General benjamin butler biography

Early Years

Benjamin Franklin Butler was born in Deerfield, New Hampshire, on November 5, He was raised in Lowell, Massachusetts, where his mother kept a boardinghouse, and although his hope as a young man was to attend the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, he instead graduated from Waterville College (now Colby College) in Waterville, Maine, in After founding a successful law practice in Lowell, he entered local Democratic Party politics, championing working-class issues.

He also campaigned for Southern Rights Democratic candidate John C. Breckinridge during the U.S. presidential election of after briefly supporting the failed nomination of the pro-slavery U.S. senator from Mississippi, Jefferson Davis.

Butler&#;s political connections and shameless self-promotion helped him attain a senior position in the Massachusetts state militia, and on the outbreak of the Civil War in he was assigned field command of the first brigade sent into Union service from the B