Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History
Benson Lossing, Ed.

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Butler, Benjamin Franklin, 1818-1893

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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.

disruption at Charleston in 1860; and he had served as a member of both Houses of the Massachusetts legislature. As brigadier-general of militia he hastened towards Washington, on the call of the President, with troops, in April, 1861, and landed at Annapolis. He was placed in command of the Department of Annapolis, which included Baltimore (q. v.). At the middle of May he was made major-general of volunteers, and put in command of the Department of Virginia, with headquarters at Fort Monroe, where he held as contraband all fugitive slaves. In August (1861), an expedition which he commanded captured forts Hatteras and Clarke; and, in the spring of 1862, he led another expedition for the capture of New Orleans, in which he was successful.

In New Orleans he elicited unbounded praise from loyal people because of his vigor and efficiency, and created the most intense hatred of himself personally among the Confederates by his restrictive measures. On his arrival he seized the fine St. Charles Hotel, and made it his headquarters. The mayor of the city, John T. Monroe, took an attitude of defiance. He refused to surrender the city, or take down the Louisiana flag from the [494] city hall. The editor of the True Delta refused to print Butler's proclamation in hand-bill form. The general invited the city authorities to a conference. The mayor at first refused to go, but finally went to the St. Charles, with Pierre Soule (formerly member of Congress) and other friends. They persisted in regarding Louisiana as an independent nation, and the National troops as invaders or intruders. An immense and threatening mob had collected in the streets in front of the St. Charles. Butler had placed troops there and a cannon for the protection of headquarters. The commander sent him word that the mob was pressing hard upon him. “Give my compliments to General Williams” (the commander), said Butler; “and tell him if he finds he cannot control the mob to open upon them with artillery.” The mayor and his friends sprang to their feet, exclaiming, “Don't do that, general!” “Why not, gentlemen?” said Butler; “the mob must be controlled. We can't have a disturbance in the street.” The mayor went to a balcony, informed the mob of the general's order, and persuaded them to disperse. Butler read a proclamation which he had prepared to Soule, who declared it would give great offence; that the people were not conquered and would never submit, and uttered a threat in smooth terms. To this Butler replied: “I have long been accustomed to hear threats from Southern gentlemen in political conventions; but let me assure the gentlemen present that the time for tactics of that nature has passed, never to return. New Orleans is a conquered city. If not, why are we here? How did we get here? Have you opened your arms, and bid us welcome? Are we here by your consent? Would you or would you not expel us if you could? New Orleans has been conquered by the forces of the United States, and, by the laws of all nations, lies subject to the will of the conqueror.” These utterances indicated the course General Butler intended to pursue in New Orleans and in the Department of the Gulf; and, within twenty-four hours after he had taken possession of the city, there was a perfect understanding between him and the people of their mutual relations. Butler, at the same time, took pains to remove all causes for unnecessary irritation, and removed his headquarters from the St. Charles to a private residence.

At the beginning of September, 1862, Butler was satisfied that the Confederates had abandoned all ideas of attempting to retake New Orleans, so he proceeded to “repossess” some of the rich districts of Louisiana. He sent Gen. Godfrey Weitzel with a brigade of infantry, with artillery, and Barnet's cavalry, late in October, into the region of the district of La Fourche, west of the Mississippi. On Oct. 27 Weitzel had a sharp fight at Labadieville with Confederates under General McPheeters. They were on both sides of the Bayou La Fourche, with six pieces of cannon. These Weitzel attacked with musketry and cannon. The Confederates were driven and pursued about 4 miles. Weitzel lost eighteen killed and seventy-four wounded. He captured 268 prisoners and one cannon. He then proceeded to open communication with New Orleans by the bayou and the railway connecting Brashear (afterwards Morgan) City with it. The whole country was abandoned, and the troops were received with joy by the negroes. All industrial operations there were paralyzed, and General Butler, as a state policy and for humane purposes, confiscated the entire property of the district, appointed a commission to take charge of it, and set the negroes to work, by which they were subsisted and the crops saved. Two congressional districts in Louisiana were thus “repossessed,” and the loyal citizens of New Orleans elected to seats in Congress Benjamin F. Flanders and Michael Hahn. In December, 1862, General Butler was succeeded by Gen. N. P. Banks (q. v.). in command of the Department of the Gulf. Late in 1863, he was placed in command of the Department of Virginia and North Carolina, and his force was designated the Army of the James. After an unsuccessful expedition against Fort Fisher, in December, 1864, General Butler retired to his residence in Massachusetts. He was elected to Congress in 1866, and was one of the principal managers of the House of Representatives in conducting the impeachment of President Johnson. He was a Republican Congressman until 1875, and again in 1877-79. In 1883 he was Democratic governor [495] of Massachusetts, and in 1884 the People's party candidate for President. He died in Washington, D. C., Jan. 11, 1893.

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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.

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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.