Butler Quotes
This quotation’s authenticity and accuracy are challenged by many scholars. The only source is the personal reminiscences of General Butler, a politician with Presidential aspirations who had his own agenda. The nuance of wording is very critical as to whether Lincoln was trying to accomplish export or whether he was asking Butler to staff out the feasibility so that Lincoln could deal with others who had raised the issue. Butler’s reply was that it was not feasible ({633655}), and there is no other record of the idea being advocated or implemented. The quotation, if indeed it was a quotations, is taken by some to indicate that Lincoln was no friend of Blacks and very racist to boot.
The “gentleman” was Congressman Benjamin Butler former Civil War General, and Governor of Massachusetts who had a corrupt history of looting wealthy Louisiana. Brady had been a very successful photographer and had invested over $100,000 in photographing the civil war with the expectation that when the war was won, the government would buy his collection. They did not and he was financially ruined and had to accept anything the government would offer. Butler arranged the purchase and got the $12,500 kickback which was legal in those days. He became one of the wealthy men of America. Brady died an alcoholic in poverty. Without the Brady photographs, the great Ken Burns PBS documentary of the Civil War could never have been made.
A Tory party organizer called on Lord Mountbatten, assuming the aristocrat was a conservative, to sign a petition. 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma
Julius Jacob von Haynau, 1786–1853, was a vicious Austrian General who had committed many atrocities in Italy and Hungary which today would be considered War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity. He even had women publicly flogged who were heard saying anything sympathetic about the freedom fighters who the General suppressed brutally. Haynau was known and despised by military men the world over. So many of the Confederate and Union officers understood the insult. General Butler was not accused of atrocities of the usual type, but as the Commanding Union General of New Orleans, he was not very chivalrous to the Southern women of the city who were particularly effective in harassing the Union Officers and men. For example, the women would store the urine and feces of the chamber pots of the house and wait until Union soldiers, preferably officers, walked by and unloaded the waste on them from upper story windows. Butler ordered that women who harassed the soldiers could be “treated like common prostitutes.” Butler also turned a blind eye to the looting of the activist women’s silver and other valuables.
Greeley was convinced that Lincoln could not win a second term against George McClellan and wanted to consider dumping Lincoln from the ticket and running someone else as the Republican nominee. Pundits have never been great predictors; Lincoln won.
