Benjamin Franklin "Beast" Butler (5 November 1818 – 11 January 1893) was Governor of Massachusetts from 4 January 1883 to 3 January 1884, succeeding John Davis Long and preceding George D. Robinson, as well as an American Civil War general and the Greenback Party's 1884 presidential nominee.
Biography[]
Benjamin Franklin Butler was born in Deerfield, New Hampshire on 5 November 1818. Butler regularly got into fights while he attended Phillips Exeter Academy, and his family moved to Massachusetts in 1828. In 1840, he was admitted to the state bar, and he became a member of the US Democratic Party. Butler specialized in bankruptcy law, and he served as a criminal defense lawyer for several court cases. Butler expanded his practice into Boston after meeting tremendous success and press coverage, and he served in the Massachusetts legislator as an antiwar Copperhead Democrat until 1854; Butler joined the US Republican Party that year. Butler served in the state militia, and he became a general in the US Army when the American Civil War broke out in 1861. In 1862, Butler led the capture of New Orleans from the Confederate States of America, instituting martial law and reducing the number of violent acts and acts of vandalism that were committed against the occupying Union forces in the city. In December 1862, President Abraham Lincoln had him be recalled from New Orleans and replaced by Nathaniel P. Banks, as Butler angered the United Kingdom and France by ordering the arrests of their consuls. Butler earned the nickname "Beast Butler", as he gained a very negative reputation in the American South.
In November 1863, Butler was given command of Union forces in Virginia and North Carolina, making camp at Norfolk. Butler took part in the Overland Campaign of Ulysses S. Grant in 1864, but his advance on Richmond was halted by P.G.T. Beauregard's forces at the town of Bermuda Hundred. Only President Lincoln's intervention prevented Grant from firing Butler, whom Lincoln had considered as a possible vice-presidential nominee for the 1864 elections to due his membership in the Radical Republicans. However, Butler would be removed from command after failing to take Fort Fisher in North Carolina.
From 1867 to 1873, Butler returned to politics as a member of the US House of Representatives from the 5th congressional district of Massachusetts, and he defected from the Republicans to the new socialist Greenback Party. Butler left the Republicans due to his opposition to Andrew Johnson's policies during Reconstruction, and he authored the Second Enforcement Act of 1871 to help in suppressing the Ku Klux Klan, as well as helping in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1875. In 1882, he won the governorship of Massachusetts with Greenback and Democratic support, serving until 1884, when he decided to run for President. Butler received only 1.75% of the vote during the Democratic primaries, and Grover Cleveland won the nomination. Butler died in 1893.
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