Born on November 5, 1818, in Deerfield, New Hampshire, Benjamin Franklin Butler became a lawyer, Union general, and politician whose career combined bitter controversy with consequential contributions to emancipation and civil rights. A daguerreotype taken by Lorenzo G. Chase around 1845–1847 shows the future general seated with a dog—a quieter portrait than the combative public image he later acquired.
During the Union occupation of New Orleans in 1862, Butler became notorious for his response to civilians who openly insulted Federal troops. On May 15, he issued General Order No. 28, declaring that women who insulted Union officers or soldiers would be treated as a “woman of the town plying her avocation”—language implying prostitution. The harassment reportedly ceased, but the order provoked widespread condemnation and helped earn him the nickname “Beast Butler.” Confederate President Jefferson Davis declared him an outlaw.
A year earlier, at Fort Monroe in Virginia, Butler had made a decision with far-reaching consequences for slavery. When three men escaped enslavement and sought refuge within Union lines, he refused to return them. Because their labor had supported Confederate military defenses, Butler argued that they could be retained as “contraband of war.” The decision opened a path for thousands of enslaved people to seek protection behind Union lines and helped move federal policy toward emancipation.
Butler’s political commitments also evolved. Although he had not entered the war as an abolitionist, he later became an advocate for civil rights during Reconstruction. In Congress, he helped develop legislation against Ku Klux Klan violence and co-authored the Civil Rights Act of 1875 with Senator Charles Sumner. His legacy remains a difficult combination: a controversial commander whose legal and political work also helped expand the reach of freedom and citizenship.
