USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Genealogical and personal memoirs relating to the families of Boston and eastern Massachusetts > Part 19
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1819. For the war of 1812 he raised a com- pany of light dragoons, was commissioned captain, July 23, 1812, and served on the northern frontier. He married first, June 5. 1803, Sarah Batchelder, of Deerfield, New Hampshire ; second, July 21, 1811, Charlotte Ellison, who was born February 4, 1792, died October 4. 1870. Children of John and Sarah Butler : 1. Polly True, born June 8, 1804. 2. Sally, born March 11, 1805. 3. Betsey Mer- rill, born January 9, 1808; married Daniel B. Stevens, March 2, 1827 ; she died at Notting- ham, September 22. 1904: children: i. Eliza- beth B. Stevens, widow of Colonel John B. Batchelder, artist and historian; ii. Thomas Stevens ; iii. Amanda Stevens ; iv. Charlotte B. Stevens; resides at Washington, D. C .; v. Walter D. Stevens, of Derry, New Hamp- shire. Children of John and Charlotte Butler : 4. Charlotte, born May 13, 1812 ; died August, 1839. 5. Andrew Jackson, born February 13, 1815; died February 11, 1864; efficient aide and assistant of his brother in the civil war. 6. Benjamin Franklin, mentioned below.
(VII) General Benjamin Franklin Butler. son of Captain John Butler (6), was born No- vember 5, 1818, at Deerfield, New Hampshire ; died January 11, 1893. He was rather a puny child, and quiet, gentle, and eager to learn, at the age of four was taught his letters by his mother. In the summer he was sent away to a school in Nottingham Square, quite two miles from his home. He attended that school for six weeks and learned to read with little diffi- culty. He remained at home during the au- tumn, and in the following winter his mother and uncle provided a home for him in Deer- field with "Aunt Polly" Dame, and he went to school there. In the winter of his sixth year he walked from home every morning to Not- tingham Square to school, and proved a bright pupil. In the course of time he was virtually adopted by his grandmother, and attended a private school and academy at Deerfield until eight years of age, under James Hersey, after- ward postmaster of Manchester, New Hamp- shire. He was then sent to Phillips Exeter Academy to be fitted for college. A clergy- man, who had befriended his widowed mother, built a house for her to occupy in Lowell, and in 1828, at the close of the winter term, Butler went to his mother's house and studied Latin at home during the spring and summer fol- lowing, having the kindly assistance of Seth Ames, then a lawyer, afterwards a justice of the supreme court. Later in the year it be- came necessary for him to earn some money,
and his mother procured him a place at Meec- ham & Mathewson's, the Franklin bookstore, the only establishment of its kind in the town. He remained in this clerkship until December 18. 1830, when the Lowell high school was established through the exertions of Rev. Theo- dore Edson, rector of St. Anne's Church. He finished his fitting for college, to which he went unwillingly. He wished to go to West Point Military Academy and, when his ap- pointment seemed assured, his mother's clergy- man, a good Baptist, advised her to send the boy to the Baptist College at Waterville, Maine, in the labor department, where he could do something toward his own support. He was religiously brought up and inclined, giv- ing his good mother the hope that he would study for the ministry. His college career was a disappointment to him, having set his heart on the more virile and practical course at West Point. He became interested in chemistry and physics, outside of his prescribed work, and loved experimental research, and became lab- oratory assistant to Professor Holmes. He taught school during the long winter vacations at college. At the time of his graduation, Butler was so reduced by a severe cough that he weighed only ninety-seven pounds, and he seemed in danger of consumption. But a sea voyage restored him to health which even dur- ing the privation and exposure of the rebellion never deserted him until his last illness. On his return to Lowell he began the study of law in the office of William Smith, in the early autumn of 1838, and not many months later before he was admitted to the bar secured mnich valuable experience in the Lowell police court. In the autumn of 1839 he accepted the position of teacher in a Dracut school, but declined a reappointment, and devoted all his attention to studying law and practicing in the police court. At the September term of the court of common pleas in 1840, he was ad- mitted by Justice Charles Henry Warren.
He became interested in politics when quite young, he learned by heart the Constitution of the United States, and studied the funda- mental principles that divided the parties, as well as the public questions then agitating the public mind. The characteristic pugnacity and disregard of his future interests were shown in his first struggle. He took advantage of a coalition made by the Democrats and the new Free Soil party in 1851, made to defeat the Whigs, and secured candidates from Lowell pledged to the ten-hour movement. He was a Democrat. It was impossible to carry
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Buy Fonithez
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through this radical reform in the legislature, but great strides were made in the right direc- tion, and after unsuccessful efforts in several legislatures a compromise bill was enacted, fixing the hours of labor at eleven and a quarter. In 1852 he was elected to the gen- eral court, and again he espoused a very un- popular cause, the reimbursement of the Order of St. Ursula for the destruction in 1834 of their convent in Charlestown by an anti-Catho- lic mob. In the constitutional convention of 1852 he was a delegate from Lowell, and served as chairman of the committee to which was assigned the revision of Chapter Six of the old constitution. The defeat of this constitu- tion at the polls by the Roman Catholics brought the triumph of the Know-nothing party in 1855 and the downfall of the Whigs in Massachusetts. He attended every Demo- cratic national convention from 1848 to 1860 inclusive ; and was frequently a candidate for congress, but his party in Lowell was in a hopeless minority. In 1858 he was elected to the state senate from Lowell, the only Demo- crat on the ticket. He drew the act reform- ing the judiciary of the state and the superior court established in place of the old court of common pleas. Most of the provisions of that act are still the law of the state. In 1860 he accepted the nomination for governor of Mass- achusetts from the Breckinridge wing of the Democratic party, and received only about six thousand votes while as the Democratic candi- date for governor in 1859 he had had more than 35,000. He was a member of the na- tional committee of that wing of his party. But when the war broke out, he stood by the Republican governor of Massachusetts and the Republican president, and became the most conspicuous volunteer general of the beginning of the war, on account of his former political affiliations making his example of incalculable value to other Democrats who were brought to enlist and fight for the Union, and on ac- count of his promptness in getting his troops to Baltimore and his success in action.
He came of a race of fighters. In 1839 he enlisted in the Lowell City Guard and served three years as a private. Step by step he was promoted until he became colonel of the regi- ment in which he first enlisted. During the Know-nothing furore, Governor Gardner re- organized the militia of the state for the ex- press purpose of disbanding companies of Roman Catholic soldiers, and as a conse- quence Colonel Butler lost his command, it being assigned to another district in which he
did not live. Not long afterward, however. he was elected brigadier-general by the field officers of the brigade, and received his com- mission from the same Know-nothing gover- nor. He encamped with his brigade in 1857, 1858, 1859 and 1860. In 1860 Governor Banks called together the whole volunteer militia, six thousand men, at Concord, so that when he went into service he had seen together for discipline, instruction and military move- ment, a larger body of troops than even Gen- eral Scott, the commander-in-chief himself. With foresight and persistent effort, General Butler caused the Massachusetts volunteer militia to be made ready so that they were the first organized armed force marched into Washington for its defence. As early as Jan- uary 19, 1861, the Sixth Regiment under Col- onel Edward F. Jones, of Lowell, was pre- pared and tendered its services to the govern- ment. When the call came it found General Butler trying an important case in Boston. He stopped short, asked the judge for adjourn- ment, and in fact, Butler tells us that the case has never been finished. He helped devise the means to raise money to transport the troops. The Sixth Regiment, strengthened with two companies from others, started for Washing- ton on April 17. General Butler stayed be- hind to get his two other regiments in order, and to wait for the Eighth Regiment, which he took to the front April 18. He was in Philadelphia when his Sixth Regiment was attacked in Baltimore with six men killed and thirty wounded. The Sixth finally reached the capital, and President Lincoln, as he shook the colonel's hand, said: "Thank God you have come; for if you had not, Washington would have been in the hands of the rebels before morning." With his command General Butler proceeded to Annapolis and took pos- session of it against the protest of the mayor and of the governor of the state, of which it was one of the capitals. Thus he held open a way for the transportation of troops to Wash- ington and insured its safety. He occupied and held the Relay House, and so prevented an assault upon Washington from Harper's Ferry, which the rebels had captured and were occupying for that purpose. From thence he made a descent upon Baltimore and established it as a Union city, which it always remained. These movements effectually prevented the secession 'of Maryland, and held her loyal through the war.
He was placed in command of the Depart- ment of Virginia, North Carolina and South
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Carolina, with headquarters at Fortress Mon- roe. He had immediately to solve one of the most perplexing questions of the war. Under the civil law, the negro slaves that took refuge in the Union lines were chattels, and should be returned to their owners, but it would be out of the question for northern troops to act as slave-catchers. Butler cut the Gordian knot, to the relief of the whole country, by declaring the slaves contraband of war-a legal subter- fuge, under which during the rest of the war the slaves were set free, and which paved the way for the Emancipation Proclamation. No single act or thought early in the war helped the Union cause more. Within forty-five days after the fall of Fort Sumter, without orders from anybody, he seized and strongly fortified the important strategic point of Newport News, at the mouth of the James river, which was held during the war, thus keeping open a water way for the transportation of troops and supplies to the intrenchments around Rich- mond, by which the Army of the Potomac un- der McClellan escaped from Harrison's Land- ing. In co-operation with the navy he captured Fort Hatteras and Fort Clark (thus making the holding of the sounds of Virginia and North and South Carolina possible ) August 20, 1861, the first victory of any account that came to the Union army, taking 715 prisoners. and giving new courage after the defeat at Bull Run. He went home on leave of absence. but soon became aroused to the need of a bet- ter system of recruiting soldiers. He saw the political necessity of the situation, and offered his services to President Lincoln to recruit six regiments of loyal Democrats in New England. That effort was successful, uniting the North. and destroying the suspicion that the war was a Republican party affair and to be supported by partisans of Lincoln. He raised this divi- sion of six thousand men for the United States without the payment of bounties or impress- ment. With them he sailed to Ship Island, in an expedition aimed at New Orleans, and, aid- ed with an equal number of troops added to his command, co-operating with the fleet of the immortal Farragut to his entire satisfaction. they opened the Mississippi, captured New Orleans, subdued Louisiana, and held all of it that was ever held afterwards permanently as a part of the United States. He enforced there a proper respect for the nation's flag, its laws and power. By proper sanitary regulations he rescued New Orleans, the commercial port of the Gulf of Mexico, from its most potent dan- ger, the yellow fever, from the ravages of
which in no year had it ever escaped, a foe which the rebels relied upon to destroy Butler's army, as it surely would have done if left un- combated. He enlisted there the first colored troops ever legally mustered into the army of the United States, thus inaugurating the policy of arming the colored race before Con- gress or the President had adopted it, and by so doing pointing the way to recruiting the armies of the United States by the enlistment of colored men to the number of 150,000, and establishing the negro soldier as a compon- ent and permanent part of the military re- sources of the country. He was superseded by General Banks in command of New Orleans. He was appointed again to the command of the Department of Virginia and North Carolina. November 2. 1863. and subsequently commis- sioner for the exchange of prisoners.
In the spring of 1864, General Butler "de- vised, organized and perfected the strategy for a campaign against Richmond by having an impregnable intrenched camp containing thirty square miles of territory within its boundaries, which could be held by ten thou- sand men against the whole Rebel forces for- ever," to quote his own words, "within eight miles of the Rebel capital, like a hand upon its throat never to be unclenched, as it never was." From that intrenched camp at Ber- muda Hundred, July 15. he captured Peters- burg, but lost it, as he says, "through the sloth or incompetency of a corps commander who had a technical military education." With the Army of the James, September 29. he captured Fort Harrison and a line of in- trenched works, a strong part of the defences of Richmond, which were held by colored troops until Richmond was evacuated. He planned, carried out and constructed the great* strategic work, the Dutch Gap Canal, and which remains to this day a most valuable public work in the navigation of the James River, worth more as a commercial avenue in time of peace than all it cost as a military undertaking. He was sent to New York at the time of the presidential election, and took effectual means to prevent disorder and threatened illegal voting and rioting. He was offered the portfolio of secretary of war, but declined it, as he had also declined to be nomi- nated as vice-president on Lincoln's ticket.
In January, 1865, when General Butler was relieved from the command, he accounted for and returned over five hundred thousand dol- lars which he had collected in various ways. such as taxes on traders-tolls on cotton sent
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north. With the money thus shrewdly gained for the Union cause, he paid largely the cost of the Dutch Gap Canal; built a hospital at Point of Rocks and barracks at Fortress Monroe, etc. He used the revenues at New Orleans with great shrewdness, and was com- plimented by his superiors for the conditon of his accounts, and by the business men of that city for his regulation of the medium of exchange and the banking business, prevent- ing hardship to the people, and yet saving the banks from disaster. He cleaned Norfolk,
Virginia, just as he had cleaned New Orleans and made it habitable. He put deserters and petty criminals to work on the streets, taking for three months a thousand loads of filth a week out of the city. He was as proud of keeping the yellow fever out of Norfolk as out of New Orleans. Grant himself wrote to Lincoln: "As an administrative officer Gen- eral Butler has no superior. In taking charge of a department where there are no great battles to be fought, but a dissatisfied element to control, no one could manage it better than he." That describes the popular opinion as well, after his work in Norfolk and New Or- leans.
In 1866 he was elected to congress from the Essex district as a Republican, although his residence was in Lowell. He was placed on the committee on appropriations. He took an active part in the debates of the house. He took up the cudgels for the legal tender or "greenback" currency issued as a war measure, and the controversy over this money lasted many years. A party known as the Green- back Party existed for several years and Gen- eral Butler became a prominent figure in it. ,In 1868 Butler was re-elected, and again in 1870 and 1872, but in 1874 he was defeated. In 1867 he became one of the most prominent figures in the impeachment of the president, as the attorney for the board of managers on the part of the house in the trial before the senate, making the opening argument. In 1871 he became a candidate in the Republican con- vention for the nomination for governor, and was defeated by William B. Washburn. The following year he ran again against Governor Washburn. He was an independent candidate for governor in 1878, and as such reduced the Republican majority largely. He also had the nomination of the Democratic party, but a section of that party supported another candi- date, and he again was defeated. In 1879 he was again the Democratic and so-called "Greenback" candidate, and was again de-
feated. In 1880 he supported the nomination of General Hancock for president. In 1882 he again became the Democratic candidate for governor, and after a hot canvass won by fourteen thousand plurality. His administra- tion was hampered by the fact that his council was almost unanimously Republican, as well as the legislature. He had one sensational in- vestigation, that of the Tewksbury almshouse, something in the line of what has come in fashion generally in later days of muck-raking and graft-probing. The Republican party nominated George D. Robinson, and the Re- publican governor reclaimed the state by a slender majority of nine thousand. In 1884 General Butler was elected by the Democratic state convention one of the delegates-at-large to the national convention at Chicago, and served on the platform committee. General Butler had always stood for the doctrine of a protective tariff for American industries. "I could not agree," he said, "that the Demo- cratic party, which I supposed would be in the ascendant, could stand upon anything but the Jackson doctrine of a 'judicious tariff,' a tariff to raise sufficient revenue for the wants of the country, and to give American industry inci- dental protection against foreign labor. I was overruled, and some mongrel resolution was adopted which meant anything or nothing, as one chose to construc it." He declined to sup- port any candidate on that platform, and effected a fusion between the Democrat and Greenback parties in Michigan, but failed in other states to carry out his plan, which would have defeated Cleveland's election. He be- came a candidate for president, and labored earnestly in the hope that the Democratic vote in New York would be split and the Republi- can candidate elected. He says: "Election day came and there were votes enough thrown for me several times over to have prevented Mr. Cleveland's election, but in many of the polling places they were counted not for me but for Cleveland," and so the electoral vote of the state of New York was counted for him by a few hundred votes only. In 1888 Mr. Butler made two speeches in favor of General Harrison ; after that he took no active part in politics.
He married, May 16, 1844, at St. Anne's Church, Lowell, Sarah Hildreth, daughter of Dr. Israel Hildreth, of Dracut, a town adjoin- ing Lowell. Mrs. Butler had a distinguished career on the stage before her marriage. After her marriage she devoted herself wholly to her husband and family, and was with him
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FITTE FANTEIL.
From the original picture by Smihert ili possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society
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during the whole of his civil war service, ex- cept during active campaigning. She died April 8, 1876. Children : 1. Paul, born June, 1846, died April, 1850. 2. Blanche, born 1847 ; married, 1871, Adelbert Ames. 3. Paul, born 1852; graduate of Harvard College in 1875. 4. Ben Israel, mentioned below.
(V) Ben Israel Butler, son of General Ben- jamin F. Butler (4), was born in Lowell in 1854. He was educated in the public schools and high school of Lowell, and at West Point. He graduated with honor, and accepted a lieu- tenant's commission in a regiment of colored troops stationed on the Plains, that he might have, in addition to his instruction at the acad- emy, the knowledge of the movement and care of troops in the field and in actual service. In this onerous work of defending the scattered population of the frontier from Indians raids, he served one year.
Four generations of the Butler family fought in the wars of their country and held commissions. General Butler had the swords of Captain Zachariah Butler, of the French War and Revolution : Captain John Butler of the war of 1812; General Benjamin F. But- ler, of the Civil War, and that of his son ; all kept together in a glass case at his home, a unique and perhaps unexampled testimony of the loyalty and military prowess of one family in direct line of descent. General Butler be- lieved that there would be a war in each gen- eration, and wished his son to be prepared to do his part, but he planned also to make him his partner in the law business. He studied at Columbia Law School in New York, and after two years was admitted to the bar, but on the very day that his career in partnership with his distinguished father was to begin, he died, September 1, 1881. "I had hoped to lean upon him in my declining years," wrote his father, "to take my place in that profes- sion which I love and honor. Man proposes, but God disposes."
The family of this name is of FANEUIL French Huguenot origin, and was planted in New York, in what is now Westchester county, in 1690, and there certain of its members founded the town of New Rochelle. In 1701 they removed to Boston, Massachusetts, where Peter Faneuil came into prominence as a merchant. When the project of establishing a public market was mooted, in 1717, he took an active inter- est, and it was largely through his instrument- ality that in 1734 an appropriation of £700
was made by the town for building market houses. These did not meet with favor from the country people, and they were soon aban- doned. In 1740 Mr. Faneuil offered to pro- vide at his own expense a market house for the town, but opposition was so strong that the vote of acceptance carried by only seven ma- jority, though he was complimented with a unanimous vote of thanks for his generosity. The edifice was erected by the architect Smi- bert, was opened in 1842, and the auditorium was first publicly used on March 14, 1743, when John Lovell, the famous educator, pro- nounced a funeral oration upon Mr. Faneuil. On December 30, 1760, the accession of George III to the throne of England was pro- climed from the balcony, and a state dinner was served in the hall. The hall was burned down in 1761, and in 1763 was rebuilt by the town, a large part of the building fund being procurred by means of a lottery. The build- ing was illuminated in 1767, in joy over the repeal of the stamp act. In 1768 the citizens of Boston assembled in the hall to express their indignation at the quartering of British troops upon them, and to devise means for re- sisting British oppression. British troops were quartered in the hall in October, 1768, and it was used as a theatre by the soldiers and loyalists during the British occupation. After the British had retired from the city, the hall was held for patriotic purposes, and became known as "The Cradle of American Liberty." The hall was remodeled in 1805, after designs by Bulfinch. The first city government was organized within its walls, in 1822. The hall has been used for patriotic and reform meet- ings from that time to the present. Mr. Fan- euil died March 3, 1743.
POPE Joseph Pope, immigrant ancestor of one branch of the New England family of that name, born in Eng- land, is said to have been a son of Robert Pope, of Yorkshire. He came from London in the "Mary and John," in 1634 ; was admitted mem- ber of the church in Salem before 1636; was made freeman in 1637, and had lands granted in that year and afterward in that part of Salem now known as West Danvers, some of it bordering on Ipswich river. In 1658 he and his wife Gertrude were summoned before the court on a charge of attending Quaker meetings, and in 1662 were dismissed from the church of their adherence to the teachings of the Society of Friends. Joseph Pope died about 1667, and his will, dated September 10,
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