Benjamin Butler, Colby’s most significant Civil War-era alumnus, is getting a reevaluation.
Elizabeth D. Leonard, Colby’s John J. and Cornelia V. Gibson Professor of History, Emerita, has written a new biography that reveals Butler as a heroic, progressive figure who championed equality for people of color, fair wages and voting rights for women, and dignity and opportunity for the oppressed.
Earlier biographies have drawn the controversial military and political leader overwhelmingly as a boorish, unhandsome “beast,” most notable for his ego and for treating people he didn’t agree with badly.
Published by the University of North Carolina Press in Chapel Hill, Benjamin Franklin Butler: A Noisy, Fearless Life offers a deeper and more complete portrait of Butler, who grew up poor in Lowell, Mass., earned his law degree, and spent the rest of his life fighting for the underdog. The biography expands and corrects the record and provides a fairer picture of an important figure with close ties to Colby and U.S. history.
His painted portrait, which he gave to the College as a gift, hangs in the lobby of the Schair-Swenson-Watson Alumni Center.
Butler graduated from Waterville College—later Colby—in 1838 and became among the most significant civilian Union generals in the Civil War. His policies offered a path to freedom for enslaved people before emancipation, and he earned the ire of white Southerners for his ruthless enforcement of Union authority in the heart of the Confederacy. After the war, during Reconstruction, Butler became a symbol of Northern arrogance and aggression among many in the South.
During his life, he was often defined by his awkward physical appearance and brusque personality. Over time and after his death in 1893, Lost Cause narratives of the war and wealthy opponents in the North worked together to craft a dominant image of incompetence, corruptness.
That maligned portrait was informed by earlier biographies that emphasized his faults and overlooked the humanistic characteristics that many people respond favorably to and look for in leaders today, Leonard writes.
“Most recently, I have been struck by how much we might benefit today from Butler’s wisdom and leadership on issues like racial and economic justice, even as I am hardly blind to the ways he was limited by his circumstances, personality, and the horizons of his times,” she writes in her introduction to the 365-page book.
In an interview, Leonard emphasized the current appeal of Butler’s ideas and policies and said she hopes the book inspires people to take a fresh look at Butler and reconsider his stature and place in history—in Colby history and U.S. history.
“One reason I think the book is especially timely is because the issues we face as a society today—equality, fairness, social justice—are issues he faced too. He fought hard to fix them. He certainly wasn’t able to achieve all of his goals, but he felt strongly that you can transform society by changing policies first. You can’t always change people’s minds, but you can fix policies, and that is what he tried to do,” she said.
When Butler died, the people who grieved him “most vigorously” other than his family were minorities, women, and poor people because he advocated for them, cared about them, and fought for them. “The rich and famous white leaders—the industrialists, Southern whites—despised him and made a mockery of him,” she said. “But poor Americans loved him.”
Leonard, who retired from Colby in 2019 and lives in Waterville, is an award-winning biographer with specialties in the Civil War, Reconstruction, and American women’s history. This is her seventh book. A previous book, Lincoln’s Forgotten Ally: Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt of Kentucky, won the Lincoln Prize in 2012.
“One reason I think the book is especially timely is because the issues we face as a society today—equality, fairness, social justice—are issues he faced too. He fought hard to fix them.”
Elizabeth D. Leonard
Butler became famous, and infamous, during the Civil War not so much for his battlefield acumen as for his policies in direct support of runaway enslaved people, which in turn advanced the idea and reality of emancipation. Commanding U.S. forces at Fort Monroe in Virginia in May 1861, Butler was the first Union general to refuse to return runaways to their masters, establishing the principle that enslaved people were like other forms of “contraband” to which the enemy had no claim. His decision inspired a wave of bondsmen and women to come to the fort in search of a form of freedom.
A year later, he took command of New Orleans and drew the wrath of many residents when he ordered the execution of a citizen who tore down a U.S. flag. While in New Orleans, Butler also established the first regiments of Black U.S. soldiers, pushing President Abraham Lincoln and the country further toward emancipation and Black citizenship.
After the war, he became a U.S. congressman and governor of Massachusetts and fought for the rights of women and the working class. He was a force behind the passage of the Ku Klux Klan Act, which was conceived to protect Black people from racist mobs; the 14th Amendment, which granted citizenship to all people born in the United States, including formerly enslaved people; and the 15th Amendment, which granted voting rights to Black men. As governor, he nominated and seated the first Black judge in the state.
Leonard spent several years researching and writing her book. Much of her material came from Colby College’s Special Collections and Archives Department. In the book, she thanks Colby staffers Pat Burdick, Erin Rhodes, Maggie Libby ’81, and Jim Merrick ’75 for their assistance, and she credits the late Colby history professor Harold B. Raymond, whose own writings about Butler gave her the subtitle for her biography.
“Having spent all these years with him now, I have grown quite fond of him. I do not fail to see his flaws, but Butler is a fascinating figure,” she said. “I think Colby should be proud of him, warts and all.”
Source: https://news.colby.edu/story/reexamining-benjamin-butler/
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