Benjamin F. Butler (1818 - 1893)
Born at Deerfield (NH); died at Washington DC.
Career politician and Civil War general.
Portrait by Darius Cobb, 1889.
Presented to the State by the Boston Butler Club, 1889.

Benjamin Butler's father died when Butler was an infant. His penniless mother moved from Deerfield to her in-laws' farm at Nottingham (NH), and there Butler attended common school. A physically frail boy with crossed eyes and very possibly an attention deficit disorder, Butler began to be a student at Exeter Academy; but he was not a good student. When his mother got an offer of running a boarding house for mill workers at Lowell (MA), his mother accepted the offer and her young son followed. In Lowell Butler studied at Lowell High School; he also established a practice of stealing items from rooms of the boarding house tenants while they were at work according to one of Butler's biographers [Chester G. Hearn, When The Devil Came Down to Dixie: Bent Butler in New Orleans (1997), pp. 8-9]. Hearn goes on to suggest that Butler's early proclivities were life-long:

Butler died on January 11, 1893, an immensely wealthy man whose estate topped $7million. Nobody has ever been able to explain how Butler, who came from simple means and spent the bulk of his career alternating between law and politics, amassed so huge a fortune (Ibid., p. 6).

In 1844 Butler married Sarah Hildreth, a beautiful and cultivated actress; with his crossed eyes and puny frame the couple made an odd-looking couple, but they settled in Lowell and Butler practiced law and got involved in politics.

In the national election of 1844 Butler was convinced that the Whig Party's Martin Van Buren could not win re-election, so Butler supported the eventual winner, James K. Polk (president 1845 - 1849). After the election Butler went to Washington, D.C. to collect on his political support, and while there he was admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court, an indication of his skills as a lawyer. But Mr. and Mrs. Butler soon returned to Lowell, where Butler campaigned as a Democrat for the 10-hour workday. The Lowell mill owners objected, saying they could not compete with so short a day, and they had the support of the ruling Whig Party. Butler allied himself with the new Free Soil Party, "and on election day, November 10, 1851, the town of Lowell cast 8,000 votes in a district of 800 registered voters.....When the error was discovered the Whigs demanded a revote....." (Hearn op cit., p. 15).

The mill owners expected to demolish Butler in the new election. But two days before the election Butler accepted an invitation to speak on the 10-hour day at Lowell City Hall. The mill owners regarded this as an invitation to civil insurrection and anarchy, and they threatened to call out the militia, and to fire anyone who voted for the 10-hour day. Butler was colonel of the Lowell City Guard, however, so no militia showed up, and the meeting was such a success that Butler was carried on the shoulders of the multitude who came to hear him. The millowners quietly rescinded their threats of termination and learned to live with the 10-hour workday.

Butler had established a reputation as a man willing to buck the ruling powers. During the 1850s he established a reputation as a man who would do whatever it took to get what he wanted. He changed political parties at will, supporting candidates and causes diametrically opposed to each other throughout the decade, and he did the same throughout his career. In 1856, reunited with the Democratic Party because of his vote-getting skills, Butler was for the Democratic Party leaders' man; but at the 1860 party convention Butler, who had been elected as a delegate for John C. Breckenridge, stuck with his man through seven ballots - and then changed to support of Jefferson Davis of Mississippi for the next fifty ballots. Davis, who was soon to become President of the Confederate States of America, was not the ultimate winner of the convention (Stephen Douglas was), but Democratic Party leaders were angered over Butler's bolt from his Breckenridge position. Not that it mattered much; in the national election Democrat Stephen Douglas won twelve electoral votes. The Republican Party's Abraham Lincoln, a man who had bested Douglas in a series of great debates during the campaign, won the rest.

In the election of 1860 Butler had been the choice of Breckenridge Democrats to be governor of Massachusetts. Butler got four percent of the vote; but with the nation soon to be at war Butler battled with Massachusetts Governor Andrew and got permission to raise a state regiment which would help ensure order at Lincoln's inauguration. How this maneuver turned into Butler's being made a general, despite no military experience and no West Point training in military tactics, cannot be summarized here; nor can his appointment to capture and restore order to New Orleans. It is the subject of Mr. Hearns' book, Butler's own autobiography, and many other writings. Even more than a century after the Civil War the reader is left shaking his head. In the years after his tenure as "Beast" Butler of New Orleans, Butler continued his erratic political career. Between 1866 - 1875 Butler was a Radical Republican from Massachusetts, helping to lead the 1868 effort to impeach President Andrew Johnson. In 1878 he was returned to Congress from Massachusetts, this time as a Greenback Party man. In 1880 he reunited with the Democrats, and in 1882 he was elected governor of Massachusetts as a Democrat. Yet in 1884, Butler was the president candidate of the Greenback and Anti-Monopoly political parties.

Even the 1889 gift of Butler's portrait to the State of New Hampshire was a controversial event, and by far the most colorful presentation of a portrait to the State. A special train brought 250 Butler supporters from Boston to Concord, including the Fife, Drum & Bugle Corps of the Benjamin Butler Post of the Grand Army of the Republic, from Lowell, Massachusetts. At Concord the Third Regiment Band met the train, and spectators lined Main Street. The painting was accepted for the State by Governor David H. Goodell, accompanied by Charles R. Corning, chairman of the State Library Commission and a well-known historian. The President of the Boston Butler Club, Noah A.. Plymton, attacked critics of General Butler's war record in a lengthy speech at Doric Hall, and the State Legislature recessed for the event.

The only person missing for these exercises was General Butler, who had missed the train from Boston. He arrived by special train after the exercises were concluded, but received much praise at subsequent festivities. And when Butler's portrait was first hung in the State House, it hung opposite that of General John Dix - two heroes of New Orleans. Perhaps fortunately, General Dix had died ten years before, and was not present for the 1889 installation.

Location: First Floor, State House