USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Historic homes and places and genealogical and personal memoirs relating to the families of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, Volume III > Part 80
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91 | Part 92 | Part 93 | Part 94 | Part 95 | Part 96 | Part 97 | Part 98 | Part 99
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 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 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 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. Presumably on ac- count of his politics, 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, notwith- standing the angry proclamation of Jefferson Davis ordering him hanged if captured, and placing a big reward on his head at the time he "tamed" New Orleans. He grappled again with a trying problem. After a time, the ex- change ceased. The North wished the prison- ers exchanged to save the suffering and starv- ing Union soldiers in Rebel prisons, but Gen- eral Grant declined to have further exchanges, on the ground that the armies of the South were recruited by the exchange, while the Union soldiers were reduced to such condition
I278
MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
that their value as soldiers had ceased. Gen- eral Butler haggled over the terms of exchange and the treatment of captive negro soldiers, all to carry out the secret purpose of his com- mander-in-chief.
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." He fortified it as a refuge to which the Army of the Potomac could repair in safety as a base of supplies, as it did when it failed to drive Lee's army in retreat to the defences of Richmond. He took possession of this camp, to be intrenched, by a march wholly of his own planning and execution, by moving more than thirty thousand men, with their artillery, supplies and munitions of war, by water, seventy-five miles through the enemy's country, in a single day, without the loss of a man, and without any knowledge on the part of the rebels of his presence until he was in camp. 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, which was prevented from being made entire- ly efficient only by a naval officer who was af- terward convicted for cowardice in that mat- ter, and which remains to this day a most val- uable 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 says: "By firmness of purpose which subsequent events have shown to have been the best military judg- ment, as I knew it was then, I prevented my major-general of division from making an as- sault on Fort Fisher by which very many of the troops of the expedition would have been slaughtered in a useless attack. In all mili- tary events I never met with disaster, nor uselessly sacrificed the lives of my men." He was sent to New York at the time of the pres-
idential election, and took effectual means to prevent disorder and threatened illegal voting and rioting. He has called this creditable feat "taming Mackerelville." As a result of his success, the premium on gold failed to make its promised advance to three hundred, and the election of Lincoln gave evidence that the Union would be saved, that McClellan's idea of a dictatorship would be avoided; and the credit of the country grew more firm, the con- fidence of the people in the government stronger, and the courage of the men in the field better. Butler was offered the portfolio of secretary of war, but declined it, as he had also declined to be nominated as vice-presi- dent on Lincoln's ticket. At a banquet in New York, tendered him by the leading citi- zens after election, Rev. Henry Ward Beech- er nominated him as Lincoln's successor to the presidency. General Butler did not take the compliment of Beecher seriously, but had occasion afterward to regret that he had not turned the political current, as he could easily have done by suggesting Grant as the only logical successor to Lincoln. As it was, he became handicapped by the supposition in high quarters that he had political intentions of the kind suggested.
In January, 1865, when General Butler was relieved from his command, he accounted for and turned over five hundred thousand dol- lars 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 com- plimented 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, 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
-- -
I279
MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
opinion as well, after his work in Norfolk and New Orleans.
For twenty years after the war, General Butler was one of the foremost figures in the political world. In 1866 he was elected to con- gress from the Essex district as a Republican, although his residence was in Lowell. He was placed on the committee on appropria- tions. 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 Greenback Party existed for several years, and General Butler became a promi- nent figure in it. In 1868 Butler was re-elect- ed, and again in 1870 and 1872, but in 1874 he was defeated. In 1867 he became one of the most prominent figures in the impeach- ment 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 convention for the nomination for governor, and was de- feated by William B. Washburn. The follow- ing year he ran again against Governor Washburn. General Butler claimed that he had a majority of the delegates elected, that the Republican state committee by fraud and contests secured his defeat, and then declared that he should never be governor of the state. "I then came to the conclusion," he writes, "that I could not be governor in the Repub- lican party. I allowed myself to be put in nomination as 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, "the first Democratic candidate I had supported since the war began." In 1882 he again . became the Democratic candidate for governor, and after a hot canvass won by fourteen thousand plurality. His administration was hampered by the fact that his council was almost unan- imously Republican, as well as the legislature. He had one sensational investigation, 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 gathered its forces to-
gether, nominated George D. Robinson, and a historic campaign was fought in the fall of 1884 when the Republican governor re- claimed the state by a slender majority of nine thousand. But General Butler, by his own force of character and personal magnet- ism, had broken down party lines and carried his long battle against the Republican poli- ticians. He had been governor of the com- monwealth in spite of them and their allies in the opposing party. In 1884 General Butler was elected by the Democratic state conven- tion one of the delegates-at-large to the na- tional convention at Chicago, and served on the platform committee. Now General But- ler had always stood for the doctrine of a pro- tective tariff for American industries. He thought all other national questions at that time subordinate to that. "I could not agree," he said, "that the Democratic 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 suffi- cient revenue for the wants of the country, and to give American industry incidental pro- tection against foreign labor. I was over- ruled, and some mongrel resolution was adopted which meant anything or nothing, as one chose to construe it." He declined to support 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 Re- publican candidate elected. He says: "Elec- tion day came and there were votes enough thrown for me several times over to have pre- vented 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. If John Kelly had not fallen sick, General Butler's contest in New York would have been pushed stoutly, and doubtless Blaine, not Cleveland, would have been seated as president. In 1888 Mr. Butler made two speeches in favor of General Harrison: after that he took no active part in politics.
General Butler's thorough knowledge of law and his successful practice of the pro- fession of law had much to do with his suc- cess as a military and political leader. He says of himself: "I tried my cases critically,
I280
MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
catching at every point in the faults of my op- ponents, and of course was immediately called 'sharp' by the attorneys conducting criminal cases, who frequently begged of me to over- look their blunders which might enable me to save my clients. But upon these matters I was inexorable; I held that a good point of law in his favor was as much the property of my client as was a good point of fact, and that I had no more right to waive one than to give up the other. I was quite successful in my defence of criminals." * * Mr. Butler thus states the reasons of his professional success: "The closest application to the study of law applicable to any case in hand, and careful thought of what the law ought to be as applied to the case, and then the most careful study of the books to see how it has been applied in like instances. I thought out my cases, and thought out the law as applied to them, and then verified or corrected my thought by the opinions of the courts. The highest legal authority has declared the com- mon law to be the perfection of common sense, so that any man who thoughtfully ap- plies his common sense ought to know what the common law is. The only need he has of the cases in the books is not so much to guide himself, as to use them to direct the minds of judges to adopt his common sense as the law of the case, resulting from precedents. *
* I am called in largely in desperate cases, but I have made it a rule of my life never to refuse to assist in trying cases, however des- perate, if I believe there is any chance to win." John Quincy Adams Griffin said of Butler: "General Butler had the power, pos- sessed by but few men, of attending to sev- eral important mental operations at the same time. * * * Unexampled success attend- ed his professional efforts, so characterized by zeal and shrewdness. When the war sum- moned him from his toils, he had a larger practice than any other man in the state. I have no doubt that he tried four times more causes, at least, than any other lawyer, during the ten years preceding the war. The same qualities that made him efficient in war made him efficient as a lawyer-fertile in resources and stratagem, earnest and zealous to an ex- traordinary degree, certain of the integrity of his client's cause, and not inclined to criti- cise and inquire whether it was strictly con- stitutional or not, but defending the whole line with a boldness and energy that generally carried court and jury alike. His ingenuity is exhaustless. If he makes a mistake in
speech or action, it has no sinister effect, for the reason that he will himself discover and correct the error before any 'barren spectator' has seized upon it. He is faithful and ten- acious to the last degree. There is no possi- bility of treachery in his conduct. He would not betray the devil to his fellow. * A pleasant humor and a lively wit, and their constant exercise, are the possession and the habit of General Butler."
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. She had been taught Shakespeare's plays by her father, and began her professional life at the Tremont Theatre in Boston and the Park Theatre, New York, with brilliant success. She was trained for her work by Mrs. Vernon, a very accomplished tragedienne, and Isaac C. Pray, a playwright, in one of whose plays she made her first appearance. After her marriage she devoted herself wholly to her husband and family. She was with him during the whole of his civil war service, except during active campaigning. General Butler wrote: "My wife, with a devotion quite unparalleled, gave me her support by accompanying me, at my earnest wish, in every expedition in the war of the rebellion, and made for me a home wher- ever I was stationed in command. She joined me at Annapolis, and accompanied me to Fort- ress Monroe when I was assigned there in May, 1861. She went with me on the expe- dition to Ship Island for the attack upon New Orleans, wherein I was exposed to the greatest peril of my life; and only when my ship was hourly expected to go to pieces, and when I importunately appealed to her good sense that our children must not be bereft of both pa- rents, did she leave me to seek safety on board a gunboat. She suffered great privations and hardships on the sands of Ship Island while we were awaiting the attack on New Orleans, and was on the first vessel that went up the river after the surrender of Forts Jackson and St. Philip. She went ashore with me and lodged at the St. Charles Hotel on the night after I took possession of New Orleans. *
* Thus I had an advantage over most of my brother commanding generals in the de- partment and in the field, in having an adviser, faithful and true, clear-headed, conscientious and conservative, whose conclusions could al- ways be trusted. Returning home with me after I retired to civil and political life, Mrs. Butler
I28I
MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
remained the same good adviser, educating and guiding her children during their young lives with such skill and success that neither of them ever did an act which caused me serious sor- row or gave me the least anxiety on their be- half. She made my home and family as happy as we could be. She took her place in society while in Washington, and maintained it with such grace, dignity, and loveliness of charac- ter that no one ever said an unkind or dis- paraging word of her." She died April 8, 1876. Children : I. Paul, born June, 1846, died April, 1850. 2. Blanche, born 1847; married, 1871, Adelbert Ames (see sketch). 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 lieutenant's commission in a regiment of col- ored troops stationed on the Plains, that he might have, in addition to his instruction at the academy, 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 on 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. 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 sketch of the Ames family shows that a fifth generation has added its contribution to the military history of General Butler's family.
AMES Captain Anthony Ames (or
Eames, as. the name was more commonly spelled by the early generations in America, although as early as 1652 his name is spelled and was doubtless pronounced "Ames,") was the immigrant an- cestor of this family. He was a proprietor of the town of Charlestown, Massachusetts, as early as 1634. (Pope's "Pioneers of Massa- chusetts," p. 149). A few years later he re- moved to Hingham, Massachusetts, and in 1636 owned a house lot there on the Lower Plain. From the first he appears to have been one of the foremost citizens of Hing- ham. He was admitted a freeman March 9, 1636-1637, and represented the town in the gen- eral court in 1637, 1638, 1639, 1643 and 1644. He assisted in laying out the boundary between the Massachusetts and Plymouth patents. He was lieutenant of the military company, but when he was chosen captain there was a seri- ous controversy between his friends and others, developing into a lasting difference that continued for several generations to di- vide the citizens of Hingham. The town granted permission to Anthony Ames, Sam- uel Ward and Bozoun Allen, June 12, 1643, to set up a corn mill for the town; Gowen Wilson had been miller of the town; in future either Thomas Lincoln or John Pogger was to be the miller. He removed to Marshfield, in Plymouth Colony, about 1650. He and his son Mark bought a house and land to- gether at Marshfield, December 10, 1651. For many generations the family lived in that town. He was deputy to the general court at Plymouth in 1653, 1654, 1655, 1656, 1657, 1658 and 1661, and was a member of the council of war. He was admitted freeman in the Plymouth Colony, March, 1654-5. He also served the town of Marshfield as mod- erator. His wife Margery was admitted to the Charlestown church, September 13, 1635. Children: I. John, died at Hingham in 1641. 2. Mark, born 1620; died September, 1698; witness of will of John Rogers, at Marshfield, with his father Anthony, February 1, 1660; appraiser of estate of Robert Waterman, of Marshfield, January 13, 1652 ; also of Thomas Little's estate, July 1, 1672; deputy to the general court, 1662, and fourteen years out of the next twenty; children: i. John, born at Marshfield, September 6, 1649; ii. Jona- than, born 1656; iii. Elizabeth, married, De- cember 5, 1672, Andrew Lane. 3. Margery, married October 20, 1653, John Jacobs. 4. Elizabeth, married Edward Wilder, of Hing-
I282
MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
ham. 5. Justus, mentioned below. 6. Milli- cent, married William Sprague. 7. Daugh- ter, married Michael Peirse. (Michael re- fers to Anthony as "father" and to Mark as "brother" in his will). The foregoing are probably not in order of birth.
(II) Justus Ames, son of Anthony Ames (1), was born in 1626, in England, and died in 1697, in Marshfield. He settled in Marsh- field, and married, May 2, 1661, Mehitable Chillingworth, daughter of Thomas Chilling- worth, a pioneer at Sandwich and Marshfield. Justus served as juror at grand inquests in 1669 and 1677. His children were mentioned in his will proved in 1697, viz .: I. Anthony, mentioned below. 2. Nathaniel. 3. John. 4. Josiah, married Hannah 5. Joseph. 6. Ephraim. 7. Millicent. 8. Justus, Jr., and four daughters whose names are not given.
(III) Anthony Ames, son of Justus Ames (2), was born probably in Marshfield, in 1663, and died in 1739. He married Elizabeth He settled at Marshfield; was on the jury in 1692; moderator in 1722, 1724, and 1725; selectman in 1694 and 1714, 1716, 1717 and 1719; treasurer in 1734. He used the designation "Jr." on account of an elder An- thony, not his father, until about 1706. His will was dated January 17, 1738-9; in it he mentions the following children: I. Anthony, Jr. 2. Margery; married November 5, 1719. 3. Thomas. 4. Caleb, born July, 1702. 5. Joshua, born November, 1704. 6. Elizabeth, born November, 1704. 7. Elizabeth, born July, 1706; married Samuel Williamson. 8. Benjamin, born September, 1709. 9. Eben- ezer, born December 20, 1711; mentioned be- low.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.