Radio Script #945

Little Talks on Common Things
October 29, 1972

Because this program is devoted to Maine social history, especially that of the Kennebec Valley, why should today’s broadcast be concerned with the most controversial of all Civil War generals, Benjamin F. Butler. The answer is that long before the Civil War Butler knew Waterville very well. For three years he was a student at old Waterville College, now Colby, entering as a sophomore in 1835 and graduating in 1838. His portrait, in the uniform of a major general, is still on display at Colby.

In some way, not clear 135 years after the event, Butler as a college student was somehow connected with a prominent Waterville citizen, Aaron Plaisted. When the Federal surplus money was distributed in 1837, each person in Waterville over four years of age was entitled to ten dollars. The head of each family collected for all its members. One of those old receipts, long preserved at Waterville City Hall is for ten dollars to Aaron Plaisted for Benjamin F. Butler.

For more than a century historians have disputed about the character or General Butler. Some called him a military genius, others denounced him as unfit to lead a company, much less an army corps. Some considered him a statesman, others were sure he was a cheap, venal politician. The people of New Orleans hated him bitterly when he was in military command of that captured Confederate city. Butler, himself, always claimed that he was offered the vice-presidential post to succeed Hannibal Hamlin in 1864 but others close to Lincoln stoutly denied that claim.

It is true that Ben Butler was frequently at odds with the high command in Washington, that several times he certainly did exceed his orders. But it is equally true that he was never fired, never reduced in rank, never courtmartialed. As a political figure after the war he was unpredictable. A Unionist Republican in 1864, he was a Grant Republican in 1868 and 1872, but a Tilden Democrat in 1876. Then he joined the Greenback Party and was once its candidate for President. He served a heated, embattled term as Governor of Massachusetts, wrote his fiery memoirs in 1892, and died still a figure of controversy.

A few month ago, I saw for the first time a small book entitled General Butler in New Orleans, a contemporary volume published in 1864 a year before the Civil War came to an end. This book tells us that Ben Butler came naturally by his military instincts. His father had been a Captain in the War of 1812, and had been with Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans. He had died of yellow fever in the West Indies in 1819, when Ben was only a year old. Ben Butler had therefore grown up in comparative poverty, cared for by his widowed mother. He got an appointment to West Point, but failed to pass the physical examination. As a consequence, he hated the Military Academy and all its products. He never seems to have been quite fair to any West Pointers who came under his command.

After graduation from Colby in 1838, Ben studied law and established practice in his home town of Lowell, Massachusetts. He commanded a militia company and rose in the ranks of that state organization, so that when the Civil War came, he was ready to offer his services.

When news came to Boston that, immediately after Fort Sumter, Lincoln had called on Massachusetts for twenty companies of militia, Butler at once assembled the ~~h Mass. Regiment, and notified Washington that all the readied regiments in the state constituted a brigade, and a brigade needed a brigadier general. Back came orders for Butler to assume that command. When Butler’s contingent arrived in Philadelphia on April 19, 1861, he could not risk marching through hostile territory into Baltimore, but camped outside that city. Then, under cover of darkness, Butler marched his men through that southern sympathizing town. The troops arrived safely in Washington.

When plans got underway for the Union forces to take New Orleans, Butler was sent as commander at Ship Island, 75 miles below that city. There he made plans with Admiral Farragut for the coming campaign. A number of wooden ships would anchor below the two forts, Jackson and St. Philip, and fire on them until they surrendered. When Farragut’s fleet was thus able to pass the forts, Butler would march his troops around the rear of Fort St. Philip, and try to carry both forts by assault. Then the Union force would advance on New Orleans. The plan worked splendidly and, with the 31st Massachusetts on the land, Butler’s troops entered New Orleans. To the mayor and other civil authorities Butler promised there would be no interference with the ordinary life of the city, if the local authorities could control the people. Butler also issued a proclamation forbidding assemblies of citizens in the streets, forbidding the sale of liquor to soldiers, and making unlawful any posters or wall writings against the government of the U.S. By the end of the third day the city seemed peaceful, General Butler commanding the Army, the mayor and council actually ruling the city.

Then came trouble, with General Butler’s issuance of the notorious General Order 28, about which historians have not ceased to dispute to this day. Naturally those proud southerners did not like military control by a northern army, and they did all they could, short of violence, to show their hatred. The women were especially cold to the northern soldiers, leaving the sidewalk to go into the street, rather than pass close to a Yankee in uniform. Butler endured the taunts for a few days, then issued the notorious order. Let us see exactly what that order said:

“As officers and soldiers of the United States have been subject to repeated insults from the women (calling themselves ladies) of New Orleans, in return for the most scrupulous courtesy on our part, it is ordered that hereafter, when any female shall, by word, gesture, or movement, insult, or show contempt for any officer or soldier of U.S., she shall be regarded as a woman of the town, plying her avocation. By command of Major General Butler.”

At once the Mayor protested in these words: “Your officers and soldiers are permitted, by the terms of this order, to place upon the conduct of our wives and daughters any construction they please and to offer them atrocious insults. To give license to soldiers to commit outrages upon defenseless women is a reproach to civilization and Christianity.”

Butler at once replied: “John T. Monroe, Mayor of New Orleans, is now relieved of all responsibility for the peace of the city, and is suspended from the exercise of any municipal functions and is committed to Fort Jackson until further orders.”

The Mayor then accepted Butler’s assurance that the order didn’t refer to virtuous women, and withdrew his protest against Butler’s order. On his part, Butler released the Mayor from arrest.

The next day the Mayor changed his mind. He wrote Butler: “I wish to withdraw the endorsement I made yesterday on the letter addressed to you. I reiterate my original protest.”

Butler answered: “There is no room for misunderstanding General Order 28. No lady would take any notice of a strange gentleman in such, form as to attract attention. Common women do. Therefore, any woman who by word or gesture, shows contempt for the soldiers, thus attracting their notice, will be deemed to act as becomes the vocation of common women. If obeyed, this order will protect all truly modest women from any possible insult.”

Within a few days, a wealthy Mississippian offered a reward of $10,000 for Butler’s head, and Butler was denounced in all the Confederate Congress. Nor did all Northerners approve of the order. One Boston woman wrote that the men of New Orleans should have resisted to the death. Even the British press burst out in tirades against what they called Butler’s insult to womanhood.

Then came up the notorious case of New Orleans silver spoons. Butler was long afterward persistently accused of stealing from wealthy New Orleans their household silver. The fact is that no silver dining utensils were ever involved, what did cause the accusation was silver coin and bullion in New Orlean’s banks. From the Citizens Bank a large quantity of silver had been taken by the city authorities to the Dutch Consulate and placed under that diplomatic protection. The Consul put it in the vault of a liquor dealer. Butler demanded of the Consul the key to the vault and was refused. Butler took the key by force, and found in the vault 160 kegs containing 5,000 Mexican dollars and boxes holding 110 city bonds, as well as plates for making Confederate treasury notes. Butler removed the silver to the U.S. Mint and sent the plates to Washington. All the foreign Consuls in New Orleans, including the powerful British and French, vigorously protested.

Next Butler got into trouble with the New Orleans clergy. It was not the predominant Catholic priests who caused Butler’s wrath, but clergy of the Protestant Episcopal Church, who refused to read from their pulpits the customary prayer for the President of the U.S. Butler ordered them to use the prayer or be arrested. When they refused, Butler shipped some twenty of those clergymen to Fort Lafayette, and ordered the services to be conducted by U.S. Army chaplains.

Always troublesome to Butler was the Negro problem. In 1862 the number of blacks in New Orleans exceeded the number of whites. Of the city’s 28,000 blacks, 18,000 were slaves, 10,000 free negroes. Lincoln, told Butler that the government was not yet prepared to announce a Negro policy. The Emancipation Proclamation was some months len l-jle -_:-ut”r~. n ~1 .. T 1 • – – ‘-‘ ~th. cr, sale Lincoln must handle the problem in New Orleans as best he could. Slaves, however, were protected by an Article of War that forbade the return of slaves to their masters when they sought protection of the Union forces. What was Butler to do with those refugees? Their labor in the city was not needed, where there was an abundance of white labor. Yet Butler had no authority to free the New Orleans slaves. The best Butler could do was to allow each Union officer to have one colored servant, and to employ a few others in army hospitals.

It is well known that when Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation came, it did not free all the slaves, but exempted certain parishes in Louisiana considered loyal to the Union. Butler found that many slaves in the exempted parishes were held by French citizens. He ascertained that the laws of France did not permit a French citizen to hold slaves anywhere in the world. When Butler was about to act on that information, he was suddenly recalled from his New Orleans command. General Banks was to replace Butler, and strangely the French government was the first to be notified. In fact Pres. Jefferson Davis of the Confederacy got the news even before Banks. Davis issued his own proclamation: “I do pronounce and declare the said Benjamin F. Butler to be a felon, deserving of capital punishment. I do order that he shall no longer be considered or treated simply as a public enemy of the Confederate States of America, but as an outlaw and common enemy of mankind, and that, in the event of his capture, the officer in command of the capturing force do cause him to be immediately executed by hanging.”

Now remember this was all in a book written in 1864, before the war was over. This is the author’s conclusion: “Butler is a great achiever, the victorious kind of man. Brains are a great part of his success, but courage, will, firmness, nerve, he also possesses. He is completely honest; his hands are spotless. He is a sterling patriot.”

And there ends the story of General Ben Butler in New Orleans.

Year: 1972