American lawyer and politician and a Union general in the American Civil War
1818 CE
to 1893 CE
Benjamin Franklin Butler (November 5, 1818 – January 11, 1893) is an American lawyer and politician who represents Massachusetts in the United States House of Representatives and later serves as the 33rd Governor of Massachusetts.
In 1868, as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Butler has a prominent role in the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson .As Chairman of the House Committee on Reconstruction, Butler authors the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant, that gives federal authority to prosecute and destroy the Klan in the South.
Butler authors, along with Sen. Charles Sumner, the Civil Rights Act of 1875, signed into law by President Grant.
This law, a final act of Reconstruction, gives African American U.S. citizens the right to public accommodation such as hotels, restaurants, lodging, and public entertainment establishments.
During the American Civil War, he serves as a major general in the Union Army.
His policies regarding slaves as contraband, his administration of occupied New Orleans, his ineffectual leadership in the Bermuda Hundred Campaign, and the fiasco of Fort Fisher rank him as one of the most controversial political generals of the war.
Butler is the first Eastern Union General to declare runaway Virginia slaves "contraband of war"; refusing to return them to their masters.
He is widely reviled for years after the war by Southern whites, who give him the nickname "Beast Butler."
Although considered a hostile Union Army general while commanding New Orleans, Butler, through his Christian charity, makes efforts to care for the poor and needy, having given $1,000 of his personal money to purchase food for those who were starving.
As all business activity is shut down, Butler gives railroad and steam loading permits to operators, relieving the city of starvation.
Butler receives permission from the city to employ the poor to clean up the streets and under the supervision Col. T.B.
Thorpe, a million dollars worth of of land is added to the state from the Mississippi River deposits.
At the request of Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, Butler is relieved of duty on January 8, 1865, after having failed to capture Fort Fisher.
