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

Baltimore was in my military department, and in the absence of special orders to the contrary, I had as much right to go there as anywhere else if I chose, and surely there were no orders for me not to go into that city.

It is but fair for me to say that I had the strongest possible suspicion that if I asked General Scott for orders to occupy Baltimore he would refuse them, saying that men enough could not be spared from the defence of Washington to make the movement, and that he was waiting for more men. Now I believed and knew, and it so turned out, that it was comparatively as easy to capture Baltimore as it was to capture my supper. I knew it, but Scott did not. Was I not justified in acting upon my knowledge? I agree that the expedition was called hazardous by the know-nothings and timid ones, and it has been said it was undertaken in a spirit of “bravado,” as say Messrs. Nicolay and Hay in their Life of Lincoln, and that it was so looked upon by all those who did not know what they were talking and writing about; but I did know.

After it was done I was very much praised and applauded in some quarters for my bravery, daring, and courage in making the expedition, all of which were well enough for newspaper paragraphs, but I did not deserve plaudits. The greatest amount of my daring was that I ventured to do it without asking Scott's leave, as it afterwards turned out. But I do claim some credit that by vigilance and industry in getting knowledge which I used to find out what I wanted to know, I was certain of the exact state of things. I had the courage to rely on my convictions, which insured success.

A Baltimorean by the name of Ross Winans, a gray-haired old man of more than three score and ten, a bitter rebel, and reputed to be worth $15,000,000, had made five thousand pikes of the John Brown pattern, to be used by the rebels at Baltimore to oppose the march of the United States troops. Some of these very pikes were used by the mob which attacked the Sixth Regiment on its march to Washington. He was also the builder of the Winans steam gun, a very much relied upon instrument of warfare or assassination, costing a very large sum which my troops had captured coming down from Frederick on the 10th cay of May. I knew that he