General Butler

Benjamin Butler was born in the afternoon of November 5, 1818, in Deerfield, New Hampshire, the youngest of three children of John and Charlotte Ellison Butler.  Benjamin’s father died of yellow fever when he was five months old, leaving the young infant fatherless.  Benjamin, described as small and sickly at birth, disfigured with a drooping eyelid and a severe case of strabismus or being “crossed eyed,” in time would come to count on his older brother Andrew, who served as a substitute father.  A lasting bond between the two brothers developed.  The trust they had for one another would reach new heights when the pair traveled south to New Orleans in 1862.

Benjamin’s younger years were a mixture of anxiety and contentment for his mother, who after the sudden death of her husband was saddled with raising three children alone.  Young Benjamin’s health, his sickly appearance, more than anything else, caused his mother much apprehension.  Benjamin could do little to improve the body he was given, but he compensated in other ways.  He immersed himself in reading, having had his mother teach him his letters by age four.  He quickly developed an appetite for literature and the wide vocabulary it gave him.  Butler’s later abilities to articulate his viewpoint, reason, and to think can be attributed to the strong educational foundation he received as a youth while attending several common schools, the Academy of Exeter, a college preparatory school, and later Lowell (Massachusetts) High School. (A clergyman, who had befriended Butler’s mother, built a house for her in Lowell during the late 1820s, the same time period that Butler attended Exeter. Butler spent time in Lowell between terms and eventually enrolled in Lowell High School beginning in December 1830. At that high school Butler finished his college preparatory work.) 

His knowledge more than compensated for his facial abnormalities and general appearance, features that often left him in social isolation.  When teased as a boy for his odd look and mannerisms, Butler would strike back at his adversaries with a barrage of verbal epithets, articulated in such a matter, that it often left them speechless or powerless to respond.  However, on occasion, he was not above the use of brute force to make his feelings known.  At Exeter, when called “a little cockeyed devil” by an upper classmate, Butler struck the lad with a stick.  His command of the English language would serve him well later in the political world as a lawyer and master politician. 

After completing his studies at Lowell High School, Ben Butler, at first had aspirations of being educated at West Point. His mother attempted to solicit two congressmen at different times to give Benjamin an appointment to the military academy.  Lack of political connections and his mother’s lack of social standing, in spite of her late husband’s military career with Andrew Jackson, doomed any chances of a military career for Benjamin.

Whether he would have been accepted if appointed was uncertain.  His overall physique at age sixteen, “small in stature, health infirm, of fair completion, and reddish brown hair,” still left much to be desired and likely would lead to his disqualification.  This early disappointment would teach Butler a valuable lesson.  Political influence was a must if one was to achieve any station in life.

Having been passed over at West Point, Benjamin attended Waterville College, a Baptist school at Waterville, Maine.  His mother wanted him to become a minister.  Benjamin was well versed in Old and New Testament scriptures, having been indoctrinated with Bible study at an early age by his mother, “a religious woman of the strictest sect of Calvin,” according to Butler.  Benjamin went, not to become a minister, but rather to receive an education and the degree.  Almost from the beginning of his studies, Butler felt himself above the rest.  “Unfortunately, I had a much higher standard as to clergymen than they had, and I observed all their shortcomings and outgoings,” commented Butler on the school.

His ego at sixteen, his first year at the college, was emerging and continued to grow throughout his four years there.  Butler’s graduation from Waterville in the summer of 1838 could not have come any sooner for his professors, who, no doubt, had had their fill of Benjamin’s superior intellect.  In a sense, the frustration they felt toward Butler was of their own making. They asked for it.  “At the close of each discourse, the lecturer invited the class to offer objections,” James Parton, Butler’s biographer wrote in 1863.  “Young Butler seized the opportunity with alacrity, and plied the doctor hard with the usual arguments employed by heterodox.”  Butler’s augmentative style brought him few admirers among the faculty.  “[It] was touch-in-go whether he could be permitted to graduate at all,” Parton wrote, commenting on Butler’s perceived status among the faculty as a “rebel.”   Of course, he did graduate. The president of Waterville College, no doubt, realized the folly of obstructing Butler’s progress.