6.8: The Scandal of Benjamin Franklin Butler
Supplement to Endnotes
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Benjamin Butler's career before the Army of the James augured controversy. When Butler was tapped to lead the Army of the James in late 1863, he had been out of military command for nearly a year since the administration put an unceremonious end to his seven-month stint as military governor of New Orleans. It was in the Crescent City that he secured his nickname “Beast Butler.”[1]
Butler caused the nation’s political extremities, and much of the middle, to throb, often with the questions of race and slavery.[2] In the war’s first year he had pushed black emancipation into the center of the conflict. When the first black refugees began flowing into Fort Monroe, Virginia, it was Butler who gave them shelter behind Union lines and put them to work. Butler called the refugees “contrabands” -- as in an enemy’s “contraband” taken in war -- as a way to legally justify keeping Confederate “property.”[3]
This policy further emboldened slaves to flee to the Union Army camps, which nudged Lincoln down his halting path toward declaring emancipation to be a central war necessity. Butler hastened the unraveling of the slavery regime.
Butler’s mixed military record in early-war Virginia had been good enough to get him transferred to the Army of the Gulf, where after New Orleans fell into Union hands, he assumed command of the Crescent City where he wasted no time in making himself a despised figure among white locals. His brash actions astonished Confederates, Europeans, and moderate Republicans alike. He suppressed Rebel newspapers, confiscated property, corralled conspicuous secessionists into prison, and, just after arrival, executed a man for removing the Union flag from the mint building and dragging it through the streets. In response to southern women who spat at, sneered at, or rebuffed Union soldiers, Butler issued the notorious “Woman’s Order.” Any female secessionist who affronted or snubbed a Union soldier would be treated as “a woman of the town plying her avocation,” that is, as a prostitute. Despite his significant accomplishments of reducing yellow fever and ameliorating poverty (especially among black southerners), when Butler further antagonized much of Europe by confiscating cargo and money from foreign consuls and ships, shutting down Confederates’ church services, and silencing clergy, his impolitic actions landed him back in his home in Massachusetts.
Over the next several months, Butler fished in vain for a justification from the Lincoln administration for his sudden dismissal. A shelved general with no troops, he turned to writing letters and barnstorming at the pulpit, cashing in on his enormous popularity for waging hard war. Northerners knew that after Butler’s regime ended in the largest city of the South, confederate president Jefferson Davis had called for him to be hanged. Part of the presidential proclamation reads: “Now, therefore, I, Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America, and in their name, do pronounce and declare the said Benjamin F. Butler to be a felon, deserving of capital punishment. I do order that he be no longer considered or treated simply as a public enemy of the Confederate States of America, by as an outlaw and common enemy of mankind, and that in the event of his capture the officer in command of the capturing force do cause him to be immediately executed by hanging; and I do further order that no commissioned officer of the United States taken captive shall be released on parole before exchange until the said Butler shall have met with due punishment for his crimes.”[4]
Many Americans, especially abolitionists, regarded him as the answer to Lincoln’s over cautiousness; many others maligned him as a contemptible, corrupt opportunist who exploited the race question for personal advancement and fame.[5] Butler had an uncanny way of converting his humanitarian sympathies into immense political capital. When it advanced his ambitions, he was unmatched in what he did for the plight of slaves -- perhaps because his ambitions were unmatched. In Louisiana, when his subordinate general, abolitionist John W. Phelps, tried to force the hand of the reluctant War Department by enlisting black soldiers without authorization, Butler sided with Lincoln and Seward, quashing the experiment and pushing Phelps out of the military. But, with brow-raising timing, the day after Phelps resigned, Butler issued his own unauthorized proclamation to raise other black troops drawn from the Native Guards, a New Orleans militia filled with free blacks.[6]
Butler’s brazen actions regarding emancipation and arming former slaves led many to believe, especially him and his wife, that he would win the next presidential election. Lincoln rightly feared that if the war dragged on, and if Butler continued to gain more fame as either a soldier, or as a solution to Lincoln’s moderation toward Rebels, Butler would oust him from the White House.
As it turned out, the timing of Butler’s removal from New Orleans was a godsend. After Lincoln sidelined “the Beast,” Butler attended home-front war rallies where he reminded listeners of his hard-nose credentials. Over the stretch of 1863, more and more Republicans turned sour on their president. They wanted a leader who would go for the throat in matters of war.[7] Lincoln only encouraged critics when he replaced Butler with his Massachusetts political rival General Nathaniel Banks, another “self-made man.”[8] Sacking Butler for Banks further tarnished Lincoln’s reputation within hard-war circles, especially when Banks immediately set out to undo many of Butler’s radical measures. He forced out remaining Butler men, conciliated secessionists, and aborted the raising of new black regiments while purging the others of all their black officers.[9]
General Banks made things “uncomfortable” for those who had once enjoyed alliances with Butler. One of these allies, General Shepley, informed Butler that Lincoln and Banks had spies afoot who had been hired to dig up dirt on the shelved general. Butler was informed that Lincoln had sent one of his confidants, a Jewish podiatrist, Dr. Isachar Zacharie to New Orleans. Zacharie was employed to remove corns from Banks’s feet; but he was suspected to be there to help pluck the thorny Butler from Lincoln’s heel. One of Banks’s “employees,” continued Shepley, “approached various persons with the assurance that it they could communicate any information that would tell against Gen. Butler, it would be highly appreciated….”[10]
In the spring of 1863, a New Orleans port collector and admirer sounded the alarm that Butler was direly needed back in the Crescent City which, it was argued, teetered on the cusp of returning back to Rebel control. But the administration would never risk such a move, Butler’s admirer predicted, because “if placed in a high position, [Butler] might possibly become dangerous as a candidate for the Presidency.”[11]
Lincoln and his supporters had good reason to watch Butler with caution. He had returned home to enormous fanfare among erstwhile Lincoln supporters. He proclaimed within the walls of Boston’s Faneuil Hall that he had not been too harsh toward rebels and that there was “no middle ground between loyalty and treason.”[12] Radical Republicans like Charles Sumner had already begun to bend the ears of Edwin Stanton, the Secretary of War, and the president, asking them when Butler would be returned to New Orleans or at least put to good use in the Union cause.[13] Other friends began canvassing the populace and disseminating his speeches through pamphlets.[14] On the heels of disgrace came growing hope for redemption.
In April, ex-Secretary of War, Simon Cameron, flattered the crestfallen General, in a personal letter, by emphasizing Butler’s “usefulness” and “unprecedented labor and success.” Cameron claimed to have been astonished by Butler’s dismissal: “for a long time” he believed the general would be rightfully “offered the War Department or the command of the army of the Potomac.” Like Butler, Cameron had been ousted by Lincoln after mounting accusations of corruption and cronyism, especially in the handling of war contracts. (Butler, it must be noted, was widely accused but never proven to have been guilty of corruption; a congressional committee, on the other hand produced a report over 2,700 pages long, detailing Cameron’s use of contracts to enrich cronies and create political capital.)[15]
Like Butler, Cameron had pushed for the arming of escaped slaves before the administration officially did; and in so doing exposed Lincoln’s hesitancy.[16] In the close of 1861 Cameron — without Lincoln’s approval — authorized using black soldiers, and to Lincoln’s dismay, issued a report to Congress recommending the formation of an army of freed slaves. By doing so, Cameron was able to deflect Radical Republicans’ criticism of his corruption, and instead channel their angst toward the president’s feet-dragging.[17] Following Butler’s example, Cameron’s advocacy for arming slaves seemed to blend genuine anti-slavery sentiments with political scheming.
“I never dreamed that your services were to be lost to the country,” Cameron gushed to Butler, “when everybody believed you to be the only man in arms who had been equal to the position in which Providence had placed him.” After signing off as “your friend, truly” Cameron added a blandishment that Butler would grow accustomed to hearing from his “friends.” “Remember,” Cameron wrote, “the next President will be a military chieftain, and may save his country or destroy it.”[18] Butler had already come to that conclusion and he believed his war record qualified him for the job. After hearing initial reports of the drubbing of the Army of Potomac at Antietam in September of 1862, Butler wrote to his wife from his command in New Orleans predicting that the nation would soon turn to a hardliner.
If the news [about Antietam] is true, we are all required to look a sterner reality in the face than has yet been done. This war must then be carried on as one of extermination until any white man not a United States soldier, or openly and fully acting with the Government, is exterminated. Indeed, I don’t see but we must fight for our own existence. It is coming—a “Military Dictator”
General Butler then added, in a poorly veiled reference to his own administrative acumen, “God grant the man may be one of power and administrative capacity.” Encouraging himself, he continued: “Let it come — the man has not developed himself yet -- but he will -- in the field too, before long.” In case Sarah had any doubts about the sum of her husband’s epic visions, in the preceding paragraph he cast doubt on the Army of the Potomac’s ability to protect Washington D.C. But even so, he pledged, New Orleans would never fall. “Indeed I think they had better move the Capital here as the safest place,” he added. Butler had dreamed of using New Orleans to secure for himself the presidential mantle. Now he played with the idea of the capital coming to him. With such political momentum, when the War Department unexpectedly cut him loose, Butler, Radical Republicans and all those of anti-Lincoln persuasion questioned the timing.[19]
After significant pressure, and over strong opposition from his Secretary of State, William Seward, Lincoln halfheartedly offered to reinstate Butler in his post in New Orleans. Butler refused, however, because, as he saw it, accepting would mean sharing command with his nemesis, General Banks. Butler also claimed that Banks’s reversal on helping black families had all but ruined the delicate relationship between the government and those on the threshold of freedom.[20] Shortly after refusing Lincoln’s offer, Butler penned a letter to Salmon Chase, Secretary of Treasury. Like Butler, Chase had presidential ambitions; he also operated under a cloud of suspicion for awarding questionable contracts, especially for cotton. In the letter, Butler complained that in a short time General Banks had spoiled Butler’s grand project of employing and arming blacks. (He didn’t mention that Banks also attempted to clean up the tarnished image of contract scandals under Butler.) Then, somewhat disingenuously, Butler bemoaned his own military and political “idleness.”
All past political associations broken up, no new ones formed; idle at home, no prospect of serving my country in the cause to be useful to which I had given up everything; eating unearned bread which I have never done before; asked a hundred times a day, “when are you going into service?” or “why are you unemployed?”[21]
When he turned down a second stint in New Orleans, Butler had already lifted his sights. Since the gnawing losses at Antietam and Fredericksburg at the close of 1862, divisions in the Republican Party began manifesting themselves, especially in Lincoln’s own cabinet between Secretary of Treasury Chase and Secretary of State Seward. With many Radical Republicans behind him, Salmon Chase positioned himself as the aggressive answer to Lincoln’s dithering. By casting William Seward as the whip hand driving Lincoln’s bungled war, Chase was in effect painting himself as the last best hope. He blamed Seward —whom, it was argued, controlled the president— for the dismissal on Butler.[22] In this stratagem of divide, conquer, and tarnish by association, Butler and Chase found a mutually useful friendship. In his letter to Chase, Butler revealed his own comprehensive plan to overhaul the entire Union war strategy. He would consolidate the many armies into two or three Union juggernauts and descend swiftly and mercilessly upon Confederate targets. “Let them [the juggernaut armies] be overwhelming. Above all, let us have one pitched battle in this war.” Butler confessed, “I have dreamed of such an army.” No doubt he saw himself standing somewhere its head.[23]
In the spring of 1863, Butler’s friend, James Parton, set out to puff the general’s military career (and play down accusations of corruption) in a well-timed biography that would surface by election year.[24] Meanwhile admirers and hangers-on showered Butler with letters and suggestions of future military exploits and political possibilities. He continuously pressed his vision of the war forward, often making the War Department appear fainthearted. For Lincoln, Butler presented a dilemma. The General had the power to win pro-war Democratic votes (thanks to his days as an unabashed Democrat) along with the support of radicalized Republicans. Yet Lincoln could not win a second term without first reversing the Union army’s fortunes, and therefore needed aggressive officers like Butler in the field to wage a harsher war. If anything, it was better to have Butler back in camp instead of stumping before crowds. But by putting Butler back in the field, the president ran the risk of resurrecting his own political challenger, providing him with a feasible road to the presidency.[25]
By the fall of 1863 the prospect of returning to command in New Orleans was all but dead. Butler had been a commissioned officer with no command for roughly ten months, and could hardly refuse the administration’s offer. He could not fault his admirers for not pushing hard enough behind the scenes. They had barraged the administration and fellow politicians with suggestions for Butler’s rehabilitation since his fall from grace. And though the Army of the James was to play a supporting role to the Army of the Potomac, it was not too far-fetched to imagine the new command thrusting Butler into the public consciousness once again. A friend, Senator S.C. Pomeroy, soothed Butler’s pride, counseling that the Army of the James is not a department in a military sense, such as you ought to have. But in a political sense, and as being able to settle there even the great conflict of opinion now likely to ruin us, I hope I may advise you to go. I tried to get a more promising field. But if you can do there what you hoped to do in Louisiana, the results will not be less gratifying.[26]
With this “political sense” in mind, Butler took command of the Army of James and immediately set out to finish what he had only begun in New Orleans: the raising of a massive black army. [27]
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[1] Longacre, “The Army of the James, 1863-1865: A Military, Political, and Social History" (Vol. 1-4), pp. 2-6; Terry L. Jones, Historical Dictionary of the Civil War, Vol. 18 (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2002), pp. 118-19.; Mark Mayo Boatner, The Civil War Dictionary (New York: D. McKay Co, 1959), pp. 301-2, 434.
[2] Gender, violence and accusations of cronyism and corruption were often near the center as well.
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[3] Masur, “‘A Rare Phenomenon of Philological Vegetation’: The Word ‘Contraband’ and the Meanings of Emancipation in the United States,’’ in Journal of American History (2007) 93 (4): pp.1050-1084.
[4] General Orders No. 111: December 24, 1862. Davis goes on to state that officers under Butler had earned similar treatment upon capture. See: OR, Series 1, Vol. 15, pp. 905-08.
[5] Before the war Butler displayed unwavering commitment to the Democratic Party (he cast fifty-seven votes for Jefferson Davis at the Democratic Convention in 1860), but by 1863 he had come to embrace the main tenets of Republicanism, and as some saw it, moved beyond them. His pre-war sympathies for ethnic immigrants and the working poor of Massachusetts won him fame as an attorney and politician. With the war, he expanded his commitment to downtrodden slaves. Holzman, Stormy Ben Butler, 62-105; Jones, Historical Dictionary of the Civil War, 241; Boatner, The Civil War Dictionary, 109; Howard Nash, Stormy Petrel: The Life and Times of General Benjamin F. Butler, 1818-1893 (Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1969), pp. 158-70; Louis Taylor Merrill, “General Benjamin F. Butler in the Presidential Campaign of 1864," The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 33, no. 4 (Mar., 1947), p. 538; Longacre, Army of Amateurs: General Benjamin F. Butler and the Army of the James, 1863-1865, pp. 3-8.
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[6] Ira Berlin, Slaves no More: Three Essays on Emancipation and the Civil War (Cambridge England ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 196. To be fair, Butler “federalized” existing colored units instead of recruiting and forming new regiments as Phelps did. See: Bob Luke and John David Smith, Soldiering for Freedom: How the Union Army Recruited, Trained, and Deployed the U.S. Colored Troops (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014) pp. 1-17.
Yet, even Butler’s vociferous apologist, George Denison, confessed to Salmon Chase that Butler shut down Phelps’s daring experimentation for questionable ends: “I believe Gen. Butler’s opposition to the enlistment of Negroes by Gen. Phelps was not a matter of principle. Gen. Phelps had the start of him, while Gen. B[utler] wanted the credit of doing the thing himself, and in his own way.” See: George S. Denison to Salmon P. Chase, September 9, 1862 in Butler, Private and Official Correspondence of General Benjamin F. Butler during the Period of the Civil War. Vol. 3, February 1863-March 1864, pp. 270-71.
[7] Actually, less-conservative Republicans began losing faith when, after Lincoln finally purged the army of two of the most conservative officers, West Point generals (McClellan and Buell), the president replaced McClellan with yet another Democrat and West Point graduate, Ambrose Burnside. When Burnside immediately turned things from bad to worse with an ominous December whipping at Fredericksburg, Lincoln could feel the rug under him move. See: McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, pp. 569-74; Harry James Carman and Reinhard H. Luthin, Lincoln and the Patronage (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943), pp. 162-63.
[8] Before the war Banks cultivated his reputation as the “bobbin boy.” It reminded his constituents of his humble beginnings in a cotton mill. Banks like Butler was a first-rate political general; both were promoted to Major General in the first year of the war. For an account of Banks’s Butler-like political ambitions see: Fred Harvey Harrington, "Nathaniel Prentiss Banks: A Study in Anti-Slavery Politics," New England Quarterly 9, no. 4 (1936), pp. 626-654.
[9] Joseph T. Glatthaar, Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990), pp. 8-9, 36; Also see: George S. Denison to Salmon P. Chase, February 26, 1863 in Butler, Private and Official Correspondence of General Benjamin F. Butler during the Period of the Civil War. Vol. 3, February 1863-March 1864, pp. 17-8.
[10] Shepley wrote: “A retired corn-doctor, Jew, by the name of Zachary, is here as a spy, said to be directly under the appointment of the President, but the intimate associate and confidential advisor of Banks.” General Shepley to General Butler in Butler, Private and Official Correspondence, pp. 14-15. For another letter claiming spies in New Orleans see, J.A. Griffin to General Butler, February 26, 1863, ibid., pp. 18-20. Butler’s brother, Andrew J. Butler, who garnered substantive accusations of corruption, especially with circumventing Union approved trade and dealing in corrupt contracts, evinced anti-Semitism. In the same letter Shepley added: “The Christ killers, as Andrew calls [Jews], have it all their own way.” Butler too raised some hackles when he repeatedly reported that his men had captured Jews, as if Jewish men were somehow a rebel commodity or automatic union enemy. Holzman, Stormy Ben Butler, p. 130. For more on Butler’s record of anti-Semitism, see: Bertram Wallace Korn, American Jewry and the Civil War (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1951), pp. 164-66.
[11] Longacre, Army of Amateurs: General Benjamin F. Butler and the Army of the James, 1863-1865, p. 8; Butler supporter, George S. Denison, quoted in: Nash, Stormy Petrel, p. 180.
[12] Butler quoted in: Merrill, "General Benjamin F. Butler in the Presidential Campaign of 1864," p. 540.
[13] Charles Sumner to General Butler in, Benjamin Franklin Butler, Private and Official Correspondence. Vol. 2, June, 1862-February, 1863, pp. 570-71.
[14] See Alexander Hamilton to General Butler, April 6, 1863: Butler, Private and Official Correspondence of General Benjamin F. Butler during the Period of the Civil War. Vol. 3, February 1863-March 1864, 52-3.
[15] Carman and Luthin, Lincoln and the Patronage, pp. 147-50.
[16] Paludan, A People's Contest: The Union and Civil War 1861-1865, 79; McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, pp. 321-24 357-58.
[17]Carman and Luthin, Lincoln and the Patronage, pp. 130-31
[18] Why Butler suddenly opened up to the idea of arming blacks when he had consistently doubted and dismissed the possibility of arming African Americans is hard to answer. He certainly showed unusual sympathies for the plight of fugitives but on numerous occasions voiced deep skepticism over black soldiers. But as Dudley Cornish suggested, the assurances of Butler’s wife that backing such a venture would place one at the forefront of public approval, certainly tempted him to reconsider. Sarah Butler wrote:“The administration will assent to it just as fast and as far as the country will sustain it. It has taken a step or two in advance, and been obliged to draw back. But events may give the opportunity. They will be seized as fast as they arise.” After making this striking proclamation about the nature of the war, she immediately switches into a more domestic voice, talking about her lonely home, and letters. She provided rich descriptions of the private matters of hearth and affective love, but also, at times, spurred her husband onto the public stage, encouraging his political ambitions. She tended to spur and soothe at the same time, often mixing affectionate phrases with demands that Benjamin grasp for more, and push on in the “game of life.” See: Mrs. Butler to General Butler, August 8, 1862 in Dudley Taylor Cornish, The Sable Arm: Negro Troops in the Union Army, 1861-1865 (New York: Longmans, Green, 1956), pp. 56-65.; Benjamin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benj. F. Butler (Boston: A. M. Thayer & co., 1892), pp. 241-42.; Benjamin Franklin Butler, Private and Official Correspondence, pp. 147, 170, 190; Just before Sarah Butler penned her letter, Salmon Chase wrote Butler to encourage him to raise black troops as well. Salmon P. Chase to General Butler, July 31, 1862 in Butler, Private and Official Correspondence, Vol. 2, June, 1862-February, 1863; Edward Ayers, “Worrying about the Civil War" in Moral Problems in American Life: New Perspectives on Cultural History, eds. Karen Halttunen and Lewis Perry (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998), pp. 144-65. Also: Simon Cameron to General Butler in, April 23, 1863. Butler, Private and Official Correspondence, Vol. 3, February 1863-March 1864, p. 58.
[19] General Butler to Mrs. Butler, September 9, 1862, in Butler, Private and Official Correspondence, Vol. 2, June, 1862-February, 1863, pp. 271-73.
[20] Butler also believed he would be sent back to New Orleans as a sop for Radical Republicans, but in fact would be a general with no real power. He felt this had been done to him in the beginning of the war, and he would not suffer it again. “Let something be done or let me see that something can be done except pitiful intrigues be which I am removed from command, and the arrow shall not leave the bow with a swifter flight than I into the service. But with the expectations of the country roused into a belief that I can achieve something like success, I cannot of my own will be sent into that honorable exile again to which [Gen. Winfield] Scott banished me at Fortress Monroe, without men, without means, and without support, as a punishment for taking Baltimore without his column of 12,000 men.” See: General Butler to Salmon P. Chase, Butler, Private and Official Correspondence, Vol. 3, February 1863-March 1864, pp. 24-27.
[21] McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, pp. 623-24, 713-15. From General Butler to Salmon Chase, April 27, 1863 in Butler, Private and Official Correspondence of General Benjamin F. Butler during the Period of the Civil War. Vol. 3, February 1863-March 1864, pp. 57, 59.
[22] McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, pp. 574-5.
[23] There is a small but rich literature about the ways in which the war hardened and Americans grew more comfortable with—indeed often pushed for—a vengeful, apocalyptic war with visions of one massive battle. The literature finds this ratcheting up of violence in personal leaders like Stonewall Jackson, U.S. Grant and William T. Sherman. Or the cause is traced to evangelical yearnings for biblical purges and bloody apocalypse. Others claim the conflation of religion and state---burgeoning civil religion—helped to underwrite the dark final half of the war. Chares Royster, The Destructive War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans (New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2011); Harry S. Stout, Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War (New York: Penguin Publishing Group, 2007); Butler quoted in: Butler, Private and Official Correspondence of General Benjamin F. Butler during the Period of the Civil War. Vol. 3, February 1863-March 1864, 59-64.
[24] James Parton, General Butler in New Orleans. History of the Administration of the Department of the Gulf in the Year 1862: With an Account of the Capture of New Orleans, and a Sketch of the Previous Career of the General, Civil and Military (New York, Mason Bros.; Boston, Mason & Hamlin: etc, 1864); Butler, Private and Official Correspondence of General Benjamin F. Butler during the Period of the Civil War. Vol. 3, February 1863-March 1864, pp. 30-31, 70-71.
[25] On one hand Butler served the interests of Republicans. If a devout Democrat like Butler had supported the war and emancipation, so should his fellow party members. Longacre, “The Army of the James, 1863-1865: A Military, Political, and Social History,"(Vol. 1-4), pp. 12-14.
[26] Butler, Private and Official Correspondence of General Benjamin F. Butler during the Period of the Civil War. Vol. 3, February 1863-March 1864, p. 136.
[27] Because of his consistent, unflinching defense of black soldiers, black families, and America’s underdogs, Butler has received a deserved rehabilitation of late. See: Elizabeth D. Leonard, Benjamin Franklin Butler: A Noisy, Fearless Life (Chapel Hill: North Carolina Press, 2022).