Sunday, June 26, 2016

Brigadier-General Benjamin F. Butler to Governor Thomas H. Hicks, April 21, 1861

Headquarters, Third Brigade, Second Division, Mass. Vol. Militia, April 21, 1861

GovERNOR OF MARYLAND

SIR: I have the honor to receive your note by the hands of Mathews of the United States Naval School at Annapolis. I am sorry that your Excellency should advise against my landing here. I am not provisioned for a long voyage. Finding the ordinary means of communication cut off by the burning of Railroad bridges by a mob, I have been obliged to make this detour, and hope that your Excellency will see that from the very necessity of the case there is no cause of excitement in the minds of any good citizens because of our being driven here by any ordinary casualty.

I should at once obey, however, an Order from the Secretary of war.

Respectfully,
B. F. BUTLER, Brig. Genl.

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. 22

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