MAJOR GENERAL BENJAMIN F. BUTLER—PENCIL SKETCH CARTOON

$275.00

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Item Code: 490-6354

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On yellowing paper, measuring 6.5” x 9.25. Mounted on heavy card, w/gilt trim, matted in black and cream, in heavy black wooden frame, ornately trimmed. W/white card backing, fastened with gray carpenter tape, and wall hook attachment, upper margin. Artist unknown. Obscure lower margin caption reads: “Genl. Butler / Cave in Jeffy, the Came…Ls  up.”

Features skillful caricature of mustachioed, hatless Butler in uniform, holding sword, w/ arm extended. Squat and Balding, appearing w/side hair wildly askew. In words looking fairly ridiculous.

Benjamin Butler was the controversial Massachusetts soldier / politician who served as U.S. Military Governor of New Orleans following capture of the town by Admiral Farragut’s fleet in April 1862. Shortly after assuming command he issued his notorious general order 28, warning New Orleans women that any female exhibiting contempt toward Federal soldiers were to liable to be held as a “woman of the town” (i.e. prostitute), to the outrage of Southerners.  Suspected of illegally acquiring property & cotton seized by the Federal Government under the 1862 Confiscation Act, he was recalled from New Orleans in December of that year.

Posted next as commander of the Department of Virginia--in Norfolk—Butler was again suspected of corruption and engaged in illegal dealing between the lines.  As a military field commander he performed poorly in 1864, at Bermuda Hundred and in as expedition commander in the 1864 assault on Ft. Fisher, afterwards being summarily relieve and sent home by U.S. Grant.

A man of fluid political allegiances, Butler had served as a pro-war Democrat, but abruptly joined the radical faction of the Republican Party in the post-war period, serving five terms in the House of Representatives. Throughout his career he ran for Governor of Massachusetts five times, finally winning in 1882, and hoping to use the office as a springboard to the 1864 Democratic presidential nomination in 1864.  Failing at this (losing the nomination to Grover Cleveland) he soon after retired. At his death in 1893, he left an estate of 7 million dollars, deriving primarily from his wheeler-dealer command activities in  Civil War New Orleans and Norfolk .

An eye catching cartoon memento of the most rascally soldier-politico of the Civil War era.. [jp][ph:L]

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