against conscience to bear allegiance to the invader of their
country.
The African slaves have not only been incited to insurrection by every
license and encouragement, but numbers of them have actually been
armed for a servile war - a war in its nature far exceeding the horrors
and most merciless atrocities of savages. Officers under Benjamin
F. Butler have been in many instances, active and zealous agents in
the commission of these crimes, and no instance is known of the refusal
of any one of them to participate in the outrages.
I, Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America,
and in their name, do pronounce and declare the said Benjamin F. Butler
to be a felon, deserving of capital punishment. I do order that he
shall no longer be considered or treated simply as a public enemy
of the Confederate States of America, but as an outlaw and common
enemy of mankind, and that, in the event of his capture, the officer
in command of the captured force do cause him to be immediately executed
by hanging.
(5)
Benjamin F. Butler,
Autobiography and Reminiscences (1892)
In the spring of 1863, I had another conversation with President
Lincoln upon the subject of the employment of negroes. The question
was, whether all the negro troops then enlisted and organized should
be collected together and made a part of the Army of the Potomac and
thus reinforce it.
We then talked of a favourite project he had of getting rid of the
negroes by colonization, and he asked me what I thought of it. I told
him that it was simply impossible; that the negroes would not go away,
for they loved their homes as much as the rest of us, and all efforts
at colonization would not make a substantial impression upon the number
of negroes in the country.
Reverting to the subject of arming the negroes, I said to him that
it might be possible to start with a sufficient army of white troops,
and, avoiding a march which might deplete their ranks by death and
sickness, to take in ships and land them somewhere on the Southern
coast. These troops could then come up through the Confederacy, gathering
up negroes, who could be armed at first with arms that they could
handle, so as to defend themselves and aid the rest of the army in
case of rebel charges upon it. In this way we could establish ourselves
down there with an army that would be a terror to the whole South.
Our conversation then turned upon another subject which had been frequently
a source of discussion between us, and that was the effect of his
clemency in not having deserters speedily and universally punished
by death.
I called his attention to the fact that the great bounties then being
offered were such a temptation for a man to desert in order to get
home and enlist in another corps where he would be safe from punishment,
that the army was being continually depleted at the front even if
replenished at the rear.
He answered with a sorrowful face, which always came over him when
he discussed this topic: "But I can't do that, General."
"Well, then," I replied, "I would throw the responsibility
upon the general-in-chief and relieve myself of of it personally."
With a still deeper shade of sorrow he answered: "The responsibility
would be mine, all the same."
(6)
Benjamin F. Butler met Ulysses S. Grant
for the first time in April, 1864.
Lieutenant-General Grant visited Fortress Monroe on the 1st
April. To him the state of the negotiations as to exchange of prisoners
was communicated, and most emphatic verbal directions were received
from the lieutenant-general not to take any steps by which another
able-bodied man should be exchanged until further orders from him.
He then explained to me his views upon these matters. He said that
I would agree with him that by the exchange of prisoners we get no
men fit to go into our army, and every soldier we gave the Confederates
went immediately into theirs, so that the exchange was virtually so
much aid to them and none to us. For we gave them well men who went
directly into their ranks and we had but few others, as the returns
showed. Yet we received none from them substantially but disabled
men, and by our laws and regulations they were to be allowed to go
home and recuperate, which few of them did, and fewer still came back
to our armies.
Now, the coming campaign was to be decided by the strength of the
opposing forces, for the contest would all centre upon the Army of
the Potomac and its immediate adjuncts. His proposition was to make
an aggressive fight upon Lee, trusting to the superiority of numbers
and to the practical impossibility of Lee getting any considerable
reinforcements to keep up his army. We had twenty-six thousand Confederate
prisoners, and if they were exchanged it would give the Confederates
a corps, larger than any in Lee's army, of disciplined veterans better
able to stand the hardships of a campaign and more capable than any
other. To continue exchanging upon parole the prisoners captured on
one side and the other, especially if we captured more prisoners than
they did, would at least add from thirty to perhaps fifty per cent
to Lee's capability for resistance.
(7)
In 1864 Abraham Lincoln sent Simon
Cameron to see Benjamin F. Butler at Fortress Monroe.
Simon Cameron, who stood very high in Mr. Lincoln's confidence,
came to see me at Fortress Monroe. He spoke with directness. "The
President, as you know, intends to be a candidate for re-election,
and as his friends indicate that Mr. Hamlin should no longer be a
candidate for Vice-President, and as he is from New England, the President
thinks his place should be filled by someone from that section. Besides
reasons of personal friendship which would be pleasant to have you
with him, he believes that as you were the first prominent Democrat
who volunteered for the war, your candidate would add strength to
the ticket, especially with the War Democrats, and he hopes that you
will allow your friends to co-operate with his to place you in that
position."
"Please say to Mr. Lincoln," I replied, "that while
I appreciate with the fullest sensibilities his act of friendship
and the high compliment he pays me, yet I must decline. Tell him that
I said laughingly that with the prospects of a campaign before me
I would not quit the field to be Vice-President even with himself
as President, unless he would give me bond in sureties in the full
sum of his four years' salary that within three months after his inauguration
he will die unresigned.
(8)
Benjamin F. Butler, speech in Congress about the diary of John
Wilkes Booth (1867)
That diary, as now produced, had eighteen pages cut out, the
pages prior to the time when Abraham Lincoln was massacred, although
the edges as yet show they had all been written over. Now, what I
want to know, was that diary whole? Who spoliated that book?
(9)
Benjamin Butler, Autobiography and Personal
Reminiscences (1892)
Andrew Johnson had been suspected by many
people of being concerned in the plans of Booth against the life of
Lincoln or at least cognizant of them. A committee of which I was
the head, felt it their duty to make a secret investigation of that
matter, and we did our duty in that regard most thoroughly. Speaking
for myself I think I ought to say that there was no reliable evidence
at all to convince a prudent and responsible man that there was any
ground for the suspicions entertained against Johnson.
(10)
In his autobiography, Autobiography
and Personal Reminiscences, Benjamin
F. Butler wrote about the passing of legislation against the Ku
Klux Klan in 1870.
There were numerous large bands of organized marauders called
the Ku Klux Klan, who were dressed in fantastic uniforms, and who
rode at night and inflicted unnumbered and horrible outrages upon
the negro so that he could not dare to come to the polls. Indeed,
the men of the South seemed to think themselves excused in these outrages
because they wanted to insure a white man's government in their States.
I desired that Congress should pass laws, which, with their punishments
and modes of execution, would be sufficiently severe under the circumstances
to prevent those outrages entirely, or at least to punish them.
A bill was reported by that special committee. By the bill this murdering
of negroes of Ku Klux riders at night was to be deemed conspiracy,
and punished by fine and imprisonment. But the prisoner would first
have to be convicted by a Southern jury, and upon these juries other
members of the Ku Klux could serve if their own cases were not on
trial. That bill was passed, and the government made great show of
enforcing it.
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