He was ugly. Short, fat, cross-eyed; balding with a fringe of unkempt, oily hair; loud and obstreperous. Endowed with a strong sense of his own interest and a defiant sense of honor, he hated aristocracy and loved the underdog. When the Southern secession first broke out, he raised Massa-chusetts regiments for the Union, got himself appointed their commander, and led them to secure the nation's capital before many in the North even realized the danger.
He ruled the captured city of New Orleans with an iron fist and a price on his head, stamped out yellow fever with relentless (and unwelcome) sanitation and harsh quarantines, and prevented outright starvation among the city's poor, while occasionally despoiling its secessionist rich. As a politically-appointed general, his stunning success in capturing and paci-fying Baltimore, then shutting down Maryland's secession, masked his practical inexperience in battlefield operations. As well, a fondness for the lives of his men probably undermined the untutored military judgment he possessed.
He campaigned to legislate a ten-hour workday in his home state at a time when fourteen was the norm, and gleefully represented Lowell mill-girls in court against their blue-blooded employers. As a criminal defense lawyer, he became a sensation. As a politician, he reveled in his enemies as much as he treasured his friends.
His funeral procession, long after he had faded from public life, was reported to have been a mile-and-a-half long.
This unruly force of nature, flamboyant, unapologetic, forgotten by history, was called by the name Benjamin Franklin Butler.
(This memoir was written by Benjamin Butler and copyrighted by him in 1892. It is currently in the public domain. The text has been re-typeset and reformatted. It is not a facsimile. A few typographical errors in the original were corrected, but original spellings that were usual at the time have been retained. One error was deliberately left uncorrected, which is the consistent spelling of Drewry's Bluff as "Drury's Bluff" in the text, although it is correct in the map on page 557.)
Introduction (c)2026 by Rhapsody Press Books.
A maverick lawyer, Benjamin Butler early recognized the danger from the seceding Southern states and convinced the governor of Massachusetts to allow him to raise militia to protect the nation's capital. Appointed to command, Butler secured Baltimore, prevented Maryland's secession, and quickly got his troops into the capital. He later occupied New Orleans, then commanded the Army of the James in support of Grant. After the War, Butler went back into private law practice, served in Congress, and served as governor of Massachusetts. He was opinionated, outspoken, and sometimes unpredictable, and controversy always followed his legal, military, and political careers. Yet he never shied from it.
