Benjamin Franklin Butler: The Damnedest Yankee

by Dick Nolan

This book is an account of Benjamin Franklin Butler a Civil War General known as the 'Beast.'

Genres: Biography, Civil War

384 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1991

Reviews

[Gerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most folks with some knowledge of the Late Unpleasantness know or believe General Benjamin Franklin Butler to have been a political general who was at best a controversial administrator (the use of “contrabands” and the “woman order”) and a poor battlefield commander (Big Bethel, Bermuda Hundred, and Ft. Fisher). Dick Nolan, former career newspaperman, gives us the other side of the story. His actions in Maryland before the First Battle of Bull Run possibly saved the capital from encirclement and kept Baltimore, forcibly, in the Union. He opened shipping traffic on the North Carolina coast. He cleaned up New Orleans and reduced the risk from yellow fever. He competently supported General Grant’s Overland Campaign. So author Nolan tells us in a straightforward narrative (that is, story) with some villains being General Winfield Scott, Secretary of State William Seward, Secretary of War Edwin Station, General Halleck, Governor Andrews of Massachusetts, Commodore Porter, and Butler’s subordinates in Virginia. The book is more story than research paper; there are no footnotes, rather a listing at the end of the book of sources by chapter, and he does misname Governor Alexander Stephens and Elizabeth van Lew. Battles, except Fort Fisher, are covered but lightly. Accepting everything in it as a given rather alters many views of the Union’s heroes; but, believe it or not, General Butler proves to be one interesting character who did indeed make a contribution to ultimate Federal success.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book deserves a good look - it is detailed and informative. There is much to admire in the information conveyed. It is clear, however, the author had read West's book on Butler as numerous anecdotal evidence episodes and conclusions seem transported from that work. More troubling, perhaps, is that it is also clear the author read and used Butler's own biography without critically assessing that work or its conclusions.
Frustratingly, Nolan lays out a detailed look at the events of Butler's life, and particularly his military service, while simultaneously arguing a vast Washington conspiracy aligned against Butler. At first, the personnel conflicts between Butler and others is reasonably connected to the evidence at hand but by the end of the biography it becomes clear that these ring truer of Butler's own suspicions than based in objective review. This is, perhaps, the most damaging flaw in the construction of the arguments meant to cast Butler in a new light. One cannot help but wonder how any individual could be at the center of so many conspiratorial efforts - brings to mind the old dog and flea adage.
There are things to glean from this work - it is truly informational. Yet, the lack of exact citation is another ding in the value of the work. Chapters are small snippets, more novel style than not.
Don't let me nay say you away from reading the book - but walk into it with your eyes wide open. You will be glad you did so.

[Mark Desrosiers · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is for blinkered Civil War nerds only. Dick Nolan gives an almost daily account "Beast" Butler's actions during the Lost Cause or whatever you geeks is calling it now. And I have to give Nolan credit for just sitting down and researching this unlikeable, droopy-eyed, crafty, unprincipled bag of carpets. BUT ... and I ain't a Confederate sympathizer by any measure -- Nolan calls the Vice President of the Confederacy "Alexander H. Stevenson". His name even appears thus in the index. That, to me is an unforgivable and very odd mistake.

Even worse, Butler's post-war career gets just a short 30-page summary, with no insight into how a rabid Democrat could transmogrify into a Radical Republican, how the cleansing storm of hate and war changed him, how this bloated, crafty man helped pen the Civil Rights Act of 1875 which was declared unconstitutional 94 months later only to be redeemed in 1964. NINETEEN SIXTY FOUR. So as a biography, it's really all about his military stratagems, and that we shouldn't hate him so much despite his hideous visage and tongue of fire. Anyway I get the impression Nolan relies heavily on 'Butler's Book", and set out to wow us with a war story -- this ain't a well-researched bio, just a groovy war story. Just how Ben woulda liked it.