Benjamin Butler

Benjamin Franklin Butler (November 5, 1818 – January 11, 1893) was an American major general of the Union Army, politician, lawyer, and businessman from Massachusetts. Born in New Hampshire and raised in Lowell, Massachusetts, Butler was a political major general of the Union Army during the American Civil War and had a leadership role in the impeachment of U.S. president Andrew Johnson. He was a colorful and often controversial figure on the national stage and on the Massachusetts political scene, serving five terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and running several campaigns for governor before his election to that office in 1882. Butler, a successful trial lawyer, served in the Massachusetts legislature as an antiwar Democrat and as an officer in the state militia. Early in the Civil War he joined the Union Army, where he first gained renown when he refused to return escaped slaves, designating them as contraband of war, an idea that the Lincoln administration endorsed and that played a role in making emancipation an official war goal. Later in the war, he was noted for his questionable military skills and his no nonsense command of New Orleans, which made him widely disliked in the South and earned him the "Beast" epithet. His commands were marred by financial and logistical dealings across enemy lines, some of which may have taken place with his knowledge and to his financial benefit. At the request of General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant, President Abraham Lincoln relieved Butler from the posts he held in the Union Army after his failure in the First Battle of Fort Fisher, but he soon won election to the United States House of Representatives from Massachusetts. As a Radical Republican he considered President Johnson's Reconstruction agenda to be too weak, and he advocated harsher punishments of former...