Description
Five volume set of the Private and Official Correspondence of General Benjamin F. Butler. Octavo, [five volumes], vii, 669pp; 629pp; 632pp; 625pp; 748pp. Green cloth, title in gilt on spine. Top edge gilt. Bookplate affixed to front endpaper, library filing note on half-title of each volume. Housed in glassine jackets, all fine. (Eicher 456) (Nevins II, 43) From the Ray D. Smith Collection at Knox College. Bookplate of American historian and award-winning author Peter Cozzens affixed to front endpaper.
Comments: His family compiled this work from letters and correspondence of Major General Butler. Each volume details a specific period in the Civil War. Volume I: April 1860 – June 1862, Volume II: June 1862 – February 1863, Volume 3: February 1863 – March 1864, Volume 4: March 1864 – August 1864, Volume 5: August 1864 – March 1868. Benjamin Franklin Butler (1818-1893) served as a major general for the union army during the Civil War, a political appointment becasue he had no prior military experience. Before his military career, he was a politician, lawyer and businessman from Massachusetts. During the Civil War, while in command of New Orleans, he developed the legal principle of “contraband of war,” which viewed former slaves as confiscated property and allowed him to put them to work for the union army. This was condemned throughout the north and pushed the north towards the emancipation of all enslaved people. After being dismissed from the military, Butler served a vital role in the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, served as the governor of Massachusetts, and ran for president in 1884 on the Greenback Ticket.
