10.8: Butler's Designs on Richmond
Supplement to Endnotes
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In late January 1864, one of his indefatigable allies, Count Adam de Gurowski—the eccentric Polish exile turned Lincoln despiser and Radical-Republican—urged Butler to take the prize. Gurowski, often spotted in blue-tinted glasses and old-world cloaks, advised him to slowly build up his forces and then ,without orders, effect a coup on Richmond, only notifying the War Department mid-endeavor. “Strike the blow without letting out your secret,” he continued. “You know better than I, that if the administration would wince and smart to find Richmond in your hands, on its shoulders the people will carry you into the White House… A great action, a great bold action, and Lincoln[’s] chances vanish as a nightmare,” Gurowski concluded his confidential letter.[1]
For much of 1864, Butler imagined that with his aggressive use of black soldiers and a little luck in battle, he could steal the Republican nomination from Lincoln.[2] In February, Butler bought into one of his subordinate’s proposals to sneak into Richmond with a small force and free Union captives held at the Libby and Belle Island prisons, destroy key properties, and capture confederate leaders. After the action failed, he took no blame, firing off telegraphs to Lincoln and Stanton about the “brilliantly and ably executed movement” that would have succeeded had Lincoln not suspended capital punishment in the Army of the James. (Butler falsely believed that the moratorium allowed a union soldier who was condemned to death for killing his lieutenant to escape prison a few days before and reveal Butler’s secret plan to the enemy. If not for Lincoln, Butler believed, the murderer would have been in a wood box, and Butler’s men made national heroes.)[3]
Butler’s foiled plans on Richmond fenced in the destinies of his troops. Much of his army was left to fight from (or as some saw it, cower in) the bottle while Grant siphoned off forces from the Army of the James. Sarah Butler argued that the slow bleeding of her husband’s forces ordered by Grant was, at root, a political move. Grant had always shown a desire to remove Butler, but left him untouched, perhaps at the request of the president. (Or perhaps because no right-minded officer would dare get in a public feud with the silver-tongued attorney.)[4]
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[1] Count Gurowsky to General Butler, January 30th, 1864, in: Butler, Private and Official Correspondence of General Benjamin F. Butler during the Period of the Civil War. Vol. 3, February 1863-March 1864"; LeRoy H. Fischer, “Lincoln’s Gadfly--Adam Gurowski” in The Mississippi Valley Historical Review (Vol. 36, No. 3, Dec. 1949), pp. 415-434.
[2] Ironically, Butler’s ineffectiveness in the first half of 1864 added to the growing criticism in the North that Lincoln had sacrificed too much blood with little to show for it. The bloodletting sent once-steadfast Lincoln men scrambling for a redeemer, which opened up a narrow path to snatch the office of president. Butler saw the opening but soon destroyed his chances. Merrill, “General Benjamin F. Butler in the Presidential Campaign of 1864,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review Vol. 33, No. 4 (Mar., 1947), pp. 537-570.
[3] Nash, Stormy Petrel: The Life and Times of General Benjamin F. Butler, 1818-1893, pp. 188-89; Longacre, Army of Amateurs: General Benjamin F. Butler and the Army of the James, 1863-1865, pp. 18-19; Butler to various officials, February 8-12, 1864, OR, Series 1, volume 33. pp. 143-45.
[4] Robert Holzman suggested that Grant feared Butler would mercilessly resurrect the debate about Grant’s purported alcoholism. When Grant first came east to assume command of the army, he wanted to rid it of Butler. But despite Grant’s resistance, Lincoln convinced his top general to leave Butler at the head of the Army of the James because Butler had a strong following among Radical Republicans. See: Holzman, Stormy Ben Butler, pp. 118-19; Michael Thomas Smith, The Enemy Within: Fears of Corruption in the Civil War North (Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press, 2011), p. 39; David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), p. 498.
By summer, Major General Halleck (the chief of staff for the army) and Lieutenant General Grant bandied about ideas of how to get rid of the troublesome Butler. Butler particularly vexed Halleck because though the latter was an experienced soldier, trained at West Point, Butler outranked him as major general due to Lincoln’s rush to promote Butler for political expediency in the first hours of the war. Butler--a man of no real military experience--indeed outranked every single officer in the army save Grant, who was given the long-retired rank of Lieutenant General. Halleck and Grant discussed sending Butler to Kentucky but feared he would clash with Sherman. Halleck also suggested paring away Butler’s army size as a way to weaken Butler’s leverage. See: Halleck to Grant, July 3, 1864, in OR, Series 1, volume 40, part II, p. 598; Holzman, Stormy Ben Butler, pp. 131-32.