Butler, Benjamin Franklin, 1818-1893
Lawyer and soldier; born in Deerfield, N. H., Nov. 5, 1818; was graduated at Waterville College, Me., in 1838: was admitted to the bar in 1841; and continued the practice until 1861, with a high reputation as a criminal lawyer. He was an active politician in the Democratic party until its
Benjamin Franklin Butler. |
Farewell address in New Orleans.
As before stated, General Butler was superseded by General Banks in December, 1862. The latter assumed command of the army and department of the Gulf on the 16th, and the same day, after having formally relinquished the command, General Butler issued the following public address: Citizens of New Orleans,--It may not be inappropriate, as it is not inopportune in occasion, that there should be addressed to you a few words at parting, by one whose name is to be hereafter indissolubly connected with your city. I shall speak in no bitterness, because I am not conscious of a single personal animosity. Commanding the Army of the Gulf, I found you captured, but not surrendered; conquered, but not orderly; relieved from the presence of an army, but incapable of taking care of yourselves. So far from it, you had called upon a foreign legion to protect you from yourselves. I restored order, punished crime, opened commerce, brought provisions to your starving people, reformed your currency, and gave you quiet protection, such as you had not enjoyed for many years. While doing this, my soldiers were subjected to obloquy, reproach, and insult. And now, speaking to you, who know the truth, I here declare that whoever has quietly remained about his business, affording neither aid nor comfort to the enemies of the United States, has never been interfered with by the soldiers of the United States. The men who had assumed to govern you and to defend your city in arms having fled, some of your women flouted at the presence of those who came to protect them. By a simple order (No. 28) I called upon every soldier of this army to treat the women of New Orleans as a gentleman should deal with the sex, with such effect that I now call upon the just-minded ladies of New Orleans to say whether they have ever enjoyed so complete protection and calm quiet for themselves and their families as since the advent of the United States troops. The enemies of my country, unrepentant and implacable, I have treated with merited severity. I hold that rebellion is treason, and that treason persisted in is death, and any punishment short of that due a traitor gives so much clear gain to him from the clemency of the government. Upon this thesis have I administered the authority of the United States, because of which I am not unconscious of complaint. I do not feel that I have erred in too much harshness, for that harshness has ever been exhibited to disloyal enemies of my country, and not to loyal friends. To be sure, I might have regaled you with the amenities of British civilization, and yet been within the supposed rules of civilized warfare. You might have been smoked to death in caverns, as were the covenanters of Scotland, by the command of a general of the royal house of England; or roasted like the inhabitants of Algiers during the French campaigns; your wives and daughters might have been given over to the ravisher, as were the unfortunate dames of Spain in the Peninsular War; or you might have been scalped and tomahawked as our mothers were at Wyoming, by savage allies of Great Britain, in our own Revolution; your property could have been turned over to indiscriminate “loot,” like the palace of the Emperor of China; works of art which adorned your buildings might have been sent away, like the paintings of the Vatican; your sons might have been blown from the mouths of cannon, like the Sepoys of Delhi; and yet all this would have been within the rules of civilized warfare, as practised by the most polished and the most hypocritical nations of Europe. For such acts the records of the doings of some of the inhabitants of your city towards the friends of the Union, before my coming, were a sufficient provocative and justification. But I have not so conducted. On the contrary, the worst punishment inflicted, except for criminal acts punishable by every law. has been banishment, with labor, to a barren island, where I encamped my own soldiers before marching here. It is true, I have levied upon the wealthy rebels, and paid out nearly half a million of dollars. to feed 40,000 of the starving poor of all nations assembled here, made so by this war. I saw that this rebellion was a war of the aristocrat against the middling men; of the rich against the poor; a war [496] 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 disenthralment 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. And I shall now leave you with the proud consciousness that I carry with me the blessings of the humble and loyal under the roof of the cottage and in the cabin of the slave, and so am quite content to incur the sneers of the salon or the curses of the rich. I found you trembling at the terrors of servile insurrection. All danger of this I have prevented by so treating the slave that he had no cause to rebel. I found the dungeon, the chain, and the lash your only means of enforcing obedience in your servants. I leave them peaceful, laborious, controlled by the laws of kindness and justice. I have demonstrated that the pestilence can be kept from your borders. I have added a million of dollars to your wealth in the form of new land from the battue of the Mississippi. I have cleansed and improved your streets, canals, and public squares, and opened new avenues to unoccupied land. I have given you freedom of elections, greater than you have ever enjoyed before. I have caused justice to be administered so impartially that your own advocates have unanimously complimented the judges of my appointment. You have seen, therefore, the benefit of the laws and justice of the government against which you have rebelled. Why, then, will you not all return to your allegiance to that government — not with lip service, but with the heart? I conjure you, if you desire to see renewed prosperity, giving business to your streets and wharves — if you hope to see your city become again the mart of the Western world, fed by its rivers for more than 3,000 miles, draining the commerce of a country greater than the mind of man bath ever conceived — return to your allegiance. If you desire to leave to your children the inheritance you received of your fathers — a stable constitutional government — if you desire that they should in the future be a portion of the greatest empire the sun ever shone upon — return to your allegiance. There is but one thing that stands in the way. There is but one thing that this hour stands between you and the government, and that is slavery. The institution, cursed of God, which has taken its last refuge here, in His providence will be rooted out as the tares from the wheat, although the wheat be torn up with it. I have given much thought to this subject. I came among you, by teachings, by habit of mind, by political position, by social affinity, inclined to sustain your domestic laws, if by possibility they might be with safety to the Union. Months of experience and of observation have forced the conviction that the existence of slavery is incompatible with the safety either of yourselves or of the Union. As the system has gradually grown to its present huge dimensions, it were best if it could be gradually removed, but it is better, far better, that it should be taken out at once than that it should longer vitiate the social, political, and family relations of your country. I am speaking with no philanthropic views as regards the slave, but simply of the effect of slavery on the master. See for your1 selves. Look around you and say whether this saddening, deadening influence has not all but destroyed the very framework of your society. I am speaking the farewell words of one who has shown his devotion to his country at the peril of his life and fortune, who in these words can have neither hope nor interest, save the good of those whom he addresses; and let me here repeat, with all the solemnity of an appeal to Heaven to bear me witness, that such are the views forced upon me by experience. Come, then, to the unconditional support of the government. Take into your own hands your own institutions; remodel them according to the laws of nations and of God, and thus attain that great prosperity assured to you by geographical position, only a portion of which was heretofore yours.lawyer; born in Kinderhook Landing, N. Y., Dec. 17, 1795; studied law with Martin Van Buren in Hudson, and subsequently became his partner. In 1825 he was appointed one of the three commissioners to revise the Statutes of New York; in 1833-38 [497] was Attorney-General of the United States; and in 1836-37 was acting Secretary of War. In 1837 he became Professor of Law in the University of the City of New York. He was the author of Outlines of the constitutional history of New York. He died in Paris, France, Nov. 8, 1858.