USA > Massachusetts > Genealogical and personal memoirs relating to the families of the state of Massachusetts, Volume I > Part 126
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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 Washington on April 17. General Butler stayed behind to get his two other regi- ments in order, and to wait for the Eighth Regiment. which he took to the front April 18. He was in Philadelphia when his Sixth Regi- ment 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. Wash- ington would have been in the hands of the rebels before morning." With his command General Butler proceeded to Annapolis and took possession of it against the protest of the mavor 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 Washington and insured its safety. He occu- pied and held the Relay House, and so prevent- ed 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 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 tlie 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 under Mcclellan escaped from Harrison's
Landing. 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 29. 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 better system of recruiting sol- diers. He saw the political necessity of the sit- uation, and offered his services to President Lincoln to recruit six regiments of loyal Dem- ocrats in New England. That effort was suc- cessful, uniting the North, and destroying the suspicion that the war was a Republican party affair and to be supported by partisans of Lin- coln. He raised this division of six thousand men for the United States without the pay- ment of bounties or impressment. With them he sailed to Ship Island, in an expedition aimed at New Orleans, and, aided with an equal number of troops added to his command, co- operating with the fleet of the immortal Farra- gut 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 danger, 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 uncombated. 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 Congress or the Presi- dent 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 component and permanent part of the military resources 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 subse- quently commissioner for the exchange of prisoners.
In the spring of 1864. General Butler "devised, organized and perfected the strategy for a campaign against Richmond by having an impregnable intrenched camp containing thirty
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square miles of territory within its boundaries, which could be held by ten thousand men against the whole Rebel forces forever," 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 Bermuda Hun- dred, July 15, he captured Petersburg, but lost it, as he says, "through the sloth of incompe- tency of a corps commander who had a tech- nical military education." With the Army of the James, September 29, he captured Fort Harrison and a line of intrenched works, a strong part of the defences of Richmond, which were held by colored troops until Rich- mond 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 navi- gation 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 riot- ing. He was offered the portfolio of secretary of war. but declined it, as he had also declined to be nominated 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 dollars which he had collected in various ways, such as taxes on traders-tolls on cotton sent 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 complimented by his superiors for the condition of his accounts, and by the business men of that city for his regulation of the medium of exchange and the banking business, preventing 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 crimi- nals 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 General Butler has no superior. In taking charge of a depart- ment 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 Orleans.
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 inves- tigation, 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 Deilo- cratic party, which I supposed would be in the ascendant. could stand upon anything but the
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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 construe 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 became a candidate for president, and labored earn- estly in the hope that the Democratic vote in New York would be split and the Republican 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 poll- ing 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 Harri- son : after that he took no active part in poli- tics.
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 during the whole of his civil war service, except 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 Indian 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. Butler. 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 believed that there would be a war in each generation. 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 profession which 1 love and honor. Man proposes, but God dis- poses.'
FANEUIL The family of this name is of 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 interest, and it was largely through his instrumentality 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 abandoned. In 1740 Mr. Faneuil offered to provide at his own expense a market house for the town, but opposition was so strong that the vote of acceptance carried by only seven majority. though he was complimented with a unani- mous vote of thanks for his generosity The edifice was erected by the architect Smibert. was opened in 1842, and the auditorium was first publicly used on March 14, 1743. when John Lovell, the famous educator, pronounced a funeral oration upon Mr. Faneuil. On De- cember 30. 1760, the accession of George III to the throne of England was proclaimed 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 procered by means of a lottery. The building was illunii- nated in 1767, in joy over the repeal of the stamp act. In 1768 the citizens of Boston assembled in the hall to express their indigna-
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From the original picture bo Smithest in possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society
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tion at the quartering of British troops upon them, and to devise means for resisting 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 meetings from that time to the present. Mr. Faneuil died March 3. 1743.
No more popular and truly meri- HOAR torious family name comes to the mind in writing of the many cele- brated family circles of Massachusetts, than that to which the late lamented United States Senator, George F. Hoar, belonged. His an- cestors from the early day "Massachusetts Bay Colony," were men of great courage and activ- ity. One writer says, "They were in advance of the times in which they lived and were leaders to a higher and better sphere, both in social and political sense." The earliest of his male ancestors in this country was John Hoar, one of the three brothers who came with their sister and mother from Gloucester. England. The husband and father, Charles Hoar, was sheriff of Gloucester and died before his family came to America. His wife, Joanna, died at Braintree, 1661. They had three sons and two daughters. The sons were Daniel, who re- turned to England in 1653; Leonard, at Har- vard College 1650, and was president of that institution : and John. (See Hudson's "His- tory of Lexington," page 104. Genealogical Register ).
(II ) Leonard Hoar, son of Charles and Jo- anna ( Hincksman ) Hoar, of England, was president of Harvard College from 1672 until shortly before his death in 1675. He married Bridget Lisle, daughter of John Lord Lisle. Her father was president of the High Court of Justice in England under Cromwell, and drew the indictment and sentence of King Charles I. He was murdered in Lausanne, Switzerland, August 11. 1664, being shot in the back as he was on his way to church, by two Irish ruffians who were inspired by the hope of reward from some member of the Royal family in England. Bridget Lisle's mother was the Lady Alicia Lisle, who was in sym- pathy with the King, and was one of the earli-
est victims of the infamous Chief Justice Jef- fries, being charged with misprision of treason in aiding and concealing in her dwelling the day after the battle of Sedgemoor, Richard Nelthorpe, a lawyer, and John Hickes, a min- ister, accused of being refugees from Mon- mouth's army. She declared herself innocent of guilty knowledge, and protested against the illegality of her trial because the supposed rebels, to whom she had given common hospi- tality, had not been convicted. She was then advanced in years, and so feeble that it is said she was unable to keep awake during the tedious trial. Jeffries arrogantly refused her the aid of counsel, admitted irrelevant testimony, ex- celled himself in violent abuse, and so intimi- dated the jurors who were disposed to dismiss the charge, that they unwillingly at last brought in a verdict of guilty. She was hurriedly con- demned "to be burned alive" the very after- noon of the day of her trial, August 28, 1685, but, owing to the indignant protests of the clergy of Winchester, execution was postponed for five days, and the sentence was "altered from burning to beheading." This punish- ment was exacted in the market place of Win- chester on the appointed day, the implacable James II. refusing a pardon, although it was proved that Lady Lisle had protected many cavaliers in distress, and that her son John was serving in the royal army ; and many persons of high rank interceded for her, among whom was Lord Clarendon, brother-in-law to the King. Lady Lisle was connected by marriage with the Bond, Whitmore, Churchill and other families of distinction, and her granddaughter married Lord James Russell, fifth son of the first Duke of Bedford, thus connecting this tragedy with that of Lord William Russell, "the martyr of English liberty." In the first year of William and Mary's reign, the attainder was reversed by act of parliament upon peti- tion of Lady Lisle's two daughters, Tryphena Grove and Bridget (Hoar ) Usher. Among the eight great historical paintings which adorn the corridor leading to the House of Commons, the third of the series represents Lady Lisle's arrest. Lady Lisle's tomb is a heavy flat slab of grey stone, raised about two or three feet from the ground, near Ellingham church, close to the wall. on the right side of the church porch.
It is said that when Lady Lisle was carried on horseback by a trooper to Winchester for trial. the horse lost a shoe and fell lame. She insisted that the trooper should stop at a smith's and have the shoe replaced, on his refusal de-
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claring that she would make an outcry and re- sistance unless he did, saying that she could not bear to see the horse suffer. The blacksmith at first refused to do the work, saying that he would do nothing to help the carrying off of Lady Lisle, but on her earnest pleading, he did. She told him she would come back that way in a few days, but the trooper said. "Yes. you will come back in a few days, but without your head." The body was returned to Moyles Court the day of the execution ; the head was brought back a few days after in a basket, and put in at the pantry window ; the messenger said that the head was sent afterward for greater indignity.
There is a further tradition that when Lady Lisle heard of her husband's connection with the court which condemned King Charles, she was much distressed. It is well known that she disapproved the execution, and that she de- clared on her trial that she never ceased to pray for the King. The story further goes that she hastened to London and reached her husband's door as he had just mounted his horse to join the procession for some part of the proceeding of the court. She accosted him, but, being covered with a heavy veil, he did not recognize her. and roughly thrust her away. She fell under the horse's hoofs in a swoon: she was taken up and cared for by Hickes, one of the persons whom she afterward succored, and for relieving whom she was condemned. She remained in a swoon for a long time : her hus- band was sent for and visited her but, to use the phrase in which the story was told. "was very odious to her." She told Hickes that she could not repay him for his kindness in Lon- con. but if he came to the Isle of Wight, or to Moyles' Court, in both of which places she had property, she would repay him, saying, "At Moyles' Court I am mistress."
Bridget Hoar married ( second) November 29. 1676, Hezekiah Usher. Jr. A memorial to the memory of Joanna, wife of Charles Hoar. and to Bridget, wife of Leonard Hoar and daughter of Lady Lisle, in the form of a double headstone, shaped from a large, thick, slab of slate, was erected by Senator George F. Hoar, a descendant. Following are the inscriptions : "Joanna Hoare, died in Braintree, September 21st. 1651. She was widow of Charles Hoare. Sheriff of Gloucester, England, who died 1638. She came to New England with five children about 1640.
"Bridget, widow of President Leonard Hoar, died May 25. 1723. daughter of John Lord Lisle. President of the High Court of Justice,
Lord Commissioner of the Great Seal, who drew the indictment and sentence of King Charles I., and was murdered at Lausanne, Aug. 1Ith, 1664, and of Lady Alicia Lisle, who was beheaded by the brutal judgment of Jeffries, 1685. She was nearly akin by mar- riage to Lord William Russell."
(II) John Hoar, son of first family who located in New England by this name, was a lawyer, distinguished for bold manly independ- ence. He resided in Scituate, Massachusetts, from 1643 to 1655. It was about 1660 when he settled in Concord. and died April 2, 1704. His wife, Alice Lyle, sister of Bridget Lisle, who married Leonard Hoar, died June 5, 1697. Their children included Elizabeth, who, Decem- ber. 1675. married Jonathan Prescott ; Mary, married Benjamin Graves, October 21, 1668; and Daniel, married (first) Mary Stratton, (second) Mary Lee. The Hoar family were among the early Bay colonists, and some true conception of their character may be had by referring to a matter of New England history, wherein it is recorded that after the Indian massacre at Lancaster, at the time of King Philip's war. John Hoar, at the request of the colonial authorities, followed the Indian band far into the wilderness, and after great hard- ship and the exercise of great ingenuity, re- covered by ransom Mrs. Rowlandson, a lady captive from Lancaster. Iler account of her ransom is published. The rock where she was redeemed is close by the base of Wachusett Mountain, and has been marked by Senator Hoar by a suitable inscription.
( III) Daniel Hoar, son of John, born about 1655 : married. July 19, 1677, Mary Stratton. and October 16, 1717. Mary Lee. By these marriages the following children were born : John. October 24. 1678; Leonard, a captain. died April, 1771, aged eighty-seven years, in Brainfield, where a part of the descendants now reside, some having taken the name of Homer ; Daniel. 1680, married Sarah Jones ; Jonathan, died at the Castle, October 26, 1702 ; Joseph, died at sea, 1707; Benjamin ; Mary, March 14, 1689, died June 10, 1702; Samuel, April 6, 1601 : David, November 14, 1698; Isaac, May 18, 1695: Elizabeth, February 22. 1701.
(IV) Daniel (2) Hoar, son of Daniel (1) and great-grandson of the ancestor, born 1680; married Sarah Jones, daughter of John and Sarah Jones, December 20, 1705 ; lived in south- eastern part of Concord, where he died Febru- ary 8. 1773, aged ninety-three years. Their children were: 1. John. born January 6, 1707 ;
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