Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library

Benjamin Franklin Butler (1818-1893)
1860-1900
E. & H. T. Anthony
USA: New York, New York City
Photograph on paper mounted on board
overall: 4 x 2 6/16 in.; 10.16 x 6.0325 cm
Gift of Mrs. Doris Hudson May
78.14.12.5

Carte-de-visite photograph; portrait of Benjamin Franklin Butler sitting in Civil War uniform facing right side of photograph, holding hat in left hand and right hand resting on leg; printed on back "Published by/ E. & H. T. ANTHONY, / 501 Broadway, / New York. / EA. / FROM / PHOTOGRAPHIC NEGATIVE / in / BRADY'S / National Portrait Gallery"; written above photographic information in pencil "Butler."

Benjamin Franklin Butler was born in Deerfield, New Hampshire in 1818. After studying at Waterville College, now Colby College in Waterville Maine, he studied law, and opened a practice in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1840. He became a member of the state legislature in 1853 then joined the Union army as a brigadier general in April 1861. By May 1861, after successfully being one of the first Union leaders to restore order in Washington D.C., he was promoted to major general. He was then assigned to Fort Monroe and in 1862 commanded forces that took New Orleans, where he became the city's military governor. In a major wartime policy shift, Butler was the first to call slaves on Union held soil "contraband", so they no longer needed to be returned to their masters. This idea is sometimes cited as the precursor to the Emancipation Proclamation, ending slavery in the United States. Butler resigned in 1865; he went on to serve in the United States Congress and become governor of Massachusetts in 1882. He died in Washington, D.C. in 1893.