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;