Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

[1128] willing to try it as an experiment, but not disposed to trust to it altogether. I think it was most unhandsome in him to listen for a moment to the idle talk of Butler's staff, and his timid, calculating engineer, Comstock, who wanted some excuse for not doing their duty.

The lieutenant-general and I were together eighteen months before Vicksburg. He never had to wait for me, nor did any of his generals (but I have had to wait for them), and he should have supposed from the past, and my anxiety to go to work, that I had not become any slower in my movements than I was on the Mississippi. His course proves to me that he would sacrifice his best friend rather than let any odium fall upon Lieutenant-General Grant. He will take to himself all the credit of this move now that it is successful, when he deserves all the blame for the first failure to take the place.

All this now is saddled on General Butler, and history will tell nothing of General Grant's share in it. I tell it to you for your own personal satisfaction, that you may know and feel that you are entitled to the entire credit for getting this expedition off, and for its success. I am merely the agent, and only use to advantage the ample means placed at my disposal, which any one else could have done as well as I. I expect you sometimes think I am a little too impolitic in what I say, but that is my nature. I am always ready to fight right away, if any one reflects upon the navy. I know that no country under the sun ever raised a navy as you have done in the same time, and that no navy ever did more. Could the navy operate in James River, Richmond would now be ours. Vicksburg, a stronger place, fell when the navy was brought to bear upon it. Every place has fallen where naval cannon have been brought into play. Our success here has been beyond my most sanguine expectations. I knew that we would have Caswell in less than a month; but I had no idea that the rebels would blow that and other works up so soon and leave us sole possession.

I am uneasy now for fear the enemy may turn all their force this way, and throw forty thousand men into the peninsula. They would retake Fort Fisher, even with the gunboats we have here, and turn the guns of the fort on us. The object is a great one, and if I was general of their forces, I would do it at all hazards. Yet this is not a pet place with the lieutenant-general, and he leaves it with about seven thousand men, and I don't think knows much of the situation. An army man thinks if he has a gunboat at his back he is all safe; but this is one case where, at times, the gunboats are driven off by bad weather, and those inside cannot co-operate effectively. I have given you a long letter, but find an apology for myself in the fact that I know your whole heart is with the navy, and that everything concerning it interests you. Again permit me to thank you kindly for the confidence you have always placed in me and the opportunities you have given me for distinction; and, assuring you that it has been my warmest wish to merit only your approbation, I remain, respectfully and sincerely,

Your obedient servant,