USA > New Mexico > Men of our day; or, biographical sketches of patriots, orators, statemen, generals, reformers, financiers and merchants, now on the stage of action > Part 35
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From his twentieth year he was an eager, busy politician, whom every election-time found diligently "stumping" the neigh- boring towns; and (after 1844) regularly attending the National Democratic Conventions. His history is closely identified with that of the Democratic party in Massachusetts during the past twenty years. A "Coalitionist" in 1852, he united with the Free-Soilers to crush out the old Whig party. In 1853 he was elected on the Coalition ticket, to the Legislature-and was the acknowledged leader of that party in the House, his wordy
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battles with Otis P. Lord, the Whig leader, being memorable in the history of legislative strife and debate in that State.
In the election of delegates to the Constitutional Convention, which shortly followed, the Coalitionists of Lowell were ably represented by Butler, who exhibited a marked degree of ability, and of intimate acquaintance with the principles under discussion. And, though the Constitution was rejected, and Coalition died out, yet he was always loyal to his old allies, the Free-Soilers, and when in 1855, the "Know-Nothing" or- ganization came suddenly into existence, he battled against it with all the tremendous energy of which he was capable. When the new Know Nothing governor, Gardner, recommend- ed in his annual message the exclusion of all persons of foreign birth from the state militia; and ordered the disband- ment of certain companies wholly or largely composed of such-some of which companies belonged to Colonel Butler's regiment, he refused to transmit the order and was sum- marily deprived of his command by the governor. He then turned around and prosecuted the adjutant-general for remov- ing the arms from the armory-but without satisfactory result. In 1857, however, he was chosen brigadier-general by the officers of the brigade to which his regiment belonged, and received his commission from the hands of the same governor who had broken him of his colonelcy. During the following year he exhibited his usual vigor and fearlessness as counsel in the celebrated Burnham contempt case. In 1858, as the can- didate of the "Liberals," Butler ran for governor but was de- feated by the " Hunker" candidate. In the fall of the same year, however, the Conservatives elected him to the State Senate; and, in 1859, he was nominated, still on the Liberal ticket, for the governorship, but, although receiving the full vote of his party, was defeated by Nathaniel P. Banks. As a
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legislator he opposed the old banking system and advocated what is known as the New York system ; and he battled persist- ently and successfully for the "ten hour" bill, which gave the working men two additional hours out of the twenty-four for rest and self-improvement.
In April, 1860, General Butler was a delegate to the Demo- cratic Convention, held at Charleston, S. C., and as a member of the committee appointed to prepare a "platform" for that party, in the coming Presidential campaign, he took a very prominent part; strongly and tenaciously insisting upon an adherence to the principles of the platform adopted at the Democratic Presidential Convention of 1856, held at Cincinnati. Both at Charleston and at Baltimore, at which city the Conven- tion met, by adjournment, June 18th, he refused his support to any measures which looked to any further concessions to the South, on the part of the Democracy of the North. When the Convention divided, he, with other delegates who were firmly opposed to Douglas's nomination, withdrew from the meeting and nominated the " Breckinridge and Lane" ticket, and the campaign commenced. It cannot be doubted that in espousing thus Breckinridge's interest, he was misled by representations made to him by the southern leaders; for it soon became evident that the Breckinridge men at the South, and in Con- gress, contemplated treason. On his return to Massachusetts, he found himself the most unpopular man in the State-hooted at in the streets of Lowell, and a meeting at which he was to speak, broken up by a mob. He "had his say out," how- ever, at another meeting, and vindicated himself-as events, and his own course have since done-from any complicity with treason. In the fall of the same year, he became the Breckin- ridge candidate for governor, but was defeated, receiving only six thousand votes.
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In December, 1860, Mr. Lincoln having been elected, Butler visited Washington on party business, and there became aware of the full meaning and extent of the southern movement Secession he found to be considered, by its leaders, as an aecom- plished fact. He reasoned earnestly but fruitlessly with them- he was offered, in return, a share in their treasonable enterprise. Spurning the offer, he waited upon the Government with advice which, as a leader of the party in power, he was entitled to give; and which, had it been accepted and acted upon, might have changed the whole aspect of subsequent events. But Mr. Buchanan was timorous and embarrassed. Then the gen- eral united with his old friend (and political opponent) in urging the Governor of Massachusetts to prepare the militia of the State for the coming struggle. Governor Andrew followed their suggestions-and what of preparation was accomplished was effected not a moment too soon. Sumter fell beneath the blows of armed treason. A call came to Boston for two full regiments. General Butler, arguing a case in the court-room, at 5 P. M., endorsed the order which called the glorious Sixth of his brigade to arms, at eleven o'clock of the next day, on Boston Common. Then he effected a loan of $50,000 from one of the Boston banks, to help off the troops; and within twenty- four hours thereafter came an order from Washington for a full brigade, and he was appointed to the command. On the 17th started the Sixth, on the 18th two regiments by steamer and the Eighth by rail, accompanied by General Butler in person. Arrived at Philadelphia on the 19th, they heard of the attack of the mob upon the Sixth, at Baltimore. Yet, amid the many conflicting rumors, and the dread uncertainty which hung over their path, the general determined to follow out his orders and march his regiment to Washington via Baltimore. Leaving behind them the New York Seventh, who declined to
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share the risk of that route, the Eighth, on the 20th of April, took cars to Havre-de-Grace, and thence by a ferry-boat-im- pressed into the service-reached Annapolis, Maryland. Arriv- ing at that place they found the town in momentary expectation of attack, and the school ship, the old " Constitution," belonging to the United States Naval Academy, fast aground and weakly manned, and at the mercy of the Secessionists. So Butler put his little ferry-boat alongside, put on board a guard and a strong crew of Marblehead sailors; and finally, with incredible exer- tions, the "Constitution" was towed out to a place of safety. Another morning brought a steamer bearing the New York Seventh, and ere long, despite the repeated protestations of the civic authorities and the Governor of Maryland, both regi- ments were landed on the grounds of the Naval Academy. Butler now needed the railroad to Washington; but the depot was locked, and the track torn up. Seizing, by force, a small and purposely damaged engine from the depot, a private soldier was soon found who could put it in order-it was speedily in running trim, and track-laying commenced.
The history of the three days' march which followed, laying track as they went all the way, forms a wonderful and romantic episode in the history of the war; but on the 25th the New York Seventh saluted the President at the White House, and Washington, as well as the whole North, breathed for the first time in many days a long sigh of relief. Butler remained at Annapolis, where his active nature found full employment in providing for, and forwarding the troops, which now began to pour into the city by thousands. Before the week ended the " Department of Annapolis," embracing the country within twenty miles of the railroad on each side, was created, and the command given to General Butler.
Meanwhile Baltimore was in the hands of the sympathizers
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with treason ; and as Baltimore went, so went the State. This then was the next great object of solicitude on the part of the Government. General Scott proposed to seize it by a stra- tegic movement of four columns of three thousand men each. General Butler, who had, on the 4th of May, seized the Relay House, nine miles from Baltimore, set forth in the night of the 13th of May with nine hundred men and some artillery, and using a simple stratagem to blind the Baltimoreans to his real design, conveyed his force by rail into the city, occupied Fed- eral Hill in the midst of a tremendous thunder-storm, planted his guards and cannon so as to command the city, and issued a "proclamation," which was to the astonished citizens the first intimation which they had, on the following morning, of the pre- sence of Union troops in their midst. For this he was censured by Lieutenant-General Scott, but was immediately commissioned a major-general, May 16th, 1861, by President Lincoln, and assigned to the command of the new "Department of Virginia," (embracing South-eastern Virginia, North and South Carolina) with headquarters at Fortress Monroe. He found much to be done, the fort to be improved, the department to be studied and regulated, the troops to be drilled, and sundry expeditions and reconnoissances to be made in the vicinity. He prepared, also, an army for an attack upon Richmond, but it was crippled by a sudden call of most of his troops to the defence of Washing- ton. On the 9th and 10th of June, occurred the night expedi- tion which resulted in the affair at Big Bethel, the first reverse which the Union arms had as yet sustained, and which, although in the light of subsequent experience, only a skirmish, was a heavy blow to the popular expectation in the loyal States. Its ill-success, however, was due rather to an unfortunate mis- management in the several commands detailed for the service,
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and in the experience of the brigadier commanding the expedi- tion, than to General Butler.
It was during the Fortress Monroe period, also, that General Butler's acute intellect solved the difficulty, which had puzzled all of our politicians and military men, as to the status of the slaves of masters in rebellion against the Federal government, by pronouncing them "contraband of war," a decision the whimsicality of which is infinitely heightened by the basis of truth upon which it is predicated. From General Butler also came (in the form of a communication to the Government, August 30th, 1861) the first distinct avowal of the right and the duty of the Federal Government to emancipate every slave within the Union lines. This opinion, urged as a military neces- sity, and fortified by unanswerable arguments, was not, how- ever, adopted by the Administration for more than a year after.
On the 19th of August, 1861, he was relieved from the com- mand at Fortress Monroe, and on August 26th, sailed in com- mand of the military part of an expedition, in conjunction with Commodore Stringham, against the forts at Hatteras Inlet. They were captured August 29th (together with a large number of arms, cannon, and prisoners), and at Butler's suggestion, the forts were retained ; serving subsequently as the basis of Burn- side's splendid operations on the North Carolina coast.
· The Government now entertained the project of a combined land and water attack on New Orleans, and the winter of 1861-62 was busily spent in preparation for the enterprise, the difficulties of which were felt to be as great as its advantages to the Union cause would be glorious. A fleet of frigates and gunboats was fitted out by Commodore Farragut ; a formidable mortar fleet was got ready by Commander D. D. Porter, and the command of the co-operating land force was given to General Butler. The general was assigned to the newly
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created " Department of New England," in order to recruit men for the service, and his first transports sailed from Portland, Maine, in November, but the public was not informed as to the actual point of operations until the following spring. The advance of the expedition, which was commanded by General Phelps, whose aid Butler had especially desired, reached its destination, Ship Island (sixty-five miles from New Orleans, and fifty from Mobile Bay, both of which places it thus men- aced), early in March, and was followed by the bomb flotilla, and transports with a formidable armament of mortars and heavy guns. The forts, navy-yard, dry dock, storehouses, barracks, and marine hospital at Pensacola, upon which the rebels had bestowed great labor and expense, were speedily abandoned and burned by them; and about the middle of April, the fleet and flotilla gathered together in the Mississippi river, ten miles below Forts Jackson and St. Philip. Six days' unsuccessful bombardment of these forts (18th to 23d) decided Admiral Farragut to run past them, which he successfully accomplished on the 24th, and anchored before the city of New Orleans on the 25th. The forts, however, held out until the prompt and unexpected landing of Butler's army in the rear of Fort St. Philip, and its complete investment on every side, obliged their capitulation to the Federal authority. Having thus opened the Mississippi in the rear of Farragut's victorious fleet, General Butler's army came up the river and on the 1st of May, 1862, landed and took possession of New Orleans. The his- tory of the occupation of that intensely rebel and defiant city forms perhaps the most satisfactory chapter in the history of the war of the rebellion." "The iron heel of military law was placed
* We acknowledge with pleasure our indebtedness to Mr. Parton's Life of General Butler, for this vivid picture of his career at New Orleans. Mr. Parton's book stands without a rival in its graphic portraiture of its subject.
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with relentless severity upon the stiff necks of a people whose whole social system had long been a terror to themselves and a disgrace to American civilization; and whose violent passions seemed uncontrollable even by the menace of the armed hand. But each day that passed, now gave evidence that these wretched people had found a master whose will of iron and nerves of steel were fully equal to the task, which their con- tumacy imposed upon him. Full of sagacity and force, he quickly evolved order from chaos, He found the poor of New Orleans starving in the midst of plenty ; he regulated trade so that they were fed, and the price of food was cheapened. The business of the city was dead, and he endeavored to revive it. The currency was deranged and he improved it. The yellow fever was at hand, and the city reeked with filth; he adminis- tered sanitary science with such effect that but one case occurred during a season which generally desolated the city, in which, also, there were now 20,000 unacclimated northern troops. The city government was hostile and obstructive; he "straightened them out." The foreign consulates were dépôts of concealment for rebel treasure, and centres of foreign and rebel machinations against the United States; he quickly possessed himself of the money, for the use of the Government, and gave them to under- stand that foreign flags could not be allowed to cover domestic treason. He administered the police duty of New Orleans, in a manner hitherto unknown to "the oldest inhabitants"-he shamed into external decency, at least, the rebel women, whose hostility to the Yankee invader had overmastered the modesty of demeanor which belonged to their sex-he hung Mumford, who had pulled down the American flag from the Custom House upon the first arrival of the fleet-he assessed the prominent and wealthy rebels for the benefit of the poor, and for the ex- penses of his sanitary and other improvements, basing the
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assessment upon their respective contributions to the rebel defence of New Orleans-he placed the railroads in running order again, he improved the levees-he took the banks " in hand" with a vigor that was revivifying and wholesome-he suppressed rampant newspapers until they learned that " liberty of the pen" did not necessarily mean license-he disarmed New Orleans, and so thoroughly sifted the whole population, that he knew the particular shade and complexion of each man's poli- tics-he permitted registered enemies of the United States to seek more congenial homes elsewhere-he relentlessly confisca- ted the estates of contumacious rebels; in short, he suppressed the rampant minority which had carried the State out of the Union, and fostered the self-respect, protected the interests, maintained the rights, and elevated the scale of civilization among the people of Louisiana, both white and black, bond and free."
He was not allowed, however, to carry out the splendid work of regeneration which he had commenced. Intriguing diploma- tists and enemies whose interests had been affected by his management in New Orleans, succeeded in procuring his recall; and on the 16th of November, 1862, he was relieved of his command by General Banks. The policy of conciliation, to which his successor gave a fair trial, proved itself an im- mediate, complete, and undeniable failure. General Butler's return home was a series of honorable welcomes from the cities and communities of the loyal States through which he passed, and he was presented, by Congress, with one of the captured swords of the rebel General Twiggs.
During the year 1863, General Butler, being without a command, rendered good service to the Government by his public speeches in various places ; and in July and November of that year was, for a short time, invested with the chief mili-
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tary command of New York city, which had recently been the scene of the terrible " draft riots."
When Lieutenant-General Grant, in the spring of 1864, inaugurated his great and final campaign, he assigned to General Butler the command of the Army of the James, which was composed of the corps formerly known as the Army of Eastern Virginia and North Carolina, the 18th corps from Louisiana, and the 10th corps, partly of colored troops, from (General Gillmore's) the Department of the South. To his division of the Grand Army was assigned the duty of seizing, by an adroit manœuvre, the position of Bermuda Hundred, on the south bank of the James, midway between Richmond and Petersburg; and the interposing of such a force between those two cities, as should isolate them from each other and result in the capture of the latter. This part of the programme was skilfully carried out by General Butler; Bermuda Hun- dred (on the 4th of May, 1864) was occupied and fortified; on the 7th, the railroad was cut below Petersburg. A strong but unavailing attack was made upon Fort Darling on May 13th ; and the repeated attempts of the enemy (21st and 24th), to drive him from his own position, were each handsomely re- pulsed. On the 10th, an attempt was made to capture Peters- burg; General Gillmore, with about three thousand five hun- dred troops attacking it on the north, General Kautz's cavalry force on the south, and General Butler, with the gunboats as- saulting from the north and east. The plan was partially and handsomely carried out by Butler and Kautz, the latter of whom entered the city and maintained a hand-to-hand fight for sometime; but the enterprise was finally rendered abortive by General Gillmore's declining, with the force at his command, to attack the rebel works.
During the summer General Butler's forces had been cutting
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a canal across the neck of a peninsula, called Farrar's Island, formed by a six-mile bend in the River James. This neck of land was only half a mile across, so that the canal, it was expected, would greatly shorten and facilitate the passage of gunboats on the river. As it, also, somewhat imperilled Fort Darling and flanked the rebel position at Howlett's, it would oblige them to erect new and more extended lines of defence ; and the Confederates made a desperate attempt, on the 12th of August, to shell out the negroes who were at work on the canal, or " Dutch Gap," as it was called. In order to relieve the ditchers from the annoyance to which they were subjected by the heavy fire from rebel rams and batteries, an attack was made upon the Confederate position at Strawberry Plains, on the 14th, which resulted in a Union victory, and was followed by another success at Deep Bottom, on the 16th. Rebel pris- oners were also set at work in the "Gap." While these move- ments were in progress, Grant seized the opportune moment to attempt to gain possession of the Weldon Railroad; which was, after repeated and desperate fighting, secured and torn up for a considerable distance, on the 21st. In all the subsequent movements of the Union forces before Richmond and Peters- burg, the Army of the James, under General Butler, contributed their full share of heroic fighting, patient waiting, and hard work.
Early in the month of December, an expedition was planned by General Grant against Wilmington, North Carolina, which had long been one of the principal channels by which foreign supplies of arms, ammunition, clothing, etc., had reached the Confederacy. Its formidable defences, and the peculiar nature of its coast, rendered its successful closure against blockade- runners almost impossible; a fact at which both the Govern- ment and the officers of the blockading squadron felt deeply chagrined. The naval portion of the expedition, which set
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sail on the 9th, was commanded by Admiral Førter, and the land forces, which sailed on the 12th, had been drawn from the Army of the James, and were commanded by General Butler in person.
Arriving off New Inlet on the 24th, the squadron opened a fire upon Fort Fisher, which, for rapidity, intensity and weight of metal, was hitherto unexampled in the history of warfare. On the 25th, the land forces were disembarked; a joint assault was ordered at evening, the troops attacking the land face of the fort, while the fleet was to bombard its sea front. Upon moving forward to the attack, however, General Weitzel, who accompanied the column, came to the conclusion, from a careful reconnoissance of the fort, that "it would be butchery to order an assault ;" and General Butler, having formed the same opin- ion from other information, re-embarked his troops, and sailed for Hampton Roads. The opinion of General Weitzel, an ex- perienced engineer officer, to the effect that the fort had been " substantially unimpaired" by the terrific naval fire to which it had been for several days subjected, did not satisfy Admiral Porter, whose report to the Naval Department reflected some- what upon General Butler's course; and upon that general's return to the James river, he was relieved from the command of the Army of the James, and ordered to report at Lowell, Massachusetts, his residence.
The successful capture of Fort Fisher and Wilmington, two weeks later, by Admiral Porter and General Terry, greatly in- creased the popular dissatisfaction with General Butler-but his course seems to have been fully justified by unimpeachable evidence which was subsequently adduced. It was, however, the last active military service performed by General Butler.
In November 1866, he was elected on the Republican ticket, Representative in the XLth Congress for the fifth district of
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Massachusetts, receiving 9,021 votes against 2,838 votes for Northend, Democrat. During the present year he has taken a conspicuous part as one of the Managers of the impeachment and trial of President Johnson. His speech at the opening of the impeachment trial was pronounced, even by his opponents, the ablest of its kind on record.
Of General Butler, as a lawyer, it has been well said by one who knew him intimately, that " At the criminal terms of the Middlesex Court, he has done a greater amount of business than anybody else, and his reputation at present is that of the most successful criminal lawyer of the State. His devices and shifts to obtain an acquittal and release are absolutely endless and in- numerable. He is never daunted or baffled until the sentence is passed and put in execution, and the reprieve, pardon, or com- mutation is refused. An indictment must be drawn with the greatest nicety, or it will not stand his criticism. A verdict of " guilty" is nothing to him-it is only the beginning of the case; he has fifty exceptions, a hundred motions in arrest of judg- ment; and after that, the habeas corpus and personal replevin. The opposing counsel never begins to feel safe until the evidence is all in, for he knows not what new dodges Butler may spring upon him. He is more fertile in expedients than any man who practices law among us." And this same fertility of resource did the country rare good service during the recent war of the rebellion. Yet he is not logical-his statements and arguments, when closely analyzed, are frequently mere sophistical decep- tions, so ingeniously constructed, however, that he often believes them himself. But they are always ingenious, bewildering, set with homely illustrations, full of insinuations, and put with such vehemence and in such plain Anglo-Saxon, as often to totally overwhelm his adversary.
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