THE AMERICAN CYCLOPS, THE HERO OF NEW ORLEANDS AND SPOILER OF SILVER SPOONS

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Item Code: 490-7192

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By Pasquino (James Laughlin Fairfax.), published by Kelley & Piet, Baltimore, 1868. 25 pp., w/11 etchings. In green glazed cloth, 7.75” x 6, w/gilt cover lettering & unflattering image of Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler. Exhibits very slight wear and rubbing at the corners. Else near fine.

This book IS a post-war satirical hatchet job on Massachusetts’ Benjamin F. Butler, the most blatantly controversial of American Civil War politician-generals (Rivalled only by New York’s Dan Sickles). The book features Butler as the legendary Homeric man-eating Cyclops Polyphemus, mixing cartoons with poetry to highlight to Butler’s war-time failures: specifically pinging his military bungling at Big Bethel (1861) and Bermuda Hundred (1864), and his command failure in the assault on Ft. Fisher, [December 1864], which resulted in his ignominious recall by U.S. Grant

The “Spoiler of Silver Spoons” subtitle alludes to his nefarious property confiscations, (including between-the-lines cotton trading) while Military governor of New Orleans (1862) and again when commanding the Army of the James and administering the Department of Virginia in Norfolk, 1864. At the forefront of butler’s checkered war-time career was the infamous New Orleans /General Order 28…warning that any females subjecting U.S. troops to any gestures of contempt were liable to be held as “Women of the Town plying their avocation.” [Prostitution]. Which earned in the nick “Beast butler.” By December 1862, enraged by Butler’s New Orleans activities, Confederate President Davis published a general order declaring Butler a convicted felon, deserving of being be held for execution if captured.

By the time this book was published in 1868, Butler had shifted from the Democratic to the Republican Party and aligned himself with U.S. House  Radicals while serving five terms as Representative.….joining their prosecutorial team in the Andrew  Johnson impeachment proceedings.

Thwarted in bids to secure the Massachusetts Republican gubernatorial nomination, Butler reverted to the Democratic party, winning the Governorship in 1882. He ran again in 1883, hoping to use the office as a springboard for the Democratic presidential nomination 1884, but lost, and lost also the Democratic presidential nomination to Grover Cleveland. As a final gesture Butler then accepted the presidential nomination of the People’s Greenback Party…which went nowhere.

A Superb memento of colorful Ben Butler.  [jp][ph:L]

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