Originally aired on August 23, 1996 - In part 104 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson describes how the first volunteer Major General in the Union Army, Benjamin Franklin Butler, earned the nickname, “Beast.”
#104 – General Benjamin F. Butler
“A shifty, cross-eyed Massachusetts politician,” they called him before he became the first volunteer major general in the Union army. Thereafter, he was the man most hated in every corner of the Confederacy. Mean-spirited, egotistical, and self-serving, Benjamin Franklin Butler fairly earned his famous nickname, “Beast”.
Until civil war came, the most remembered of many oddities associated with this Boston attorney and state senator occurred at the 1860 Democratic National Convention. There Butler voted 57 times for the nomination of Jefferson Davis of Mississippi as President of the United States. The disgruntled Butler then supported the Southern states’ right candidate before subsequently transferring his alliance to the Republican Party.
Lincoln named Butler a major general solely because of the New Englander’s political influence. Butler was a man of many parts, but not one of them was that of a soldier. This he demonstrated quickly and consistently in the Civil War.
His disjointed 1861 attack at Big Bethel (near Hampton, Virginia) was embarrassing. The climax of the action came when two Union regiments had a sharp exchange of gunfire after mistaking each other for the enemy. Next, and without authority, Butler issued a declaration that runaway slaves were property owned by men in rebellion and therefore contraband of war who could be collected and used by the Union armies.
The following spring, Butler became military governor of New Orleans. His dictatorial rule was as efficient as it was distasteful. Confederates accused him of everything from murder to stealing silverware to insulting Southern womanhood. Jefferson Davis proclaimed Butler “an outlaw and common enemy of mankind”, and the Confederate president directed that if Butler were ever captured, he should be put to death without trial.
Butler’s appearance was in keeping with his irascible reputation. He was bald-headed, with a dumpy, oversized body, arms and legs that seemed hinged rather than connected, and eyes noticeably out of alignment. Drooping mustache, gaudy uniforms, and a presumptuous manner capped this totally unpleasant individual. Nevertheless, the Lincoln administration found it necessary to treat Butler with extreme care. This was despite the fact that Butler was a thorn in practically everybody’s side.
In the spring of 1864, having somehow gained command of the newly formed Army of the James, Butler executed one of the most mishandled campaigns of the war. Near Petersburg he let himself be first deceived and then defeated by a scratch Confederate force that U. S. Grant would have brushed aside with little effort. Six months later, Butler’s inept attempt to seize Fort Fisher, North Carolina, mercifully brought an end to his military career. A Union corps commander openly dismissed his as “helpless as a child on the field of battle and as visionary as an opium eater”.
That did not stop “Beast” Butler from serving nine years in the postwar U. S. Congress, or of running for governor of Massachusetts eleven years before he finally won the office. Meanwhile, he had shifted to the Greenback Party – the third political affiliation of his career. Butler also found time to produce a 1,100-page memoir that explained away (at least to his satisfaction) every charge of failure and corruption in a half-century of public life.
Be that as it may, the verdict of history has not changed. Ben Butler was ambitious, devious, sometimes unscrupulous. Always suspected of some crime, but never convicted of any lawbreaking, he was all that one dislikes intensely in a politician. Butler additionally had the distinction of being one of the most incompetent of the 600 men who were generals in the Civil War.
Uncanny and untouchable, Benjamin “Beast” Butler seemed to leave a soiled mark on whatever he touched.
