Benjamin F. Butler

Benjamin F. Butler (born Nov. 5, 1818, Deerfield, N.H., U.S.—died Jan. 11, 1893, Washington, D.C.) was an American politician and army officer during the American Civil War (1861–65) who championed the rights of workers and black people.

A prominent attorney at Lowell, Mass., Butler served two terms in the state legislature (1853, 1859), where he distinguished himself by vigorously supporting the cause of labour and of naturalized citizens. Though he was affiliated with the Southern wing of the Democratic Party in the 1860 elections, he strongly supported the Union after the Civil War broke out. He was appointed a Union officer for political reasons, and his military career was mercurial and often controversial. As a brigadier general of the Massachusetts militia, he commanded the troops that occupied Baltimore, Md., and in May 1861 was promoted to the rank of major general in command of Fort Monroe, Virginia. There he refused to return fugitive slaves to the Confederacy, using the logic that they constituted “contraband of war”—an interpretation later upheld by his government. In June 1861 he lost the engagement at Big Bethel, Va., but succeeded in capturing the forts guarding the inlet at Hatteras, N.C., two months later.

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Early in 1862 Butler was given command of the land forces that accompanied the victorious Union expedition against New Orleans. The city fell late in April, and from May to December Butler ruled it with an iron hand: he executed a citizen who had torn down the U.S. flag, undertook sanitary measures to prevent an outbreak of yellow fever, and confiscated the property of Confederate sympathizers. Partly because of difficulties arising from his relations with foreign consuls concerning confiscated property, he was recalled at the end of the year.

As commander of the Army of the James in Virginia in 1864, Butler became bottled up in Bermuda Hundred, Va., and was unsuccessful in operations before Richmond and Petersburg, Va. After the failure of an expedition against Fort Fisher, North Carolina, he was relieved of his command (January 1865).

After the war, Butler became a Radical Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives (1867–75, 1877–79), supporting firm Reconstruction measures toward the South and playing a leading role in the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson. Although a staunch supporter of President Ulysses S. Grant after 1868, he broke with the party in 1878 because of his sympathy with the inflationary Greenback movement. After two unsuccessful tries, he was elected Democratic governor of Massachusetts in 1882 and two years later became the presidential candidate of the Greenback-Labor Party and the Anti-Monopoly Party. He advocated the eight-hour day and national control of interstate commerce but failed to win a single electoral vote.

At various times in his career Butler was accused of corruption, but no charges against him were ever proved.