Benjamin Franklin Butler
Benjamin Franklin Butler

Author: Elizabeth D. Leonard

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2022-03-10

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 146966805X

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Benjamin Franklin Butler was one of the most important and controversial military and political leaders of the Civil War and Reconstruction eras. Remembered most often for his uncompromising administration of the Federal occupation of New Orleans during the war, Butler reemerges in this lively narrative as a man whose journey took him from childhood destitution to wealth and profound influence in state and national halls of power. Prize-winning biographer Elizabeth D. Leonard chronicles Butler's successful career in the law defending the rights of the Lowell Mill girls and other workers, his achievements as one of Abraham Lincoln's premier civilian generals, and his role in developing wartime policy in support of slavery's fugitives as the nation advanced toward emancipation. Leonard also highlights Butler's personal and political evolution, revealing how his limited understanding of racism and the horrors of slavery transformed over time, leading him into a postwar role as one of the nation's foremost advocates for Black freedom and civil rights, and one of its notable opponents of white supremacy and neo-Confederate resurgence. Butler himself claimed he was "always with the underdog in the fight." Leonard's nuanced portrait will help readers assess such claims, peeling away generations of previous assumptions and characterizations to provide a definitive life of a consequential man.

Benjamin Franklin Butler
Benjamin Franklin Butler

Author: Dick Nolan

Publisher: Presidio Press

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13:

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This book is an account of Civl War general Benjamin Franklin Butler who became a despised figure in the South during the Union occupation of New Orleans coming to be known as the 'Beast.'

Occupied City
Occupied City

Author: Gerald M. Capers

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2014-07-15

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 0813162378

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New Orleans is the largest American city ever occupied by enemy forces for an extended period of time. Falling to an amphibious Federal force in the spring of 1862, the city was threatened with the possibility of Confederate recapture even as late as 1864. How this tension affected the lives of both civilians and soldiers during the occupation is here examined. Gerald M. Capers finds that the occupation policies of General Benjamin F. Butler and General Nathaniel P. Banks were successful and that Butler's harsh policies were by no means as vicious as legend would have it. Banks at first reversed Butler's harsh policies, but was gradually compelled to become less lenient. Banks did succeed in establishing a civil government under Lincoln's orders, but Congress refused to recognize the civil government and imposed a reconstruction government at war's end. Life for the average resident of New Orleans, Capers states, was much better during the occupation than it was for Southerners in areas still in Confederate control. Relative economic decline had begun in the 1850's but New Orleans even enjoyed a war boom during the last two years. And although America's only brief experience as an occupation force at the time had been in Vera Cruz during 1846, Butler and Banks performed their duties well.

The Life and Public Services of Benjamin F. Butler
The Life and Public Services of Benjamin F. Butler

Author: Mark Mills Pomeroy

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2018-01-13

Total Pages: 70

ISBN-13: 9780483001176

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Excerpt from The Life and Public Services of Benjamin F. Butler: Major-General in the Army and Leader of the Republican Party It is not our aim to Speak unkindly or unjustly, merely to put in print the universal opinion of honest people concerning an officer of our army, a law-maker for our country. To do this, we aim to no harshness of language for effect, sim ply to make these pages a mirror in which moral and: bodily ugliness shall be faithfully portrayed. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Lincoln's Forgotten Ally
Lincoln's Forgotten Ally

Author: Leonard, Elizabeth

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 0807835005

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This manuscript is the first biography of Joseph Holt, the U.S. Army's Judge Advocate General during the Civil War. Leonard argues that Holt has been portrayed as more or less a caricature of himself, flatly represented as the brutal prosecutor of Lincoln's assassins and the judge who allowed Mary Surratt to be hanged despite knowing her sentence had been reduced. Leonard contends that the southern view of Holt became the predominant way we see him, in large part because the memory perpetrated by the Lost Cause defined Holt as ruthless toward Southerners and the South. But Leonard argues that there is much more to Holt than what sympathizers with the Lost Cause came to think of him, and she tells his story here, from his early life in Kentucky to his wartime life as a member of Lincoln's administration to his postwar life as the prosecutor of Lincoln's assassins. Perhaps most important, Leonard will look at the erasure of Holt from American memory and investigate how such a significant figure has come to be so widely misunderstood.