B: Billings through Butler

See below for annotated biographies of Radical Republicans. Source: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography.

BILLINGS, Liberty,  Officer in the Union Army, Unitarian minister, and a state senator from Florida.

Liberty Billings  was an officer in the Union Army, a Unitarian minister, and a state senator. An African-American, he served as a Union Army officer during the Civil War. He was a Radical Republican during Reconstruction and served as a state senator in Florida. He was involved in the constitutional convention that developed the 1868 Florida Constitution. He was the second in command of the 1st South Carolina Volunteer Infantry Regiment.
Billings was born in Saco, Maine in 1823.
He was deemed ineligible to participate in the constitutional convention and was voted out along with others accused of being residents of other states.



BINGHAM, John Armor, 1815-1900, Radical Republican Congressman, judge, advocate, U.S. Army.  Bingham was one of the writers and sponsors of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  One of three military judges presiding in the Lincoln assassination trial. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888) B. B. Kendrick,; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 2, pp. 277-278; Journal of the Committee of Fifteen on Reconstruction (1914)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 2, pp. 277-278:

BINGHAM, JOHN ARMOR (January 21, 1815-March 19, 1900), lawyer, Ohio politician, was born in Mercer, Pennsylvania, the son of Hugh Bingham, a carpenter. After securing such elementary education as his neighborhood offered, he spent two years in a printing office, a like period at Franklin College, then studied law, was admitted to the bar, and began practise at Cadiz, Ohio, in 1840. He soon became prominent as a stump speaker in Harrison's "log cabin, hard cider" campaign. In 1854 he was elected to Congress, and served continuously until 1873, except for the Thirty-eighth Congress, when, failing of reelection, he was appointed judge-advocate in January 1864, and solicitor of the court of claims the following August. When political fortunes failed him again in 1873 he was solaced by the appointment as minister to Japan, a position he held for twelve uneventful years.

Bingham was a clever and forceful speaker, overflowing with invective, rhetorical phrases, and historical allusions of varying degrees of accuracy. In two of the most dramatic episodes of the immediate post-war period-the trial of the assassins of Lincoln, and the impeachment of Andrew Johnson-he played a leading role. In the conspiracy trial his part as special judge-advocate was to bully the defense witnesses and to assert in his summary of the evidence that the rebellion was "simply a criminal conspiracy and a gigantic assassination" in which "Jefferson Davis is as clearly proven guilty. … as is John Wilkes Booth, by whose hand Jefferson Davis inflicted the mortal wound upon Abraham Lincoln" (Benn Pitman, Assassination of President Lincoln ..., 1865, pp. 351,380). In defending the legality of the military court set up by President Johnson, he argued that the executive could exercise all sorts of extra-constitutional powers, even to "string up the culprits without any court an argument which was somewhat embarrassing when he was selected by the House as one of seven managers to conduct the impeachment of President Johnson. He had voted against the first attempt at impeachment and had opposed the second, holding the President guilty of no impeachable offense (D. M. DeWitt, Impeachment, p. 506), but he finally yielded to party pressure and voted for impeachment after the Senate had declared the President's removal of Secretary Stanton illegal. It fell to him to make the closing speech at the trial. For three days (May 4-6) he rang the changes on the plea of the defense that the President might suspend the laws and test them in the courts-"the monstrous plea interposed for the first time in our history" (Trial of Andrew Johnson, II, 389 ff.). His confident manner carried conviction to the galleries, who pronounced it one of his greatest speeches.

In the work of reconstruction, Bingham's chief contribution was the framing of that part of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment which forbade any state by law to abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, or to deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law or to deny the equal protection of the laws (Kendrick, Journal, p. 106).

Bingham was married to Amanda Bingham, a cousin, by whom he had three children. He died at his home in Cadiz, Ohio. He did not introduce the resolution at the Whig national convention of 1848 containing the spirited anti-slavery apothegm carved on his monument at Cadiz, the resolution ascribed to him having been introduced by Lewis D. Campbell. Stenographic reports fail to show that Bingham ever spoke on the floor of the convention (North American and United States Gazette, and Public Ledger, both Philadelphia, for June 8, 9, 10, 1848).

[B. B. Kendrick, Journal of the Comm. of Fifteen on Reconstruction (1914); Trial of Andrew Johnson, pub. by order of the Senate as a supplement to Congressional Globe 1868); Congressional Globe, 1854-73, passim; Ohio Arch. and History Publication, X, 331-52; D. M. DeWitt, The Judicial Murder of Mrs. Surratt (1895) and The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson (1903); Evening Star (Washington), March 19, 1900; Cadiz Democrat Sentinel, March 22, 1900.]

T. D.M. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. p. 263;

BINGHAM, John A., lawyer, born in Mercer, Pennsylvania, in 1815. He passed two years in a printing-office, and then entered Franklin college, Ohio, but left, on account of his health, before graduation. He was admitted to the bar in 1840, was district attorney for Tuscarawas county, Ohio, from 1846 till 1849, was elected to congress as a republican in 1854, and re-elected three times, sitting from 1855 till 1863. He prepared in the 34th congress the report on the contested Illinois elections, and in 1862 was chairman of the managers of the house in the impeachment of Judge Humphreys for high treason. He failed of re-election in 1864, and was appointed by President Lincoln judge-advocate in the army, and later the same year solicitor of the court of claims. He was special judge-advocate in the trial of the assassins of President Lincoln. In 1865 he returned to congress, and sat until 1873, serving on the committees on military affairs, freedmen, and reconstruction, and in the 40th congress as chairman of the committees on claims and judiciary, and as one of the managers in the impeachment trial of President Johnson. On 3 May, 1873, he received the appointment of minister to Japan, which post he held until 1885, when he was recalled by President Cleveland.  Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888.

The Fortieth Congress of the United States: Historical and Biographical. Vol. 1., By William H. Barnes, 1869, p. 137.

JOHN A. BINGHAM is a native of Pennsylvania, and was be born in 1815. After studying at an academy, he spent two See years in a printing office, and then entered Franklin College, Ohio, but poor health prevented him from advancing to graduation. He entered upon the study of law in 1838, and at the end of two years was admitted to the bar. From 1840 to 1854, he diligently and successfully practiced the profession in which he attained distinguished eminence. In the latter year he was elected a Representative in Congress, and has been a member of every subsequent Congress except the Thirty-eighth.

In 1864, Mr. Bingham was appointed a Judge-Advocate in the Army, serving six months in that capacity. He was subsequently appointed, by President Lincoln, Solicitor in the Court of Claims, and held the office until March 4, 1865, when he became a member of the Thirty-ninth Congress.

Mr. Bingham served as Special Judge-Advocate in the great trial of the assassination conspirators. Immense labor devolved upon him during this difficult and protracted trial. For six weeks Mr. Bingham's arduous duties allowed him but brief intervals for rest. He occupied nine hours in the delivery of the closing argument, in which he ably elucidated the testimony, and conclusively proved the guilt of the conspirators. Mr. Bingham's success in this great trial attracted general attention, and awakened a wide-spread curiosity to know his history. Soon after the close of the trial, a correspondent of the Philadelphia Press having expressed the deep interest he had felt in arriving at a well-founded conclusion as to “the guilt of the prisoners and the constitutionality of the court,” proceeded :

“ Grant me space in your columns to give expression to my most unqualified admiration of the great arguments, on these two main points, presented to the Court by the Special Judge-Advocate-General, John A. Bingham. In the entire range of my reading, I have known of no productions that have so literally led me captive.

“For careful analysis, logical argumentation, profound and most extensive research ; for overwhelming unravelment of complications that would have involved an ordinary mind only with inextricable bewilderment, and for a literal rending to tatters of all the metaphysical subtleties of the array of legal talent engaged on the other side, I know of no two productions in the English language superior to these. They are literally, as the spear of Ithuriel, dissolving the hardest substances at their touch; as the thread of Dædalus, leading out of labyrinthis of error, no matter how thick and mazy: Not Locke or Bacon were more profound; not Daniel Webster was clearer and more penetrating; not Chillingworth was more logical.

“I feel sure that the author of these two unrivaled papers must possess a legal mind unrivaled in America, and must be, too, one of our rising statesmen. But who is John A. Bingham, who, by his industry and learning displayed on this wonderful trial, has placed the country under such a heavy debt of obligation? He may be well known to others moving in a public sphere, like yourself, but to me, so absorbed in a different line of duty, he has appeared so suddenly, and yet with such vividness, that I long to know some, at least, of his antecedents.”

Upon which the Editor remarked : “ The question of our esteemed correspondent is natural to one who has not, probably, watched the individual actors on the great stage of public affairs with the interest of the historical and political student. We are not surprised that the arguments of Mr. Bingham before the Military Commission should have filled him with delight. It was worthy of the great subject confided to that accomplished statesman by the Government, and of his own fame. 

“When the assassins of Mr. Lincoln were sent for trial before the Military Court by President Johnson, the Government wisely left the whole management to Judge Holt and his eloquent associate, Mr. Bingham; and to the latter was committed the stupendous labor of sifting the mass of evidence, of replying to the corps of lawyers for the defense, of setting forth the guilt of the accused, and of vindicating the policy and the duty of the Executive in an exigency so novel and so full of tragic solemnity. The crime was so enormous, and the trial of those who committed it so important in all its issues, immediate, contingent, and remote, as to awaken an excitement that embraced all nations. The murder itself was almost forgotten by those who wished to screen the murderers, and the most wicked theories were broached and sown broadcast by men who, under cloak of reverence for what they called the law, toiled with herculean energy to weaken the arm of the Government, extended, in time of war, to save the servants of the people from being slaughtered by assassins in public places, and tracked even to their own firesides by the agents and fiends of Slavery. These poisons of plausibility, blunting the sharpest horrors of any age, and sanctifying the most hellish offenses, required an antidote as swift to cure. Mr. Bingham's two great arguments, alluded to by our correspondent, have supplied the remedy. They are monuments of reflection, research, and argumentation ; and they are presented in the language of a scholar, and with the fervor of an orator. In the great volume of proof and counter-proof, rhetoric and controversy, that for ever preserves the record of this great trial, the efforts of Mr. Bingham will ever remain to be first studied with an eager and admiring interest. That they came after all that has and can be said against the Government, is rather an inducement to their more satisfactory and critical consideration. For from that study the American student and citizen must, more than ever, realize how irresistible is Truth when in conflict with Falsehood, and how poor and puerile are all the professional tricks of the lawyer when opposed to the moral power of the patriot.”

In Congress, Mr. Bingham has had a distinguished career, marked by important services to the country. In the Thirty-seventh Congress he was earnest and successful in advocating many important measures to promote the vigorous prosecution of the war, which had just begun. Returning to Congress in 1865, after an absence of two years, lie at once took a prominent position. Upon the formation of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, December 14, 1865, he was appointed one of the nine members on the part of the House. He was active in advocating the great measures of Reconstruction which were proposed and passed in the Thirty-ninth and Fortieth Congresses. The House of Representatives having resolved that Andrew Johnson should be impeached for “high crimes and misdemeanors,” Mr. Bingham was appointed on the Committee to which was intrusted the important duty of drawing up the Articles of Impeachment. This work having been done to the satisfaction of the House, Mr. Bingham was elected Chairman of the Managers to conduct the Impeachment of the President before the Senate. On him devolved the duty of making the closing argument. His speech on this occasion ranks among the greatest forensic efforts of any age. Ile began the delivery of his argument on Monday, May 4th, and occupied the attention of the Senate and a vast auditory on the floor and in the galleries during three successive days. At the close of his argument, the immense audience in the galleries, wrought up to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, gave vent to such an unanimous and continued outburst of applause as had never before been heard in the Capitol, Ladies and gentlemen, who could not have been induced deliberately to trespass on the decorum of the Senate, by whose courtesy they were admitted to the galleries, overcome by their feelings, joined in the utterance of applause, knowing that for so doing the Sergeant-at-Arms would be required to expel them from the galleries. The history of the country records no similar tribute to the oratorial efforts of the ablest advocates or statesmen. From so long and so well-sustained an argument, it is impossible to select particular passages which would give an adequate idea of the whole. The following historical argument for the supremacy of the Law, will always be read with interest, whether as an extract, or in its original setting :

“Is it not in vain, I ask you, Senators, that the people have thus vindicated by battle the supremacy of their own Constitution and laws, if, after all, their President is permitted to suspend their laws and dispense with the execution thereof at pleasure, and defy the power of the people to bring him to trial and judgment before the only tribunal authorized by the Constitution to try him? That is the issue which is presented before the Senate for decision by these articles of impeachment. By such acts of usurpation on the part of the ruler of a people, I need not say to the Senate, the peace of nations is broken, as it is only by obedience to law that the peace of nations is maintained, and their existence perpetuated. Law is the voice of God and the harmony of the world--

It doth preserve the stars from wrong,

Through it the eternal heavens are fresh and strong.'

“All history is but philosophy teaching by example. God is in history, and through it teaches to men and nations the profoundest lessons which they learn. It does not surprise me, Senators, that the learned counsel for the accused asked the Senate, in the consideration of this question, to close that volume of instruction, not to look into the past, not to listen to its voices. Senators, from that day when the inscription was written upon the graves of the heroes of Thermopylæ, 'Stranger, go tell the Lacedemonians that we lie here in obedience to their laws,' to this hour, no profounder lesson has come down to us than this: that through obedience to law comes the strength of nations and the safety of men.

“No more fatal provision ever found its way into the constitutions of States than that contended for in this defense which recognizes the right of a single despot or of the many to discriminate in the administration of justice between the ruler and the citizen, between the strong and the weak. It was by this unjust discrimination that Arastides was banished because he was just. It was by this unjust discrimination that Socrates, the wonder of the Pagan world, was doomed to drink the hemlock because of his transcendent virtues. It was in honorable protest against this unjust discrimination that the great Roman Senator, father of his country, declared that the force of law consists in its being made for the whole community.

“Senators, it is the pride and boast of that great people from whom we are descended, as it is the pride and boast of every American, that the law is the supreme power of the State, and is for the protection of each by the combined power of all. By the Constitution of England the hereditary monarch is no more above the law than the humblest subject; and by the Constitution of the United States the President is no more above the law than the poorest and most friendless beggar in your streets. The usurpations of Charles I. inflicted untold injuries upon the people of England, and finally cost the usurper his life. The subsequent usurpations of James II.—and I only refer to it because there is between his official conduct and that of this accused President the most remarkable parallel that I have ever read in history-filled the brain and heart of England with the conviction that new securities must be taken to restrain the prerogatives asserted by the Crown, if they would maintain their ancient constitution and perpetuate their liberties. It is well said by Hallam that the usurpations of James swept away the solemn ordinances of the legislature. Out of those usurpations came the great revolution of 1688, which resulted in the dethronement and banishment of James, in the elevation of William and Mary, in the immortal Declaration of Rights.

“I ask the Senate to notice that these charges against James are substantially the charges presented against this accused President and confessed here of record, that he has suspended the laws, and dispensed with the execution of the laws, and in order to do this has usurped authority as the Executive of the nation, declaring himself entitled under the Constitution to suspend the laws and dispense with their execution. He has further, like James, issued a commission contrary to law. He has further, like James, attempted to control the appropriated money of the people contrary to law. And he has further, like James, although it is not alleged against him in the articles of impeachment, it is confessed in his answer, attempted to cause the question of his responsibility to the people to be tried, not in the King's Bench, but in the Supreme Court, when that question is alone cognizable in the Senate of the United States. Surely, Senators, if these usurpations, if these endeavors on the part of James thus to subvert the liberties of the people of England, cost him his crown and kingdom, the like offenses committed by Andrew Johnson ought to cost him his office, and subject him to that perpetual disability pronounced by the people through the Constitution upon him for his high crimes and misdemeanors. * * * I ask you, Senators, how long men would deliberate upon the question whether a private citizen, arraigned at the bar of one of your tribunals of justice for a criminal violation of the law, should be permitted to interpose a plea in justification of his criminal act that his only purpose was to interpret the Constitution and laws for himself, that he violated the law in the exercise of his prerogative to test its validity hereafter at such day as might suit his own convenience in the courts of justice. Surely, it is as competent for the private citizen to interpose such justification in answer to crime in one of your tribunals of justice, as it is for the President of the United States to interpose it, and for the simple reason that the Constitution is no respector of persons, and vests neither in the President nor in the private citizen judicial power. * * *

“Can it be, that by your decree you are at last to make this discrimination between the ruler of the people and the private citizen, and allow him to interpose his assumed right to interpret judicially your Constitution and laws? Are you solemnly to proclaim by your decree:

“Plate sin with gold,

And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks ;

Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw doth pierce it?”

“I put away the possibility that the Senate of the United States, equal in dignity to any tribunal in the world, is capable of recording any such decision even upon the petition and prayer of this accused and guilty President. Can it be that by reason of his great office the President is to be protected in his high crimes and misdemeanors, violative alike of his oath, of the Constitution, and of the express letter of your written law enacted by the legislative department of the Government ? * * *

“I ask you, Senators, to consider that I speak before you this day in behalf of the violated law of a free people who commission me. I ask you to remember that I speak this day under the obligations of my oath. I ask you to consider that I am not insensible to the significance of the words of which mention was made by the learned counsel from New York: justice, duty, law, oath.

I ask you to remember that the great principles of constitutional liberty for which I this day speak, have been taught to men and nations by all the trials and triumphs, by all the agonies and martyrdoms of the past; that they are the wisdom of the centuries uttered by the elect of the human race who were made perfect through suffering. “I ask you to consider that we stand this day pleading for the violated majesty of the law, by the graves of a half million of martyred hero-patriots who sacrificed themselves for their country, the Constitution, and the laws, and who by their sublime example have taught us that all must obey the law; that none are above the law; that no man lives for himself alone, but each for all; that some must die that the state may live; that the citizen is at best but for to-day, while the Commonwealth is for all time; and that position, however high-patronage, however powerful-cannot be permitted to shelter crime to the peril of the Republic."



BIRD, Francis William, 1809-1894, anti-slavery political leader, radical reformer.  Member of the anti-slavery “Conscience Whigs,” leader of the Massachusetts Free Soil Party.  Led anti-slavery faction of the newly formed Republican Party.  Supported abolitionist Party leader Charles Sumner.  Opposed Dred Scott decision.  “Bird Club” greatly influenced radical Republican politics in Massachusetts and in the U.S. Senate.  Organized Emancipation League.  Supported enlistment of African Americans in the Union Army and emancipation of Blacks in the District of Columbia.  Supported women’s rights, Indian rights, suffrage rights for Chinese, and other causes. Editor of the Free Soiler newspaper. 

(American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 2, p. 805, Raybach, 1970 p. 184,Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Volume 2.  Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872, p. 343)



BLAIR, AUSTIN (February 8, 1818-August 6, 1894), governor of Michigan, Free-Soiler, radical republican.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 1, pp. 229-230:

BLAIR, AUSTIN (February 8, 1818-August 6, 1894), governor of Michigan, was born at Caroline, Tompkins County, New York. His great-great-grandfather came from Scotland in 1756 and settled on land now covered by Worcester, Mass. In 1809, his father, George Blair, built the first log cabin in Tompkins County, New York. Blair's mother was Rhoda (Blackman) Mann, widow of Sabin Mann. Ardent advocates of the abolition of slavery, the parents lived to see their hopes realized, and their son an instrument in the accomplishment. Austin Blair was educated at Cazenovia Seminary and Hamilton and Union Colleges, graduating from the latter in 1837. He was1 admitted to the Tioga County bar in 1841, and removed to Jackson, Mich., where he became a Whig and an active supporter of Henry Clay. From 1845 to 1849 he was a member of the state legislature, where he incurred the hostility of leaders of his party by advocating the granting of the ballot to colored citizens, and of the clergy by aiding to secure the abolition of capital punishment. Cutting loose from the Whigs, Blair in 1848 was a member of the Buffalo convention of Free-Soilers that nominated Van Buren and Adams for president and vice-president. As a member of the mass convention of Whigs, Democrats, and Free-Soilers, held "under the oaks at Jackson," July 6, 1854, he participated in the formation of the Republican party. Republican leader in the state Senate from 1855, he led the Michigan delegation at the Chicago convention that nominated Abraham Lincoln. Michigan supported Seward, and Blair was one of the trio (William M. Evarts and Carl Schurz being the others) to whom the Seward cause was intrusted on the floor of the convention. An unsuccessful candidate for the United States Senate in 1857, when Zachariah Chandler displaced Lewis Cass, Blair was elected governor in 1860, and on January 3, 1861, he declared in his inaugural address that "the Federal Government has the power to defend itself, and I do not doubt that that power will be exercised to the utmost. It is a question of war that the seceding states have to look in the face" (Detroit Free Press, January 4, 1861). The news of the bombardment of Fort Sumter reached Detroit Saturday, March 13; on Sunday the state sprang to arms; $100,000 was raised by subscription to equip troops, the treasury having been emptied by theft. On May 15, a week earlier than was required, the Michigan regiment was the first to reach Washington from the West. This initial energy continued unabated to the end; and by his energy, steadfastness, and good judgment Austin Blair came to be numbered with Andrew of Massachusetts, Morgan of New York, Curtin of Pennsylvania, Dennison of Ohio, Morton of Indiana, Yates of Illinois, and Kirkwood of Iowa in the illustrious band of "War Governors" who staunchly upheld President Lincoln. When Blair retired from the governorship in 1865, the end of the war was in sight. A year later he was elected to, Congress, where he served from 1867 to 1873. In 1871, he was supported by the soldiers and the Republican newspapers in his candidacy for the Senate, but after a bitter contest the choice of the legislature was Thomas W. Ferry, with whom Blair had made an unsuccessful combination against Senator Chandler in 1869. Feeling that his public services had entitled him to election to the Senate, and chagrined over defeat as the result of (as he believed) political trickery characteristic of his party, Blair joined the Independent Republican movement in 1872. He took the stump for Horace Greeley, and allowed himself to run for governor of Michigan on a fusion ticket. He was overwhelmingly defeated. Finding his new political bedfellows uncongenial, he was welcomed back to the Republican party, and in 1885 was nominated for justice of the Michigan supreme court on the ticket with Justice Thomas M. Cooley; but both were defeated by reason of venomous news paper attacks on decisions of the court alleged to favor railroads. From 1882 to 1890 Blair served by election two terms as a regent of the University of Michigan. The controversies in which he had been engaged from boyhood ha d burned themselves out, and the latter days of his life were spent in the practise of his profession. He was married in February 1849 to Sarah L. Ford, and his son, Charles A. Blair, was a justice of the Michigan supreme court from 1904 until his death in 1912.

[H. M. Utley and B. M. Cutcheon, Michigan as a Province, Territory and State (1906), volumes III, IV; J. F. Rhodes, History of the U. S., volumes II (1894), VI (1906); Chas. Moore, History of Mich., volume I (1915); E. W. Leavitt, The Blair Family in New England (1900); Evening News (Detroit), Aug. 4, 1894.]

C.M.

The Fortieth Congress of the United States: Historical and Biographical. Vol. 1., By William H. Barnes, 1869, p. 199.

AMONG the loyal and faithful Governors who cordially cooperated with President Lincoln in putting down the Rebellion, none deserve more honorable mention than Austin Blair, of Michigan. He was born February 8, 1818, in the town of Caroline, Tompkins County, New York. His ancestors were from Scotland, emigrating to America in the time of George I. The family, from generation to generation, seems to have pursued the busines.3 of farming. : The subject of this sketch was the first who interfered with this arrangement, to become a professional man. The education of his boyhood was at the common school, until, at seventeen, he was sent to the Seminary at Cazenovia, New York, where he remained a year and a half. He then entered Hamilton College, at Clinton, New York, becoming a member of the Sophomore class. Here he pursued his studies to the middle of his Junior year, when he entered Union College, Schenectady, being attracted thither by the great reputation of President Nott. Here he was graduated in 1839, and never re-visited his Alma Mater, until, in 1868, he delivered the annual address before the literary societies of that institution.

After leaving college, Mr. Blair read law for two years, in the office of Sweet & Davis, at Owego, N. Y. At the end of this time he was admitted to the bar. He immediately emigrated to Michigan, and commenced practice at Jackson, the place of his present residence. In a short time he removed to Eaton Rapids; and after remaining there two years, he returned to Jackson, and engaged actively in the practice of his profession. While at Eaton Rapids, he was, in 1812, elected to the office of County Clerk, which was his first office.

At this time Mr. Blair was a Whig in politics, and in 1814 joined in the canvass for Henry Clay with great zeal; and, two years later, he was sent to the lower house of the State Legislature. In 1848, le refused any longer to support the Whig ticket, and for two reasons: first, because of his great partiality for Mr. Clay, whom the nominating convention passed by in favor of General Taylor; and, secondly and principally, because of his decided anti-slavery sentiments.

After the nomination of General Taylor, Mr. Blair attended the convention at Buffalo which put in nomination Van Buren and Adams. This ticket le supported with all his might, not that he cherished any hope of success, but that he thought it was time for a beginning to be made in the right direction.

In 1852 he was elected Prosecuting-Attorney of Jackson County, holding that office during two years. In 1854, Mr. Blair actively participated in the proceedings at the convention at Jackson, which resulted in the foundation of the Republican party in Michigan. This convention brought together the anti-slavery men of the Whig and Free-Soil parties in that State, and resulted in a complete triumph over the Democracy at the Fall election. He was, at this time, chosen a Senator in the State Legislature. In 1856, he was an earnest supporter of Fremont and Dayton. At the November election of 1860, Mr. Blair was chosen Governor of Michigan, and he entered upon his executive duties in the following January. Fully aware of the perilous position in which the country had been placed by the spirit of rebellion which then pervaded the Southern States, and foreseeing the inevitable collision, he commenced his official career with a full appreciation of the responsibilities of his office. His judicious and prompt administration of military affairs in the State, soon distinguished him as possessing great executive ability, ardent love of country and true devotion to the interests and honor of his State. These characteristics soon secured for him the confidence of the people of both political parties, which he retained during his entire four years' administration.

The inaugural of Governor Blair, which was a profound and philosophical discussion of the true nature of our form of government, and of the real signification of the existing and impending issues, closed with these emphatic words:

“ It is a question of war that the seceding States have to look in the face. They who think that this powerful Government can be disrupted peacefully, have read history to no purpose. The sons of the men who carried arms in the Seven Years' War with the most powerful nation in the world, to establish this Government, will not hesitate to make equal sacrifices to maintain it. Most deeply must we deplore the unnatural contest. On the heads of the traitors who provoke it, must rest the responsibility. In such a contest the God of battles has no attribute that can take sides with the revolutionists of the Slave States.

“I recommend you at an early day to make manifest to the gentlemen who represent this State in the two Houses of Congress, and to the country, that Michigan is loyal to the Union, the Constitution, and the Laws, and will defend them to the uttermost; and to proffer to the President of the United States the whole military power of the State for that purpose. Oh, for the firm, steady hand of a Washington, or a Jackson, to guide the ship of State in this perilous storm. Let us hope that we shall find him on the 4th of March. Meantime, let us abide in the faith of our fathers—Liberty and Union, one and inseparable, now and for ever.'”

Marshaled by such a leader, the Legislature was neither timid nor slow in declaring the loyalty of Michigan to the Union. In joint resolution, offered February 2, 1861, it declared its adherence to the Government of the United States, tendered it all the military power and material resources of the State, and declared that concession and compromise were not to be offered to traitors. Still, nothing definite was done; no actual defensive or aggressive military steps were taken, until rebel foolhardiness precipitated the struggle that had become inevitable, by converging upon Fort Sumter the fire of the encircling batteries of Charleston Harbor. On April 12, 1861, the news was received at Detroit that the rebels at Charleston had actually inaugurated civil war by firing upon Fort Sumter. This intelligence created much excitement, and in view of the uncertainty of coming events, the people commenced looking around to estimate how united they would be in the cause of the Union. On the following day, a meeting of the Detroit Bar, presided over by the venerable Judge Ross Wilkins, was held, and resolutions were adopted pledging that community to “stand by the Government to the last," and repudiating the treason of the South. By the following Monday, April 15, when the surrender of the South Carolina fortress was known throughout the land, and the call of the President for : 75,000 volunteers had been received, the entire State was alive to the emergencies and the duties of the hour, and the uprising of the people was universal. Public meetings were held in all the cities and most of the towns, pledges of assistance to the nation in its hour of peril made, and volunteering briskly commenced.

On Tuesday, April 16, Governor Blair arrived in Detroit, and during the day he issued a proclamation calling for a regiment of volunteers, and ordering the Adjutant-General to accept the first ten companies that should offer, and making it the duty of that officer to issue all the necessary orders and instructions in detail. The movement thus inaugurated did not slacken in impetus nor lessen in ardor. The State responded to the call of its authorities most promptly. The patriotism of the people was in a blaze, war meetings were held in every town, and the tender of troops from all points in the State far exceeded the requisition.

The first call made by the President upon Michigan for troops to aid in the suppression of the rebellion, was, as before stated, for one regiment only, which was promptly met by the muster into service of the First regiment, and that was soon followed by the second. At the same time several other regiments were persistently pressing for service, and some were authorized to organize without provision of law, while many companies found service in other States. In the meantime the organization of the Third and Fourth regiments had been commenced on the responsibility of the Governor alone, and  while that was in progress, he received instructions from the War Department to discontinue the raising of more troops, and that it was important to reduce, rather than enlarge the number.

The Governor, foreseeing an immediate necessity for preparation to meet coming emergencies and future calls, assumed the responsibility of establishing a camp of instruction at Fort Wayne, near Detroit, for the officers and non-commissioned officers of the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh regiments; and on the 21st of May, companies were assigned to those regiments, and their officers were ordered to assemble at Fort Wayne on the 19th of June.

A course of instruction followed, with much success, until August 1, when the camp was broken up and the force sent to various localities to recruit their men and organize the regiments. This was accomplished with astonishing promptness, the Sixth being mustered in August 20th ; the Seventh, August 22d; and the Fifth, August 28th. All had left for the field prior to the 12th of September.

The establishment of the Camp of Instruction attracted much attention in other States, and most favorable comments from public journals. It has always been considered in Michigan as a most judicious and eminently successful effort, its value becoming more and more apparent as the war progressed, not only in the efficiency of these particular regiments, but in many others having the benefit of officers who had received the instruction of the camp.

The law of Congress of August 30, had authorized the President to receive into service 500,000 volunteers. The proportion of Michigan was understood at the time to be 19,500. In response to this requisition, the State continued recruiting, sending regiment after regiment to the field; and up to the end of December, had sent to the front three regiments of cavalry, one of engineers and mechanics, twelve of infantry, two companies of cavalry for the “Merrill Horse," two companies for 1st and 2d regiments U. S. Sharp-shooters, and five batteries.

In response to the call of the President of October 17, 1863, for 300,000 more, Governor Blair issued his proclamation for the Michigan quota of 11,298, in which he makes use of the following stirring language.

“This call is for soldiers to fill the ranks of the regiments in the field,—those regiments which by long and gallant service have wasted their numbers in the same proportion that they have made a distinguished name, both for themselves and the State. The people of Michigan will recognize this as a duty already too long delayed. Our young men, I trust, will hasten to stand beside the heroes of Antietam, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Stone River, and Chicamauga.”

The Governor's stirring proclamation, and the patriotic response of the people of Michigan, immediately followed each successive call of the President for volunteers.

During his four years' administration, Governor Blair devoted his entire time, talents, and energies to the duties of his office. When he left the Executive chair, he had sent into the field eighty-three thousand three hundred and forty-seven soldiers. In his message delivered to the Legislature, January 4, 1865, he greeted them most affectionately from the Capitol of the State, on vacating the chair which he had so well filled and so highly honored during the years of the war that had passed.

July 4, 1867, Governor Blair delivered an oration at the laying of the corner-stone of the Michigan Soldiers' Monument. It comprised an able and faithful resume of the principal conflicts of the war, reviewing in considerable detail the prominent part taken in those bloody scenes by the brave and hardy troops of Michigan. The brief Congressional record of Governor Blair is what might be expected from the antecedents of the man. He is an earnest Republican, a strong friend and supporter of the Reconstruction measures, and a stern enemy to every form of repudiation, and to every tendency in that fatal direction. His speech upon the national finances on the floor of the House, March 21, 1868, is eminently just and convincing, and such as could hardly fail of commending itself to all fair and honest minds.



BOOTH, Lionel,

George H. Lanning (1838 – 1864), also known by his alias Lionel F. Booth, was the commander of the 6th U.S. Regiment Colored Heavy Artillery. Lanning enrolled as a 1st Sergeant in the 1st Missouri Light Artillery. At the Battle of Wilson's Creek, he was a private in the 2nd Infantry Regiment, Company B, working as a clerk for General Nathaniel Lyon. He served in St. Louis, Missouri at Jefferson Barracks, where he met Lizzie Way, and married her in September 1861 – signing the marriage certificate as George H. Lanning. In 1863, he was promoted to Major and given the command of the 6th U.S. Colored Heavy Artillery Regiment. He was killed in action on April 12, 1864 at the Battle of Fort Pillow.



BOSEMAN, Benjamin Antony, Jr. (1840 – 1881), sometimes misspelled Bozeman, was an African-American physician born in Troy, New York, son of Benjamin and Annaretta Boseman, the oldest of five children. In the 1860 U.S. Census he is described as mulatto. His father was a steward on a steamboat, and then sutler.
He studied in the Preparatory (high school) Division of New York Central College from 1854 to 1856.

After a lengthy apprenticeship in Troy, Boseman completed his medical studies at Dartmouth Medical School in 1863 and Bowdoin College's Maine Medical College in 1864. He then served the Union as an assistant surgeon in the U.S. Colored Troops. Stationed at Camp Foster, Hilton Head, South Carolina, he treated sick and wounded soldiers, and medically examined prospective recruits

At the end of the war he opened a medical practice in Charleston, South Carolina. In 1869 he was appointed physician to the Charleston City Jail. He married Virginia Montgomery and they had two children; one was a daughter, Cordelia. A different source says that he had two sons, Benjamin and Christopher.

Boseman served in the South Carolina House of Representatives for three consecutive terms, from 1868 until 1873, representing Charleston County. As a legislator, he introduced in 1870 South Carolina's first comprehensive Civil Rights bill.

In 1869 the South Carolina Legislature, beginning the misspelling of his name as "Bozeman", appointed him and Francis L. Cardozo trustees of South Carolina College, predecessor of the University of South Carolina. He was also appointed to the Board of Regents of the South Carolina Lunatic Asylum.

In 1872 he was nominated for Comptroller General of South Carolina.

In 1873 President Ulysses S. Grant appointed Boseman the first Black postmaster of Charleston  Boseman served as postmaster until his death in 1881, at the age of 40. 



BOUTWELL, George Sewall, 1818-1905, statesman, lawyer. 20th Governor of Massachusetts.   Helped organize the Republican Party.  Member of Congress, 1862-1868.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senator.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.  Secretary of the Treasury under President Ulysses S. Grant.  Supported African American citizenship and voting rights during Reconstruction.  Important leader serving on the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, which framed the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 331-332; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 2, pp. 489-490; Congressional Globe;   (Boston, 1859); a “Manual of the United States Direct and Revenue Tax” (1863); “Decisions on the Tax Law” (New York, 1863); “Tax-Payer's Manual” (Boston, 1865); a volume of “Speeches and Papers” (1867); and “Why I am a Republican” (Hartford, Connecticut, 1884). Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 2, pp. 489-490:

BOUTWELL, GEORGE SEWALL (January 28, 1818-February 27, 1905), politician, born in Brookline, Massachusetts, was the son of Sewall and Rebecca (Marshall) Boutwell, both of old Massachusetts stock. His boyhood was passed in Lunenburg, Massachusetts., where from the age of thirteen to seventeen he was employed in a small store with the privilege of attending school during the winter months. When he was seventeen he became clerk in a store in Groton, Massachusetts. He devoted much of his time to self-education in the hope of becoming a lawyer, and at an early age began to write articles for the newspapers on political topics, and to make addresses. In 1841 he was married to Sarah Adelia Thayer. He was an active Democrat, and during seven sessions between 1842 and 1850 represented Groton in the lower house of the state legislature. Through his useful work there he became one of the leaders of the younger element of the party, whose anti-slavery leanings made possible the coalition with the Free-Soilers which in 1850 defeated the Whigs. As a result of this coalition, Boutwell was elected by the legislature governor for the year 1851, and Charles Sumner, representing the Free-Soilers, was elected senator; the same political combination effected Boutwell's reelection for 1852. After the expiration of his term he pursued legal studies with th e purpose of becoming a patent lawyer; from 1855 to 1861 he was secretary of the state board of education. In January 1862 he was admitted to the Suffolk bar.

The important part of Boutwell's career lies in the field of national politics. He had  been one of the organizers of the Republican party in Massachusetts in 1855, and he consistently represented its radical wing, more, however, on the side of practical politics than in its idealistic aspect. From July 17, 1862, to March 3, 1863, he was commissioner of internal revenue, and in that short period did effective work in organizing this new branch of the government. His activities as a radical Republican were most conspicuous during his terms of service as representative in Congress from 1863 to 1869 in connection with the problems of reconstruction. As a member of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction he helped in framing the Fourteenth Amendment; his belief in the necessity of full suffrage for the negro led to his advocacy of the Fifteenth Amendment. His support of the congressional plan of Reconstruction involved persistent, vigorous, and even fanatical opposition to President Johnson and his policies. In the movement for the impeachment of the President he was among the leaders, being chosen by the House of Representatives as one of its s even managers to conduct the impeachment. His suggestion that a suitable punishment for Johnson, the "enemy of two races of men," would be his projection into a "hole in the sky" near the Southern Cross, drew the ridicule of William M. Evarts, counsel for the defense. Boutwell's efforts on behalf of the radical Republicans were rewarded by a place in Grant's cabinet as secretary of the treasury. To this position he brought qualifications chiefly of a political nature, and he was not a supporter of civil service reform; but he labored diligently in improving the organization of the department and in reducing the national debt. Before the end of his four years as secretary he had effected the redemption of 200 millions of six per cent bonds and sold an equal amount bearing interest at five per cent (Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, December 1872, iii). Early in his administration occurred the famous " Black Friday," on which day a n attempted corner in gold was broken by his release of Treasury gold.

From March 1873 to March 1877, he served a four-year term as senator from Massachusetts. On his failure to be reelected by his party he was appointed commissioner to revise the statutes of the United States. In 1880 he became counsel and agent of the United States before a board of international arbitrators for the settlement of claims of French citizens against the government of this country, and of American citizens against the government of France. In his practise as a lawyer, which he resumed after his retirement from the Senate, he handled numerous cases involving questions of international law. The independence of spirit which at various times in his career he had manifested, in marked contrast to his general disposition for party regularity- showed itself in his last years in his opposition to the policy of the Republican party on the Philippine question, and led to his withdrawal from the party; he was president of the Anti-Imperialist League from its organization in November 1898 until his death in 1905.

He was the author of Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions (1859); A Manual of the Direct and Excise Tax System of the United States (1863); Speeches Relating to the Rebellion and the Overthrow of Slavery (1867); The Constitution of the United States at the End of the First Century (1895); The Crisis of the Republic (1900).

[Boutwell's Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (1902) contains interesting though guarded accounts of the public men of his time; to it is prefixed a biographical sketch which appeared in the Memoirs of the Judiciary and the Bar of New England, January 1901. For his connection with the impeachment of Johnson see D. M. DeWitt, The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson (1903); E. P. Oberholtzer, Jay Cooke (1907) has numerous references to Boutwell as secretary of the treasury.]

H. G. P.

(Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888,Volume I, pp. 331-332; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 2, pp. 489-490; Congressional Globe; Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Volume 2.  Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872, 348)

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography 1888, Volume I, pp. 331-332:

BOUTWELL, George Sewall, statesman, born in Brookline, Massachusetts, 28 January, 1818. His early life was spent on his father's farm until, in 1835, he became a merchant's clerk in Groton, Massachusetts. He was afterward admitted to partnership, and remained in business there until 1855. In 1836 he began by himself to study law, and was admitted to the bar, but did not enter into active practice for many years. He also began a course of reading, by which he hoped to make up for his want of a college education. He entered politics as a supporter of Van Buren in 1840, and between 1842 and 1851 was seven times chosen as a democrat to the state legislature, where he soon became recognized as the leader of his party. In 1844, 1846, and 1848 he was defeated as a candidate for congress, and in 1849 and 1850 he was the democratic nominee for governor with no better success; but he was finally elected in 1851 and again in 1852 by a coalition with the free-soil party. In 1849-'50 he was state bank commissioner; in 1853 a member of the state constitutional convention. After the repeal of the Missouri compromise in 1854 he assisted in organizing the republican party, with which he has since acted. In 1860 he was a member of the Chicago convention which nominated Lincoln, and in February, 1861, was a delegate to the Washington peace conference. President Lincoln invited him to organize the new department of internal revenue in 1862, and he was its first commissioner, serving from July, 1862, till March, 1863. In 1862 he was chosen a member of congress from Massachusetts, and twice re-elected. In February, 1868, he made a speech advocating the impeachment of President Johnson, was chosen chairman of the committee appointed to report articles of impeachment, and became one of the seven managers of the trial. In March, 1869, he entered President Grant's cabinet as secretary of the treasury, where he opposed diminution of taxation and favored a large reduction of the national debt. In 1870 congress, at his recommendation, passed an act providing for the funding of the national debt and authorizing the selling of certain bonds, but not an increase of the debt. Secretary Boutwell attempted to do this by means of a syndicate, but expended more than half of one per cent., in which he was accused of violating the law. The house committee of ways and means afterward absolved him from this charge. In March, 1873, he resigned and took his seat as a U. S. senator from Massachusetts, having been chosen to fill the vacancy caused by the election of Henry Wilson to the vice-presidency. In 1877 he was appointed by President Hayes to codify and edit the statutes at large. Mr. Boutwell was for six years an overseer of Harvard, and for five years secretary of the Massachusetts state board of education, preparing the elaborate reports of that body. He afterward opened a law office in Washington, D. C. He is the author of “Educational Topics and Institutions” (Boston, 1859); a “Manual of the United States Direct and Revenue Tax” (1863); “Decisions on the Tax Law” (New York, 1863); “Tax-Payer's Manual” (Boston, 1865); a volume of “Speeches and Papers” (1867); and “Why I am a Republican” (Hartford, Connecticut, 1884). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 331-332.

GEORGE S. BOUTWELL was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, January 28, 1818, and removed to Groton in 1835. He was engaged in mercantile business as clerk and proprietor for several years, and subsequently entered the profession of the law. From 1842 to 1850 he was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. In 1849 and 1850 he was Bank Commissioner. In 1851 he was elected Governor of Massachusetts, and served two terms. He was a member of the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention of 1853. He was eleven years a member and Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, and ten years a member of the Board of Overseers df Harvard College. He was appointed Commissioner of the Internal Revenue, in July, 1862, and organized the Revenue system. In 1863 he took his seat as a Representative in Congress from Massachusetts, and was re-elected to the Thirty-Ninth and Fortieth Congresses. He is the author of a " Manual of the School System, and School Laws of Massachusetts," "Educational Topics and Institutions," "A Manual of the Revenue System," and a volume just published, entitled " Speeches on Reconstruction."

- pp. 31, 91, 442, 475, 526, 528, 536, 553.



BROWNLOW, WILLIAM GANNAWAY (August 29, 1805-April 29, 1877), governor of Tennessee, radical republican.

 Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 1, pp. 177-178:

BROWNLOW, WILLIAM GANNAWAY (August 29, 1805-April 29, 1877), governor of Tennessee, was born in Wythe County, Virginia. His parents, Joseph A. Brownlow and Catharine (Gannaway) Brownlow, were among the many Virginians who migrated to eastern Tennessee in the early nineteenth century and developed in that somewhat isolated region a community distinct in culture and opinion. Some five years after the birth of their son they settled near Knoxville. Joseph Brownlow died in 1816, and the death of his wife three months later left the boy to grow up in the care of his mother's relatives. He had little schooling, but, while learning the carpenter's trade, studied the common branches and acquired a fair education, especially in English literature and the Bible, and subsequently prepared for the Methodist ministry, which he entered in 1826. For ten years he served as an itinerant preacher, but his intense interest in public questions, and a natural gift of pungent speech soon led him into political as well as religious controversy. In his speeches and in a pamphlet defending his political activity, he avowed beliefs and displayed a fearlessness that were to make him a national figure thirty years later. This pamphlet, a controversy with a Calvinistic preacher named Posey (October 1832), contained his first published utterance on the slavery question. He said that he expected to see the day when slavery, not the tariff, would shake the government to its foundations, and that when such a day came he, though no opponent of slavery, would stand by the government. He became in 1838 the editor of the Tennessee Whig (Elizabethton), and the following year, of the Jonesboro Whig and Independent which he edited until 1849. In that year he entered upon his editorship of the Knoxville Whig, which under his hand was soon the most influential paper in eastern Tennessee and before the Civil War had a circulation larger than that of any other political paper in the state. He was a candidate against Andrew Johnson for nomination to Congress in 1843 and in 1850 was one of several commissioners appointed by President Fillmore to carry out the improvement of the Missouri River for which Congress had made provision. He had always been a "Federal Whig of the Washington and Hamilton type," always a "national" man, an unconditional advocate of the preservation of the Union. On November 17, 1860, he declared editorially that Lincoln, though elected by a sectional vote, "is chosen president, and whether with or without the consent and participation of the South, will be and ought to be inaugurated on the 4th of March, 1861." His was the last house in Knoxville over which the Union flag was displayed, and the Whig was the last Union paper in the South. Until it was suppressed (October 24, 1861) every issue contained arguments and appeals to the Union men of the South and defiance of and contempt for the leaders of secession. In the last issue Brownlow declared that he would rather be imprisoned than "recognize the hand of God in the work of breaking up the American Government." After he had refused allegiance to the Confederate government his arrest was imminent and on November 5, 1861 (Congressional Record, 42 Congress, 2-Session, pp. 1038-40), he fled to the mountains on the North Carolina border. His press and types were destroyed. He was found by Confederate scouts, returned to Knoxville, and notified that he would be given a passport beyond the Confederate lines into Kentucky. But on December 6 he was arrested and placed in jail under suspicion of having had a hand in the state-wide burning of railway bridges on November 6, and charged with treason because of his final editorial in the Whig. He suffered from typhoid during his imprisonment and after a month was allowed to go to his home, where he was kept under guard for nearly eight weeks. On order of Judah P. Benjamin, Confederate secretary of war, he was sent inside the Federal lines on March 3, 1862. Going at once to Ohio, he spent some time regaining his health and writing his Sketches of the Rise, Progress, and Decline of Secession; With a Narrative of Personal Adventure Among the Rebels (1862), after which he made an extensive lecture tour through the North where he was shown distinguished attention by public officials and large audiences. His ideas in regard to slavery changed and he supported President Lincoln's emancipation policy (Cincinnati Gazette, April 30, 1877).

Returning to eastern Tennessee with Burnside's army in the fall of 1863, he again became a leader among the Unionists of that section, was among those who called a nominating convention for May 30,-preliminary to restoring civil government in the state,-and was a member of the Union central committee until elected governor by acclamation in 1865. His first message gave a remarkably comprehensive view of conditions and needs in the state, and outlined closely the course afterward followed by legislation. He was determined to disfranchise all who had fought against the United States, and asked the legislature for a military force to make such a measure effective. The Ku Klux Klan became a dangerous power after the franchise law had been made more severe, and when the protection of federal troops was denied, Brownlow gathered 1,600 state guards and proclaimed martial law in nine counties. He was afflicted with palsy and unable to make an active campaign for reelection, but was returned by a large majority. Before the close of his second term he was elected to the United States Senate to succeed David T. Patterson, and took office on March 4, 1869. His career in the Senate was not distinguished. He usually acted with the Republicans, and for a while spoke often and vigorously in debate. His health was failing, however, and although he attended regularly until toward the end of his term, he became unable to speak, and several addresses, mainly defenses against attack, were read by the clerk. The last bill introduced by him was for the purchase of a site for Fisk University. At the end of his term, he returned to Knoxville, bought control of the Whig, which he had sold in 1869, and edited it with something of his old-time vigor until a short time before his death.

Brownlow was of robust figure, six feet in height, and weighed 175 pounds. He had, he said, as strong a voice as any man in east Tennessee. When not in controversy he was a peaceful and charming man, but his fearless and ruthless honesty in expressing his opinions made him always a storm center. Besides the book already mentioned, he wrote Helps to the Study of Presbyterianism (1834); A Political Register, Setting forth the Principles of the Whig and Locofoco Parties in the United States, with the Life and Public Services of Henry Clay (1844); Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy (1856); The Great Iron Wheel Examined, and an Exhibition of Elder [J. R.] Graves, its Builder (1856). He was married to Eliza, daughter of James S. and Susan Dabney (Everet) O'Brien.

[The chief sources are the works mentioned above, especially Sketches of the Rise . .. of Secession. Sec also Parson Brownlow and the Unionist s of East Tenn.: with a Sketch of His Life (1862); Portrait and Biography of Parson Brownlow, the Tenn. Patriot, Together with His Last Editorial in the Knoxville Whig; Also His Recent Speeches, Rehearsing His Experience with Secession and His Prison Life (1862); Jas. Walter Fertig, The Secession and Reconstruction of Tenn. (1898); J. T. Moore and A. P. Foster, Tenn. the Volunteer State (1923); O. P. Temple, Notable Men of Tenn. (1912); John R. Neal, Disunion and Restoration in Tenn. (1899). W. F. G. Shanks compared Brownlow and Andrew John so n in Putnam's Magazine, April 1869, pp. 428 ff. Obituaries were published in the Public Ledger (Memphis, Tenn.), May 1, 1877, and in the Evening Post (N. Y.), N. Y. Tribune, and New York Times, the Cincinnati Gazette, and other papers of April 30, 1877.]

F.W.S.



BULLOCK, RUFUS BROWN (March 28, 1834-April 27, 1907), Reconstruction governor of Georgia, radical republican.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 1, pp. 258-259:

BULLOCK, RUFUS BROWN (March 28, 1834-April 27, 1907), Reconstruction governor of Georgia, the son of Volckert Veeder Bullock and his wife Jane Eliza Brown, was born in Bethlehem, New York. After securing a high school education, he became interested in telegraphy, in which art he became an expert. He developed executive talent and for several years was employed in supervising the building of telegraph lines between New York and the South. The year 1859 found him located at Augusta, Georgia, as the representative of the Adams Express Company. He organized the express business in the South and became an official of the Southern Express Company. On the outbreak of the Civil War he offered his services as a telegraph expert to the Confederacy and was used in the establishment of telegraph and railroad lines on interior points. At the close of the War he had reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel and was paroled at Appomattox as acting assistant quartermaster general. He then returned to Augusta, resumed his connection with the express business, organized a bank, and became (1867) president of the Macon & Augusta Railroad.

Bullock's entrance into politics was as a Republican member of the constitutional convention of 1868. Congress had overthrown the state government set up by President Johnson, had reestablished military control, and had required as the condition of readmission the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, already rejected by the Johnson government. Congress ordered the adoption of a new state constitution, and, by disfranchising the responsible native white element and empowering the negro to vote for members of the convention and to sit in it, assured the election of a convention which would carry into effect the will of Congress. To this convention Bullock, who heartily favored the Congressional plan of reconstruction, was elected. Being a man of considerable ability, large, handsome, pleasant mannered and popular, he at once became the leader of the carpet-bag and negro element of the convention. Under his leadership the constitutional convention was turned into a party nominating convention and he was nominated as the Republican candidate for governor in the election shortly to be held. The reviving Democratic party nominated General John B. Gordon, but was defeated in the November 1868 election.

As governor from 1868 to the fall of 1871 Bullock was charged by the contemporary Democratic newspapers and other partisan opponents with every known form of political rascality, with almost wrecking the state-owned Wes tern & Atlantic Railroad by placing its control in the hands of incompetent and venal carpet-baggers (it piled up a debt of three-quarters of a million dollars during Bullock's administration instead of yielding a steady net revenue to the state as it had done during the previous administration); with seeking to prolong military control for personal and party ends; with the sale of pardons; with purchasing the influence of the press by wasteful publications of public documents; with allowing the state penitentiary to be plundered; with gross corruption in the payment of subsidies to railroads; with selling state bonds and appropriating the proceeds; with general extravagance and corruption in every department of his administration. Two years of misrule were enough for the state, and in 1870 the conservatives returned an overwhelming majority to the legislature. The Governor saw that his rule was over; fearing criminal indictment, he resigned, on October 23, and fled from the state. On the restoration of Democratic control the legislature appointed a committee to investigate his official conduct. The report, covering 166 pages, pronounced Bullock guilty of various charges of corruption and mismanagement. Bullock undertook to defend himself in October 1872, in an Address to the People of Georgia. The historian of the Reconstruction period (C. M. Thompson, Reconstruction in Georgia, 1915) says of the defense that it "fails to bring conviction that he disproved a single charge of the investigating committee." Bullock eluded efforts to capture him until 1876, when he was arrested, brought back to Georgia, tried on an indictment charging embezzlement of public funds, and acquitted for lack of evidence. At a much later period he again published a defense, this time in the Independent, March 19, 1903. It is wholly unconvincing. The truth appears to be that Bullock and his crew "instituted a carnival of public spoliation" (U. B. Phillips, Life of Robert Toombs, 1913,p. 262). Through the device of issuing state bonds (later repudiated) to subsidize railroad corporations, they poured public money into their own pockets. During the fight over the matter of repudiating these bonds, Henry Clews & Co. of New York, who acted as Bullock's financial agents, published a card in the Atlanta Constitution in which they admitted that the proceeds of the bonds were misapplied and that the state had failed to receive value for them, but urged that they be not repudiated, as this would hurt the credit of the state.

After his acquittal by the jury, Bullock remained in Atlanta and rehabilitated himself, at least in the contemporary business world. He became president of the Atlanta Cotton Mills, president of the Chamber of Commerce, vice-president of the Piedmont Exposition, and a director of the Union Pacific Railroad. He was married to Marie Salisbury of Pawtucket, R. I., and was a vestryman in St. Philip's Church.

[A definitive history of the Reconstruction period in Georgia has been written by C. Mildred Thompson, now professor of history in Vassar College : Reconstruction in Georgia (1915). The most interesting contemporary account of the period is to be found in I. W. Avery, History of Georgia, 1850-81 (1881). Avery was editor of the Atlanta Constitution from 1869 to 1874 and was thus in a position to keep a close watch over events. A condensed account of the Reconstruction period is in R. P. Brooks, History of Georgia (1913), chapters XXIII, XXIV. The Atlanta Constitution of April 28, 1907, contains a long and highly flattering account of Bullock's career.]

R. P. B-s.



BUTLER, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (November 5, 1818-January 11, 1893), Union soldier, U. S. congressman, governor of Massachusetts. Republican member of the U.S. Congress.  Founding member and officer of the Albany auxiliary of the American Colonization Society.   As Union General, he refused to return runaway slaves to Southerners at Fort Monroe.  This led to a federal policy of calling enslaved individuals who fled to Union lines contraband of war.  “The problem of how to deal with slaves fleeing from Confederate owners to the Union lines he solved by declaring these slaves contraband; and the term "Contraband" clung to them throughout the war.” 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 1, pp. 357-359; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 81, 129, 178, 224).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 1, pp. 357-359:

BUTLER, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (November 5, 1818-January 11, 1893), Union soldier, congressman, governor of Massachusetts, was born at Deerfield, New Hampshire. His family was largely of Scotch-Irish stock, settled on the New England frontier before the Revolution. His father, John, was captain of dragoons under Jackson at New Orleans, traded in the West Indies, and held a privateer's commission from Bolivar. His mother was Charlotte Ellison, of the Londonderry (New Hampshire) Cilleys, or Seelyes. After Captain Butler's death she ultimately settled, in 1828, at Lowell, Massachusetts, running one of the famous factory boarding houses there.

Benjamin was sent to Waterbury (now Colby) College in Maine to continue the family Baptist Calvinism; but he rejected Calvinism altogether. He graduated in 1838, and returned to Lowell where he taught school and studied law. He was admitted to the bar in 1840 and began a successful practise which continued until his death. At first he was chiefly occupied with criminal cases in which he built up a reputation for remarkable quickness of wit, resourcefulness, and mastery of all the defensive devices of the law. His practise gradually extended so that he maintained offices in both Boston and Lowell. He was shrewd in investment, and in spite of rather lavish expenditures built up a fortune. On May 16, 1844, he married Sarah Hildreth, an actress. Their daughter Blanche married Adelbert Ames, who during the period of Reconstruction was senator from Mississippi, and governor of that state. After the Civil War, Butler maintained residences at Lowell, Washington, and on the New England coast. He was interested in yachting, and at one time owned the famous cup-winner America.

Butler early entered politics, as a Democrat, being elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1853, and the Senate in 1859. He was an effective public speaker. His method, which seems to have been instinctive with him, was to draw attack upon himself, and then confute his assailants. He made friends of labor and of the Roman Catholic element in his home di strict, whose support he always retained. In the legislature he stood for a ten-hour day, and for compensation for the burning of the Ursuline Convent. He took great pains to be in the intimate councils of his party, but was seldom trusted by the party leaders. His talent for biting epigrams, and his picturesque controversies made him one of the most widely known men in politics from 1860 till his death. In the national Democratic convention of 1860 he advocated a renewal of the Cincinnati platform, opposed Douglas, and voted to nominate Jefferson Davis. With Caleb Cushing and other seceders from the adjourned Baltimore meeting he joined in putting forward Breckinridge and Lane. It was characteristic ot him that in thus supporting the Southern candidate, he advanced as his reason for leaving the Douglas convention the fact that the reopening of the slave-trade had there been discussed. As was the case with so many Northern supporters of Breckinridge, Butler was a strong Andrew Jackson Unionist. He had always been interested in military affairs, and to the confusion of the Republican majority in Massachusetts had been elected brigadier-general of militia. At the news of the firing on Fort Sumter he was promptly and dramatically ready, with men and money, and left Boston for Washington with his regiment on April 17, 1861.

Thereupon began one of the most astounding careers of the war. Butler was, until Grant took control, as much a news item as any man except Lincoln. He did many things so clever, as to be almost brilliant. He moved in a continual atmosphere of controversy which gradually widened from local quarrels with Governor Andrew of Massachusetts until it included most of the governments of the world; in which controversies he was sometimes right. He expected the war to advance his political fortunes and the financial fortunes of his family and friends. His belief in the Union and in his own ability were both strong and sincere. He had hopes of the Unionist presidential nomination in 1864. A thorn in the side of those in authority, his position as a Democrat fighting for the Union and his prominence in the public eye, made it impossible to ignore or effectively to discipline him.

At the beginning of the war, his relief of blockaded Washington by landing at Annapolis with the 8th Massachusetts, and by repairing the railroad from that point, was splendidly accomplished. Probably because of his Southern connections, he was chosen to occupy Baltimore, which he did on May 13, 1861, peacefully, with but 900 troops. On May 16 he was nominated major-general of volunteers. His next command was at Fortress Monroe. Here he admirably administered the extraordinary provisions necessary for increased numbers. The problem of how to deal with slaves fleeing from Confederate owners to the Union lines he solved by declaring these slaves contraband; and the term "Contraband" clung to them throughout the war. He undertook a military expedition which ended disastrously in the battle of Big Bethel. On August 8, 1861, he was replaced by the venerable General Wool. He was then given command of the military forces in a joint military and naval attack on the forts at Hatteras Inlet, and took possession of them on August 27 and 28. He then returned to Massachusetts with authority to enlist troops; which led to a conflict with the state authorities. His plan was to use his independent command to reduce the peninsula of eastern Virginia, but he was attached instead to the expedition against New Orleans, again commanding the land forces. On May 1, 1862, he entered the city, which lay under the guns of the fleet. He was assigned the difficult task of the military government of this hostile population.

Butler's administration of New Orleans is the most controversial portion of his career. It is at least evident that he preserved the peace and effectively governed the city, improving sanitation, and doing other useful things. It is equally evident that his conduct of affairs was high-handed. Ignoring the United States government, he assumed full financial control, collecting taxes, and expending monies. He hung William Mumford for hauling down the United States flag. He seized $800,000 in bullion belonging to Southern owners, which had been left in charge of the French consul; thereby bringing upon the United States government protests from practically all the governments of Europe. A portion of the bullion was not turned over to the United States government until the whole country had become excited over its fate. Still more sensational was his Order No. 28. It certainly was true that the women of New Orleans had rendered themselves unpleasant to the occupying troops. To meet this situation Butler ordered that  "When any female shall, by word, or gesture, or movement, insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier of the United States, she shall be regarded and held liable to be treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation." To the international storm of indignation which this aroused, it could only be replied that no violence was intended. In addition to these overt acts, there hangs about Butler's administration a cloud of suspicion of financial irregularity, popularly characterized in the tradition that he stole the spoons from the house he occupied. That corruption was rampant there can be no doubt. It seems that his brother was implicated. In so far as General Butler is concerned the historian must be content to recognize that if he were guilty, he was certainly too clever to leave proofs behind; a cleverness somewhat unfortunate for him, if he were indeed not guilty. On December 16, 1862, he was removed.

In 1863 he was given command of the districts of eastern Virginia and North Carolina, and was put in command of the Army of the James, consisting of two corps. In this position Grant, the next year, used him as commissioner for the exchange of prisoners, perhaps hoping (it being contrary to Grant's policy to exchange) that the Confederate commander would refuse to recognize him, as President Davis had issued a proclamation declaring that his conduct at New Orleans had placed him outside the rules of war. Butler, however, conducted some exchanges, and forced the Confederacy to recognize the military status of the United States negro troops. He encouraged trade in his districts, almost violating the orders of the government. Having made an independent advance, this resulted in the bottling of his army at Bermuda Hundred, where they remained blocked by a greatly inferior number of Confederates. In November 1864 he was sent to New York to preserve order during the election, riots being anticipated. His adroitness and his popularity with the Democrats prevented all disorders; if any were indeed brewing. On January 7, 1865, he was ordered by Grant to return to Lowell.

He had by this time become identified with the Radical element among the Republicans. In the elections of 1866 he was elected to Congress, as a Republican, serving until 1875. He lived at Washington lavishly, the Radicals were the dominant element, and he became prominent among them. In the management of the Johnson impeachment for the House of Representatives he was, owing to the feebleness of Thaddeus Stevens, the most impressive figure. After Stevens's death in 1868 he seems to have aspired to succeed him as Radical chief, taking a drastic stand on all questions of reconstruction as they came up during the Grant administration. At this stage, his influence with Grant seems to have been strong. In the Democratic wave of 1875 he lost his seat

In. the meantime he h ad been having difficulties with the ruling element in the Republican party in his own state. He was hardly more hated in Louisiana than by the conservative elements of both parties in Massachusetts, because of his radical proposals, his unconventionality, and their questioning of his honesty. This hostility he took as a challenge, and determined to become governor of the Bay State. In 1871 he ran for the Republican nomination for governor, and was defeated. In 1872 he ran again, and was again defeated. After his defeat for Congress in 1875 he actively took up the cause of the Greenbacks, which indeed he had supported from the beginning. In 1878 he was again elected to Congress, as an independent Greenbacker. In the same year he ran for the governorship, with the support of the Greenbackers and a portion of the Democrats. Defeated, he ran again in 1879, as Democratic candidate, but there was a split in the party, and again he was defeated. In 1880 he attended the national Democratic convention and supported General Hancock, who received the nomination. In 1882 he at length succeeded in obtaining the undivided support of the Democratic party of his state, and had the advantage of the general reaction against the Republicans. His persistency, also, appealed to many, who felt that he was unduly attacked and should have a chance. He was elected, alone of his ticket, by a majority of 14,000. His position gave him no power, as in Massachusetts no executive steps could be taken without the assent of the council, which was controlled, as were both Houses of the legislature, by his opponents. He attacked the administration of the charitable institutions of the state, especially the Tewkesbury State Almshouse; but the investigation which he instigated led to no results. He characteristically attended with full military escort the Commencement at Harvard, after that institution had decided to break its tradition and not award a degree to the governor of the commonwealth. His drastic Thanksgiving proclamation created a scandal, until he pointed out that it was copied complete from that of Christopher Gore in 1810, with the addition of an admonition to the clergy to abstain from political discussion. In 1883 he was defeated for reelection. In 1884 he was an avowed candidate for the presidency. He was nominated on May 14, by a new party called Anti-Monopoly, demanding national control of interstate commerce and the eight-hour day. On May 28 he was nominated by the National [Greenback] party. He was a delegate to the Democratic convention, where he sought to control the platform and secure the nomination; but was defeated. In the election he received 175,370 votes, scattered in all but nine states, and most numerous in Michigan, where he received 42,243. This was his last political activity. He died at Washington, January 11, 1893.

[Butler's autobiography, Butler's Book, 2 volumes (1892), is entertaining and valuable as a reflection of the man.

The Private and Official Correspondence of General Benj. F. Butler, during the Period of the Civil War, 5 volumes (1917), is a fascinating collection of all varieties of material, but not complete with respect to any. His speeches and public letters outside of Congress have not been collected, and exist scattered in newspapers and pamphlets. He is constantly referred to in the letters and reminiscences of the men of his time. There is no standard life. Among the sketches are: 

Blanche B. Ames, The Butler Ancestry of General Benj. Franklin Butler (1895); Jas. Parton, General Butler in New Orleans (1864); Edward Pierrepont, Review of Defence of General Butler Before the House of Representatives, in Relation to the New Orleans Gold (1865); Life and Public Services of Major-General Butler (1864); J. F. McLaughlin, The American Cyclops, the Hero of New Orleans, and the Spoiler of Silver Spoons, Dubbed LL.D. by Pasquino (1868); M. M. Pomeroy, Life and Public Services of Benjamin F. Butler (1879); T. A. Bland, Life of Benjamin F. Butler (1879); Record of Benj. F. Butler Compiled from the Original Sources (1883).
For Butler's military career see also the Official Records (Army).]

C.R.F.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 477-478:

BUTLER, Benjamin Franklin, lawyer, born in Deerfield, New Hampshire, 5 November, 1818. He is the son of Captain John Butler, who served under Jackson at New Orleans. He was graduated at Waterville college (now Colby university), Maine, in 1838, was admitted to the bar in 1840, began practice at Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1841, and has since had a high reputation as a lawyer, especially in criminal cases. He early took a prominent part in politics on the democratic side, and was elected a member of the Massachusetts house of representatives in 1853, and of the state senate in 1859. In 1860 he was a delegate to the democratic national convention that met at Charleston. When a portion of the delegates reassembled at Baltimore, Mr. Butler, after taking part in the opening debates mid votes, announced that a majority of the delegates from Massachusetts would not further participate in the deliberations of the convention, on the ground that there had been a withdrawal in part of the majority of the states; and further, he added, “upon the ground that I would not sit in a convention where the African slave-trade, which is piracy by the laws of my country, is approvingly advocated.” In the same year he was the unsuccessful democratic candidate for governor of Massachusetts. At the time of President Lincoln's call for troops in April, 1861, he held the commission of brigadier-general of militia. On the 17th of that month he marched to Annapolis with the 8th Massachusetts regiment, and was placed in command of the district of Annapolis, in which the city of Baltimore was included. On 13 May, 1861, he entered Baltimore at the head of 900 men, occupied the city without opposition, and on 16 May was made a major-general, and assigned to the command of Fort Monroe and the department of eastern Virginia. While he was here, some slaves that had come within his lines were demanded by their masters; but he refused to deliver them up on the ground that they were contraband of war; hence arose the designation of “contrabands,” often applied to slaves during the war. In August he captured Forts Hatteras and Clark on the coast of North Carolina. He then returned to Massachusetts to recruit an expedition for the gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi. On 23 March, 1862, the expedition reached Ship island, and on 17 April went up the Mississippi. The fleet under Farragut having passed the forts, 24 April, and virtually captured New Orleans, General Butler took possession of the city on 1 May. His administration of affairs was marked by great vigor. He instituted strict sanitary regulations, armed the free colored men, and compelled rich secessionists to contribute toward the support of the poor of the city. His course in hanging William Mumford for hauling down the U. S. flag from the mint, and in issuing “Order No. 28,” intended to prevent women from insulting soldiers, excited strong resentment, not only in the south, but in the north and abroad, and in December, 1862, Jefferson Davis issued a proclamation declaring him an outlaw. On 10 May, 1862, General Butler seized about $800,000 which had been deposited in the office of the Dutch consul, claiming that arms for the confederates were to be bought with it. This action was protested against by all the foreign consuls, and the government at Washington, after an investigation, ordered the return of the money. On 16 December, 1862, General Butler was recalled, as he believes, at the instigation of Louis Napoleon, who supposed the general to be hostile to his Mexican schemes. Near the close of 1863 he was placed in command of the department of Virginia and North Carolina, and his force was afterward designated as the Army of the James. In October, 1864, there being apprehensions of trouble in New York during the election, General Butler was sent there with a force to insure quiet. In December he conducted an ineffectual expedition against Fort Fisher, near Wilmington, North Carolina, and soon afterward was removed from command by General Grant. He then returned to his residence in Massachusetts. In 1866 he was elected by the republicans a member of congress, where he remained till 1879, with the exception of the term for 1875-'7. He was the most active of the managers appointed in 1868 by the house of representatives to conduct the impeachment of President Johnson. He was the unsuccessful republican nominee for governor of Massachusetts in 1871; and in 1878 and 1879, having changed his politics, was the candidate of the independent greenback party and of one wing of the democrats for the same office, but was again defeated. In 1882 the democrats united upon him as their candidate, and he was elected, though the rest of the state ticket was defeated. During his administration, he made a charge of gross mismanagement against the authorities of the Tewksbury almshouse; but, after a long investigation, a committee of the legislature decided that it was not sustained. In 1883 he was renominated, but was defeated. In 1884 he was the candidate of the greenback and anti-monopolist parties for the presidency, and received 133,825 votes. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888.

The Fortieth Congress of the United States: Historical and Biographical. Vol. 2., By William H. Barnes, 1869, p. 429:

BENJAM1N F. BUTLER was born in Deerfield, New Hampshire, November 5, 1818. Five months afterwards, his father, a sea-captain, died at one of the West India Islands. Thus he grew up a fatherless boy, and in early childhood was slender and sickly. Yet he early evinced a fondness for reading, and eagerly availed himself of whatever books came within his reach. His memory from childhood was extraordinary, and he was fond of pleasing his mother by committing and reciting to her long passages— once, indeed, the entire Gospel of Matthew. This extraordinary gift of memory he is 6aid to retain in full force to the present day.

At ten years of age his mother removed to Lowell, Massachusetts, that she might find better privileges for schooling her children. Benjamin improved well his opportunity; graduating duly into the High School, and thence into Exeter Academy, where he completed his preparation for college. After some deliberation it was decided to send him to Waterville College, Maine. He was at this time sixteen years of age, and is represented as being a youth of small stature, infirm health, and fair complexion, while as to his mental qualities he was "of keen view—fiery, inquisitive, fearless," with ardent curiosity to know, and a perfect memory to retain. In college he excelled in those departments of the course in which he took a more especial interest, as for example the several branches of natural science, giving only ordinary attention to the rest. Meantime he read extensively, devouring books by the multitude.

At graduating he was but a weak, attenuated young man, weighing short of a hundred pounds. At the same time he was entirely dependent upon himself, and obliged to carve out his own fortune. To improve his health he accompanied an uncle on a fishing excursion to the coasts of Labrador, when, after a few weeks, he returned strong and well.

He now commenced vigorously his life-work. Entering a law office at Lowell he pursued the study of the law with all his might, teaching school a portion of the time to aid in defraying his expenses; and such was his diligence at this period that he was accustomed to work eighteen out of the twenty-four hours. Meanwhile he indulged in no recreation save military exercises, for which he betrayed an early predilection, and served in the State militia in every grade, from that of the private up to brigadier-general.

Mr. Butler was admitted to the bar in 1810, at twenty-two years of age. As a lawyer " he won his way rapidly to a lucrative practice, and with sufficient rapidity to an important leading and conspicuous position." As an opponent, he was bold, diligent, vehement, and inexhaustible. It was his well-settled theory, that his business was simply and solely to serve the interests of his client. "In some important particulars," says his biographer, "General Butler surpassed all his contemporaries at the New England bar. His memory was such that he could retain the whole of the very longest trial without taking a note. His power of labor seemed unlimited. In fertility of expedient, and in the lightning quickness of his devices to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, his equal has seldom lived." "A verdict of guilty," says another, "is nothing to him; it is only the beginning of the case. He has fifty exceptions; a hundred motions in arrest of judgment; and, after that, the habeas corpus and personal replevin." Hence, his professional success was extraordinary; and, when he left his practice to go to the war, he is said to have had a larger business than any other lawyer in the State. After ten years of practice at Lowell he opened an office in Boston also, and went thither and back punctually every day; and so lucrative had his business become at the beginning of the war, that it was worth, at a moderate estimate, $18,000 annually.

Yet General Butler was among the first, if not the very first of Northern men, to discern the coming of war, and to sound the note of preparation to meet it, and to leave behind his business, large and profitable as it was, and fly to the rescue. From the beginning of his career he had been one of the most determined and earnest of Democrats. He had been a leader of his party in Massachusetts, although a leader of a " forlorn hope." Yet when the great crisis came on he seemed at once to rise above party and party politics, and to think of nothing but crushing the rebellion, and crushing it, too, with speedy and heavy blows. Ascertaining, on a visit to Washington, the designs of the Southern leaders, he warned them that those designs would lead to war; that the North would resist them to the death; and notified them that he himself would be among the first to draw the sword against the attempt to break up the Union. Returning home, he immediately conferred with Governor Andrew, assuring him that war was imminent, and that no time should be lost in the great matter of preparation, and that the militia of Massachusetts should be ready to move at a day's notice. The Governor acquiesced, and through the winter months, daily, except Sun-. days, military drilling was the order of the day, and other necessary preparations of war were diligently prosecuted. Thus when, in the succeeding spring, the first and fatal blow fell, Massachusetts was ready, and at the call of the Government several full regiments were in a few hours on their way to Washington, under the command of General Butler. Then in quick succession we hear of the murderous attack on one of the regiments as it passed through Baltimore, of the landing of the 8th Massachusetts at Annapolis, of the march thence to Washington, of the quiet occupation by General Butler of the city of Baltimore and the consequent distress of poor old General Scott, of the approval of President Lincoln of Butler's promotion to the major-generalship, and of his assuming command of Fortress Monroe. During his brief command at this important post he exerted himself strenuously to bring order out of confusion. He extended his lines several miles inland, and was eager for a strong demonstration upon Virginia from this point as a base of operations, but his views failed of acquiescence by the Government. It was while in this command that General Butler originated the shrewd device of pronouncing as contrabands the slaves that escaped into his lines from the neighboring country. The epithet was at once seen to be appropriate as it was skillful, as by the enemy the blacks were esteemed as property; and as such property was used for aiding the rebellion, General Butler rationally concluded that it might be more properly employed in helping to crush it. Hence, this new species of contraband property, instead of being returned to its alleged owners, was retained and set to work for the Government.

On his recall from the command of Fortress Monroe, General Butler requested and obtained leave to recruit six regiments in the several New England States. With these new forces he was commissioned, in conjunction with the naval squadron under command of Captain Farragut, to capture the city of New Orleans. The combined military and naval forces were at the mouths of the Mississippi in April of 1862. Between them and New Orleans was 105 miles; and 30 miles up the river, one on each bank, and nearly opposite each other, were the two impregnable forts, Jackson and St. Philip, together with a huge chain cable, supported by anchored hulks, stretched sheer across the river. Added to these obstructions was, just above the fort, a fleet of armed steam vessels, ready to aid in disputing every inch of the terrible passage. After several days of severe bombarding, however, with but small impression upon either fort, having succeeded in sundering the cable, the fleet, under cover of night, yet with a raking fire from the forts and an engagement with the rebel squadron, passed the terrible batteries with comparatively small loss, and proceeded triumphantly up to the city. The transport steamers, still at the river mouths, were then put in motion, and by a back passage General Butler landed the troops in the rear of the two forts, which with but little further resistance were surrendered, and their garrisons paroled. Then presently the General, having manned the forts with loyal troops, followed the fleet to the city, of which he took immediate possession, the rebel troops stationed there having retired precipitately.

In New Orleans, General Butler was the right man in the right place. His government may not have been faultless; yet, if bringing order out of confusion, if providing for forty thousand starving poor, if the averting of pestilence by cleaning the filthy streets and squares and canals of the city, if giving the loyal citizens freedom of election, such as they never had before, and causing justice to be impartially administered, if restoring to freedom slaves subjected to the most horrible oppression, if imparting salutary lessons on morals and manners to traitorous officials and ministers, and rebellious and impudent women—if these and a hundred other kindred measures were commendable and good, then was General Butler's career at New Orleans praiseworthy and eminently beneficial. Nor is it any mean confirmation of such statement that on being recalled by the Government, no word or hint was ever given him why such recall was ordered.

During a few months which followed, General Butler, though without a command, was not idle, but ably supported the Government by public speeches in various places. His executive ability was soon called into requisition in the military command of New York, which was lately the scene of the terrible " draft riots."

In the spring of 1864 he was assigned to the command of the Army of the James. He was expected to pave the way for the capture of Petersburg and Richmond by the capture of the intermediate position of Bermuda Hundred, which he speedily accomplished. In the assault on Petersburg General Butler and General Kautz gallantry carried out their parts of the plan, but the enterprise was unsuccessful, from the fact that General Gilmore failed to co-operate with the force at his command. We find General Butler patiently and laboriously striving to effect the fall of Richmond, whether by hard work at Dutch Gap or successful fighting at Deep Bottom and Strawberry Plains. We next see him commanding the land forces to cooperate with a naval squadron under Admiral Porter in an expedition against Wilmington. Arriving before Fort Fisher December 24, the squadron opened a terrific fire. The day following the land forces were disembarked, and a joint assault was ordered by sea and land. Upon moving forward to the attack, however, General Weitzel, who accompanied the column, came to the conclusion, from a careful reconnoisance of the fort, that " it would be butchery to order an assault." General Butler, having formed the same opinion from other information, re-embarked his troops and sailed for Hampton Roads. Upon his return to the James River he was relieved from the command of the Army of the James, and ordered to report to Lowell, Massachusetts, his residence.

Returning to civil life, General Butler was triumphantly elected Representative from Massachusetts to the Fortieth Congress, and reelected to the Forty-first Congress. In the House of Representatives he has distinguished himself for activity and industry, and for skill and readiness in debate. He was prominent as a Radical, and assumed a leading position against the views and policy of President Johnson. In the impeachment of that functionary he was designated as one of the managers for the people, and performed his part in that grave transaction with signal ability.

In conclusion, while we do not contemplate General Butler as among the most faultless and prudent of men, we cannot at the same time refrain from assigning him an elevated rank among the heroic and distinguished spirits of his generation. He is emphatically a "man of mark," a man whose perceptions are keen and quick to an extraordinary degree, faithful and ready in expedients, sprightly and active beyond most men—of strong and determined purpose—ambitious, but true as steel in his patriotism—a man to have enemies, but friends also equally numerous and equally strong—a man like few others, yet just such a one as is needed under peculiar and extraordinary circumstances—a man bold, fearless, prompt, ingenious, talented, able, persistent, and efficient.

Sources:
Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes I-X, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volumes I-VI, Edited by James Grant Wilson & John Fiske, New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1888-1889.