Showing posts with label Blanche Butler Ames. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blanche Butler Ames. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 19, 2019

Sarah Hildreth Butler to Brigadier-General Benjamin F. Butler, April 27, 1861

LoweLL, April (27), 1861

DEAREST: We are still in doubt where you are, but think you must be in Washington by this. Mr. Kimball told me today a letter came from his father yesterday saying you would go to Washington directly. And Mrs. Kimball said, from the Dr., that you’re astonishing everybody by your executive ability.

I wrote a note and sent it by Harriet, but feel no certainty you will get it. She has gone with Mr. Read, for Blanche. But whether they will get through we cannot tell. There has been great fear that Washington would be attacked and defeated before our troops arrived. That accounts for our sending for Blanche. I don’t know but you will think it premature. I shall send this by Dr. Kimball if he goes in a day or two. And now how do you like this life? Will the glorious excitement more than balance the labour and anxiety? I hope so. One who strives as you do ought to meet his reward somewhere. I do not much like these last lines but I must leave them. The fact is I am so down I could cry outright sometimes, but that I must bestir myself for others. Jackson must be of infinite service to you in every way. I am so glad he is with you now. To think of you there alone would be intolerable. Monday, got your telegram. Feel more easy. Tuesday, your short letter came. I shall send this by the same person who brought yours. I should like to go if it would answer, and you are to be there any time. Gilman is crazy to start; he would enlist if he thought you would not send for him. Brady is starting a company to be called the Butler Rifle Guards. Everybody is wild with excitement. The ladies are making soldiers’ shirts and rolling up bandages. I would gladly go to you if you would not find me an incumbrance.

Always yours,
SARAH

SOURCE: Jessie Ames Marshall, Editor, Private and Official Correspondence of Gen. Benjamin F. Butler During the Period of the Civil War, Volume 1: April 1860 – June 1862, p. 51-2

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Diary of John Hay: January 2, 1864

Point Lookout. The President and Secretary of War to-day (Jan. 2, 1864), commissioned me to go down to Point Lookout, and deliver to Gen. Marston the book of oaths and the accompanying blanks, and explain to him the mode in which they are to be used. Gen. Butler was ordered by telegraph to meet me there and consult as to the manner of carrying out the President's plan for pardoning and enlisting the repentant rebels. I bore a letter for Gen. Butler’s instruction.

I went on board a little tug at the Seventh Street Wharf, and rattled and rustled through the ice to Alexandria where I got on board the Clyde, most palatial of steam tugs, fitted up with a very pretty cabin and berths heated by steam and altogether sybaritic in its appointments.

The day was bitterly cold, and the wind was malignant on the Potomac. I shut myself up in my gorgeous little cabin and scribbled and read and slept all day. The captain thought best to lay to for a while in the night, so we put in at Smith's Creek, and arrived at Point Lookout in the early morning. I went to the head-quarters of the General, accompanied by a young officer who asked my name and got it. I felt little interest in his patronymic, and it is now gone into the oblivion of those ante Agamemnona. It was so cold that nobody was stirring. A furry horse was crouching by the wall. “Hello, Billy! cold! Ain't it?” said my companion. Billy was indignantly silent. We stumbled on over the frozen ground past the long line of cottages that line the beach, built by the crazy proprietor of the land who hoped to make here a great watering-place which would draw the beauty and fashion of the country away from Long Branch, and make Newport a Ranz des Vaches. We came up to a snug-looking frame house which had been the dwelling of the adventurous lunatic. A tall young man, with enormous blonde moustache and a general up-too-early air about him, hove in sight, and my guide and friend introduced me. “Yes, I have heard of you, Mr. Hale. I got a despatch from the General saying you would be here. When did you arrive, Mr. Kay? Rather cold weather! Any ice on the river, Mr. Day?” All this in a voice like a rumbling of distant thunder, measured and severe, and with a manner of preternatural solemnity. “The General will soon be up, Mr. Hayes.” My mild insinuation as to my cognomen having brought him that near to my christening at last.

He disappeared, and coming back beckoned me out. I followed him across a little entry into a room opposite. There stood in the attitude in which, if Comfort ever were deified, the statues should be posed, — parted coat-tails, — a broad plenilunar base exposed to the grateful warmth of the pine-wood fire, — a hearty Yankee gentleman, clean-shaven, — sunny and rosy, — to whom I was presented, and who said laconically, “Sit there!” pointing to a warm seat by a well-spread breakfast table. I had an appetite engendered by a day and night of river air, and I ate breakfast till the intelligent contraband, who served us, caught the infection and plied me with pork-steaks till hunger cried quarter. The General told a good yarn on a contraband soldier who complained of a white man abusing him: — “I doesn't objeck to de pussonal cuffin, but he must speck de unicorn.”

The General's flock are a queer lot. Dirty, ragged, yet jolly. Most of them are still rebellious, but many are tired and ready to quit, while some are actuated by a fierce desire to get out of the prison, and by going into our army, avenge the wrongs of their forced service in the rebel ranks.

They are great traders. A stray onion, — a lucky treasure-trove of a piece of coal, — is a capital for extensive operations in Confederate trash. They sell and gamble away their names with utter recklessness. They have the easy carelessness of a about their patronymics. They sell their names when drawn for a detail to work, a great prize in the monotonous life of every day. A small-pox patient sells his place on the sick-list to a friend who thinks the path to Dixie easier from the hospital than the camp. The traffic in names on the morning of Gen. Butler’s detail of 500 for exchange was as lively as Wall Street on days when Taurus climbs the Zenith, or the “Coal Hole” when gold is tumbling ten per cent. an hour.

They live in a 30-acre lot fenced around by themselves. They put up the fence with great glee, saying, “they would fence out the d----d Yankees and keep respectable.”

Rather a pleasant place, on a pleasant day, is Point Lookout. To-day it was dreary and cold. I could not but think of the winter life of the sanguine lunatic who built the little village intended for the summer home of beauty and chivalry, and destined for the malodorous abode and the unfragrant belongings of a great hospital in busy war-times.

My little boat got frightened at the blow that freshened in the evening, and I sent her up to snooze the night away in Smith's Creek.

In the dusk of the evening Gen. Butler came clattering into the room where Marston and I were sitting, followed by a couple of aides. We had some hasty talk about business: — he told me how he was administering the oath at Norfolk; how popular it was growing; children cried for it; how he hated the Jews; how heavily he laid his hand on them; — “A nation that the Lord had been trying to make something of for three thousand years, and had so far utterly failed.” “King John knew how to deal with them — fried them in swine's fat.”

After drinking cider we went down to the Hudson City, the General's flagship. His wife, niece and excessively pretty daughter; tall, statuesque and fair, and named, by a happy prophecy of the blonde beauty of her maturity, Blanche, were there at tea. I sent my little web-footed sulky word to get home as she could, and sailed with the Butler’s for Baltimore.

At night, after the ladies had gone off to bed — they all said retired, but I suppose it meant the same thing in the end, — we began to talk about some queer matters. Butler had some odd stories about physical sympathies; he talked also about the Hebrew jurisprudence and showed a singular acquaintance with biblical studies; his occasional references to anatomy and physiology evidently surprised the surgeon, to whom he respectfully deferred from time to time. He talked till it grew late and we dispersed to bed. I slept on the guards: a pleasant bed-room, but chilly; and listened till I slept, to the cold and shuddering roar of the water under the wheels.

At Baltimore we took a special car and came home. I sat with the General all the way and talked with him about many matters; Richmond and its long immunity. He says he can take an army within thirty miles of Richmond without any trouble; from that point the enemy can either be forced to fight in the open field south of the city; or submit to be starved into surrender.

He was very severe on McClellan for his action about the New Orleans expedition. He says that before the expedition was resolved on, by the President, McClellan said it would require 50,000 men; after it was resolved on, he said 5,000 would be enough. He said he did not like to attack McC. Nil nisi bonum, etc. But he might have to exploit that matter sometime.

I told him of the night of October 21.

He gave me some very dramatic incidents of his recent action in Fortress Monroe, smoking out adventurers and confidence men, testing his detectives, and matters of that sort. He makes more business in that sleepy, little Department than anyone would have dreamed was in it.

SOURCES: Clara B. Hay, Letters of John Hay and Extracts from Diary, Volume 1, p. 146-52; for the entire diary entry see Tyler Dennett, Editor, Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries and Letter of John Hay, p. 148-51.

Saturday, November 12, 2016

Blanche Butler to Brigadier-General Benjamin F. Butler, April 24, 1861

Academy of Visitation, April 24th, 1861

DEAR FATHER: I suppose that you will be surprised at the reception of this letter, but you can not imagine the anxiety I feel all of the time, for as the mails are stopped I have not heard a word from Mother for two weeks. Nearly all of the girls are going home, twenty-six have gone already, and Sister Bernard has telegraphed to the parents of the others, for she does not think that they ought to stay here with the country in the state it is now. It is not at all probable that we shall have any Distribution this year, and as we have been all over our examination we shall lose nothing by going away. Please let me go home, for I cannot study when I know that you are liable to be sent to war at any time. Nor do I think that Mother would wish me to stay if she could not hear from me. If you do not think it best that I should go, I think I shall join the secessionists. My toes seem to be going without my consent, for my shoes are much more “holy than righteous,” as I am keeping my new ones for my journey home. Of course I could not expect you to go with me, for I know that this would be impossible; but if any of your numerous friends are going to Lowell you can send me with them. As this letter will reach you through the influence of Col. somebody (I never can remember names), and I have to write to Mother, I must close. Goodbye and believe me

Your ever devoted
“LITTLE BUNTY.”


BLANCHE is mistaken about the telegraph, but the poor child seems so anxious about you and about her mother. We are not the least alarmed, but since the secession of Virginia parents seem to be very much so, and are sending daily for their children. Do not be uneasy about Blanche. She is perfectly safe, but I do hope that you will soon get to Washington. Excuse haste.

S. MARY BERNARD

SOURCE: Jessie Ames Marshall, Editor, Private and Official Correspondence of Gen. Benjamin F. Butler During the Period of the Civil War, Volume 1: April 1860 – June 1862, p. 36-7

Saturday, October 3, 2015

Brigadier-General Benjamin F. Butler to Blanche Butler, March 25, 1861

LoweLL, March 25, '61

MY GOOD LITTLE BLANCHE: I was glad that your visit to Washington on the occasion of the Inauguration gave you so much pleasure. The apples too were very carefully put up that you might feel that father had not forgotten you. Your letters, neatly written, generally well composed, and correct in language please me much. The only drawback I have is your persistent quarrel with the Latin. You say that it will do you no good hereafter. You will allow, I know, that I am the better judge upon that point; and I assure you if I did not believe that in after life you would thank me for insisting upon your further pursuit of the language I would yield to your wish. Not to enter into a labored argument to prove its usefulness, will you remember that the Latin is the foundation of at least five of the modern languages most in use, as a part of our own language and a most powerful auxilliary to our own – that you may see how much we are in debt to it I have checked the words (thus) derived in whole or part from it. You will find your path so strewn with Latin flowers while you acquire the Spanish or the Italian that you will remember with pleasure the pain of Sister Augustine's teachings. I am much obliged to you for your “cards.” If you could fully appreciate a father's pride in the well doing of a darling child a new incentive would be added to the conscientious discharge of your duty which you now I believe most fully do.

Do not permit idle gossip of idle people to annoy you. While you do as well as you now do you can have no cause to fear anything however malicious. You see, I have written you precisely as if you were a “big girl” instead of a very little one, but you know I have always treated you more like a woman than a child, and have appealed to your good sense and judgment rather than to the childish motives of hope of reward or fear of chiding. I look forward with almost as much pleasure as you can do to our excursion which we shall have together in our vacation.

FATHER

SOURCE: Jessie Ames Marshall, Editor, Private and Official Correspondence of Gen. Benjamin F. Butler During the Period of the Civil War, Volume 1: April 1860 – June 1862, p. 14

Thursday, October 1, 2015

Brigadier-General Benjamin F. Butler to Blanche Butler, Sunday October 22, 1860

LoweLL, Oct. 22, 1860

MY GOOD GIRL: You know that I am not a constant correspondent, but I am now taking your mother's place. You need not feel alarm about your mother's eyes, as I believe the weakness to be temporary only. At least she was quite well enough last Friday evening to go with me to the Prince's Ball1 at Boston. Aunt Harriet went with us; both were much pleased, as ladies always are, with beautiful dresses, fine music, and a gay throng. I was obliged to go down to the review of the Military.2 I suppose you hardly saw the Prince; as a sight you have not lost much. He looks somewhat like your cousin Hal Read, but is not quite so intelligent in the face.

Pray do not pain me by hearing that you are homesick. A girl of good sense like you to be homesick! Never say it. Never feel it, never think it. The change, the novelty of your situation, will soon wear away, and with your duties well done, as I know they will be, you will be sustained by the pride of a well-earned joy in your return. You say the girls, your associates, seem strange to you. May they not find the same strange appearance in you? You say you think they do not like you much, and you do not like them much. Is not this because of the strangeness, and because you do not understand and know each other. It is one of the objects I desired to gain by sending you to Georgetown that you should see other manners, other customs and ways, than those around you at home. However good these may be, the difficulty is that one used to a single range of thoughts and modes of life soon comes to think all others inferior, while in fact they may be better, and are only different. This is a provincialism, and one of which I am sorry to say that Massachusetts people are most frequently guilty.

By no means give up your own manners simply because others of your associates are different. Try and see which are best, but do not cling to your own simply because they are yours. In the matter of pronunciation of which you wrote, hold fast your own, subject to your teachers. Do not adopt the flat drawl of the South. That is a patois. Avoid it. All educated people speak a language alike. T’is true Mr. Clay, said cheer for chair, but that from a defect of early association. Full, distinct, and clear utterance with a kindly modulated voice, will add a new accomplishment to a young lady, who is as perfect as Blanche in the eye of

FATHER
_______________

1 H. R. H. the Prince of Wales, then on a visit to the United States.

2 General Butler was Brigadier General of the Massachusetts militia, having received his commission in 1857.

SOURCE: Jessie Ames Marshall, Editor, Private and Official Correspondence of Gen. Benjamin F. Butler During the Period of the Civil War, Volume 1: April 1860 – June 1862, p. 3-4

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Benjamin F. Butler to Blanche Butler, Sunday October 8, 1860

LoweLL, Oct. 8, 1860

MY DAUGHTER: I had not intended writing you, until you had been two months away, but the weakness of your mother's eyes prevents her from writing, and so you have a note from “father.”

That you should be ambitious to excel, and obtain the rewards of merit, gives me much pleasure; but you must not be disheartened because your numerous studies will not permit you to compete successfully with those that have fewer. Success in school life is one thing and to be desired, giving much pleasure to us all; but remember, my brave, good girl, that success in life is the object to be obtained, and your progress at school is gratifying only as it gives assurance that you are endeavoring to prepare yourself for the future. Go on, there, as you have begun. Limit your exertions only by the necessities of your health. Remember how proudly I think of you, and how much of our happiness is bound up in your welfare. Beside, my dear, you are almost the only New England girl, and the only Massachusetts girl in your large school, representing nearly all other sections of the country. A Yankee girl, a Massachusetts girl, and “my Blanche” will not be outstripped by any competition because duties are a little hard — studies a little perplexing — hours of recreation a little restrained, or because it would be a little more pleasant to run over the fields in the bright Autumn.

You must not give up Latin if it is possible to go on with it, in due regard to your health. Why, I look forward to the pleasure I shall have in reviewing my own old studies with you in the coming vacations. A graver reason, however, is that your labor in the Latin will render lighter your toil in other languages, whether French, Spanish, or Italian.

There, “Buntie,” I find that while I had intended only a word of encouragement, I have almost given you a lecture. Still you know there is no harsh word in it from “father,” who has had occasion to speak so few of them to his good child.

Nothing has changed since you left, and nothing is missed at home save yourself. “Bennie” gets his usual share of unlucky tumbles, but picks himself up again with the same good humor as ever. Paul has taken one from him just now, and cut a fine little gash in his forehead, but that is healing up cleverly after having let out, as I tell him, some of his bad blood. Both go to school under the charge of our neighbor, Mrs. Chase's niece.

We have not heard from Grandmother1 or Andrew2 for two mails, but I will see that you hear as soon as there is anything of interest.

Goodbye, Blanche, I never knew how much you added to my comfort and happiness at home till you were away, and you may be assured that yours is not the only sacrifice of pleasure in doing that which has been thought best for your future welfare by

FATHER
_______________

1 General Butler's mother, Mrs. Charlotte Ellison Butler.
2 General Butler's brother, Andrew Jackson Butler, then in California

SOURCE: Jessie Ames Marshall, Editor, Private and Official Correspondence of Gen. Benjamin F. Butler During the Period of the Civil War, Volume 1: April 1860 – June 1862, p. 2-3

Thursday, September 24, 2015

Benjamin F. Butler to Sarah Hildreth Butler, Sunday April 22, 1860

CHARLESTON, S. C., Steamer S.R. SPAULDING, Sunday, April 22, 1860

DEAR SARAH: We came here after a very pleasant passage of from Wednesday at night (6 o'clock) till Friday at 10 P.M. We lay on the quarantine ground till morning, when about 8 o’clock we came up to the city and skirted along its whole length with flags flying, guns firing, and drums beating all in the finest style. Fisher and Clemence were very seasick but are all right now. George was also very sick. For myself, I ate five times a day, slept soundly, smoked incessantly, and drank sparingly. Charleston is much the same apparently that it has been for a half century. Do you remember that the first time I ever spent any considerable hours with you was at the American House, Boston, just previous to your voyage to Charleston? It has occurred to my thoughts more than once. I felt sad at parting from you, but I thought then I should see you again, although you thought not so. You will see by the enclosed prospectus (which I pray you preserve) that I have visited the school at Georgetown. I am more in favor than ever of sending Blanche1 there; you will agree with me when you visit for yourself, as we will do next Winter.

How are all at home? I long to be with you at home again with an inexpressible longing. We shall start probably a week from today and be home in four days. Love to all.

Yours,
BENJ.
_______________

* “I have not read the life of Butler, although I am awaiting it with some curiosity. I read, however, in one of the reviews, of his tribute to his wife. ‘My wife,’ he says, ‘with a devotion quite unparalleled, gave me her support by accompanying me, at my earnest wish, through the War of the Rebellion, and made for me a home wherever I was stationed in command. Returning home with me after I retired to civil and political life, Mrs. Butler remained the same good adviser, educating and guiding her children during their young lives with such skill and success that neither of them ever did an act which caused me serious sorrow or gave the least anxiety on their behalf. . . .

“I had the great honor and pleasure of knowing Mrs. Butler, and this allusion of her husband brings her to mind. I have often thought if I were in the book-writing business that I should sketch a few lives which have come within the range of my own; lives based upon a perfect marriage. That of General Butler should have the first place. His marriage was one of singular felicity. Mrs. Butler was a woman of extraordinary ability, in intellectual force the equal of the General, and that means a great deal; for in mental force Butler is one of the first men of the age. She had more self-command than the General, had a singular grace and dignity, a consciousness of power and genius which attracted you with a sentiment of respect and admiration. She was an exquisite reader, and only surpassed in my knowledge by Fanny Kemble. Shakespeare she knew by heart, and, Mr. Donelly will be pleased to learn, had anticipated him in the acceptance of the Baconian theory. She even believed that the music and the imagination of Shakespeare could be found in Bacon, and I remember her reading, one summer evening at her Washington home, many parallel passages in support of this theory.

“It is not, however, the intellectual side of Mrs. Butler that comes back to me now, thinking of her as I read her husband's tribute to her memory, but her high, serene womanliness. Her power over the General was unbounded. ‘I have never,’ he once said to The Spectator, ‘done anything of any import without taking counsel of my wife, and I have never made a mistake except when I failed to follow her advice. This is high praise. I am proud to write it, as due to a noble and gracious memory. Her influence was always for gentleness, peace, mercy; and how much this must have meant at the side of that proud, turbulent nature. . . .

JoHN RUSSELL YoUNG (The Spectator)
 [From the Philadelphia Evening Star, July 18, 1891]

1 His daughter, aged 13, who was at the Georgetown Convent, D.C.

SOURCE: Jessie Ames Marshall, Editor, Private and Official Correspondence of Gen. Benjamin F. Butler During the Period of the Civil War, Volume 1: April 1860 – June 1862, p. 1-2;