GENERAL BUTLER IN NEW ORLEANS. CHAPTER I. GENERAL BUTLER BEFORE THE WAR. He came of fighting stock. His father's father, Captain Zephaniah Butler, of Woodbury, Connecticut, fought under General Wolfe at Quebec, and served in the continental army in the war of the revolution. A large, old-fashioned powder-horn, covered with quaint carving, done by this old soldier's own hand and jackknife, which was slung at his side when he climbed the hights of Quebec, and the sword which he wore during the war for independence, now hang in the library of General Butler at Lowell, the relics of an honorable career. The mother of General Butler descends from the Cilleys of New Hampshire, a doughty race of ScotchIrish origin; one of whom fought at the battle of the Boyne on the wrong side. That valiant Colonel Cilley, who at the battle of Bennington commanded a company that had never seen a cannon, and who, to quiet their apprehensions, sat astride of one while it was discharged, was an ancestor of our general. Mr. Cilley, member of congress from Maine, who was shot in a memorable duel, twenty-five years ago, was the general's cousin. Thus the tide that courses the veins of Benjamin Franklin Butler is composed, in about equal parts, of that blood which we call AngloSaxon, and of that strenuous fluid which gives such tenacity and audacity to the Scotch-Irish. Such a mixture affords promise of a mitigated Andrew Jackson or of a combative Benjamin Franklin. The father of General Butler was John Butler, of Deerfield, New Hampshire; captain of dragoons during the war of 1812; a faithful soldier who served for a while under General Jackson at New Orleans, and there conceived such love for that tough old hero, as to name his first boy Andrew Jackson. After the war, he engaged in the West India trade, sailing sometimes as supercargo, sometimes as merchant, sometimes as captain of the schooner, enjoying for several years a moderate sufficient prosperity. In politics, a democrat, of the pure Jeffersonian school; and this at a time when in New Hampshire to be a democrat was to live under a social ban. He was one of the few who gave gallant support to young Isaac Hill, of the New Hampshire Patriot, the paper which at length brought the state into democratic line. He was a friend, personal as well as political, of Isaac Hill, and shared with him the odium and the fierce joy of those early contests with powerful and arrogant federalism. A 'hearted' democrat was Captain Butler; one whose democracy was part of his religion. In Deerfield, where he lived, there were but eight democratic voters, who formed a little brotherhood, apart from their fellow townsmen, shunned by the federalists as men who would have been dangerous from their principles if they had not been despicable from their fewness. His boys, therefore, were born into the ranks of an abhorred but positive and pugnacious minority—a little spartan band, always battling, never subdued, never victorious. In March, 1819, Captain Butler, while lying at one of the West India Islands with his vessel, died of yellow fever, leaving to the care of their mother his two boys, Benjamin being then an infant five months old. A large part of his property he had with him at the time of his death, and little of it ever found its way to his widow. She was left to rear her boys as best she could, with slender means of support. But it is in such circumstances that a New England mother shows the stuff she is made of. Capable, thrifty, diligent, devoted, Mrs. Butler made the most of her means and opportunities, and succeeded in giving to one of her boys a good country education, and helped the other on his way to college, and to a liberal profession. She lives still, to enjoy in the success of both of them, the fruit of her self-denying labors and wise management; they proud to own that to her they owe whatever renders them worthy of it, and thanking God that she is near them to dignify and share their honors and their fortune. Of late, the world has heard a good deal of that variety of the human being called the YANKEE. Our Southern ex-brethren have bestowed much strong language upon him. Mr. Russell, of the London Times, has given him passing notice. Some orations have been pronounced upon him, and numberless anecdotes told of him. He has, also, as usual, had something to say upon the subject himself; for the Yankee, I regret to say, is somewhat given to boasting of the qualities and exploits of his race. The various accounts do not harmonize. If Dr. Bellows regards the Yankee as the consummate man, Jefferson Davis considers him a companion less desirable than the hyena. It is with the Yankee as with other noted personages, the more that is printed about them, the more difficult it becomes to get any knowledge of them. In these circumstances, it may be edifying to some readers to have a recent specimen of this curious and renowned people caught and examined; his growth and formation briefly narrated; his peculiarities and capabilities noted. General Butler is a Yankee. He has traits which are peculiar to himself and to his family; but in the great outlines, both of his career and of his character, he shows himself a Yankee of that type, of which his namesake, Benjamin Franklin, is the perfect and immortal example. Behold, then, in the paragraphs following, the process by which a Yankee becomes the creature we find him in these very days now passing over us. General Butler was born at Deerfield, an agricultural town of New Hampshire, on Guy Faux day, the fifth of November, 1818. The fatherless boy was small, sickly, tractable, averse to quarrels, and happy in having a stout elder brother to take his part. Reading and writing seem to come by nature in New England, for few of that country can recollect a time when they had not those accomplishments. The district school helped him to spelling, figures, a little geography, and the rudiments of grammar. He soon caught that passion for reading which seizes some New England boys, and sends them roaming and ravaging in their neighborhood for printed paper. His experience was like that of his father's friend, Isaac Hill, who limped the country round for books, reading almanacs, newspapers, tracts, "Law's Serious Call," the Bible, fragments of histories, and all printed things that fell in his way. The boy hunted for books as some boys hunt for birds'-nests and early apples; and, in the great scarcity of the article, read the few he had so often as to learn large portions of them by heart; devouring with special eagerness the story of the revolution, and all tales of battle and adventure. The Bible was his mother's sufficient library, and the boy pleased her by committing to memory long passages; once, the whole book of Matthew. His memory then, as always, was something wonderful. He can, at this hour, repeat more poetry, perhaps, than any other person in the country who has not made the repeating of poetry a profession. His mother, observing this gift, and considering the apparent weakness of his constitution, early conceived the desire of giving him a liberal education, cherishing also the fond hope, as New England mothers would in those days, that her boy would be drawn to enter the ministry. One chilly morning in November, 1821, when he was in his fourth year, half a dozen sharp-eyed Boston gentlemen, Nathan Appleton being one of them, might have been seen (but were not) tramping about in the snow near the Falls of the Merrimac. There was a hamlet near by of five or six houses, and a store, but these gentlemen wandered along the banks of the river among the rocks and trees, unobserved, conversing with animation. The result of that morning's walk and talk was the city of Lowell, now a place of forty thousand inhabitants, with thirteen millions invested in cotton and woolen mills, and two hundred thousand dollars a month paid in wages to operatives. In 1828, when our young friend was ten years old, and Lowell was a thriving town of two thousand inhabitants, his mother removed thither with her boys. It was a fortunate move for them all. The good mother was enabled to increase her income by taking a few boarders, and her book-loving son had better schools to attend, and abundant books at command. He improved these opportunities, graduating from a common school to the high school, and, at a later day, preparing for college at the academy of Exeter in his native state. As the time approached for his entering college, the question was anxiously discussed in the family, What college? Probably one half the boys in the United States, even in those piping times of peace, had a lurking desire to enter the military academy at West Point. At present, every boy has such a desire, except those who prefer the naval school at Newport. Perhaps the boys are right. In those institutions the fundamental conditions of manly education are complied with in a respectable degree. There is physical training; there is science; there modern languages have their proper |