Butler Gets Lost in the Bermuda Hundred
May 6–20, 1864: The Battles of the Bermuda Hundred Campaign
Doug Niles
If there was to be a “poster boy” for the political generals that plagued the high commands of both sides during the American Civil War, Benjamin Franklin Butler deserves serious consideration for the, er, honor. He was a successful Massachusetts lawyer, and held the rank of brigadier general in that state’s militia. It should be noted that this rank was gained in great part due to his extensive political connections, as Butler had virtually no actual military experience before the war.
Although he rose to prominence in Democratic Party politics, he would become a key supporter of Abraham Lincoln during Honest Abe’s first term as president. His abolitionist credentials were impeccable, and by 1864 Butler’s political support in Massachusetts was judged so crucial to Lincoln’s reelection chances that Butler would retain his field commands during the war even as his performance proved almost completely unsuccessful.
In May 1861, Butler was one of three major generals of volunteers appointed by President Lincoln. By virtue of being listed after John Dix and Nathaniel Banks, Butler was thus third in seniority among these appointees. (Dix was judged too old for field service, while Banks would go on to a career every bit as lackluster as Butler’s.) Butler’s first assignment was to take command at Fort Monroe, in Virginia. In his first venture into operations, his small force was soundly defeated by an even smaller force of Rebels at the Battle of Big Bethel.
More notably, while he commanded the Federal zone in Virginia he refused to return to their owners escaped slaves who had made it into the Union position. His stance regarding these “contrabands” would eventually become standard policy, and it won him growing respect from the politically influential abolitionists in the North.
A year later, Butler was sent to New Orleans to take command of that city, which had been captured by the Union Navy. He proved to be a decent administrator and the city was an orderly place under his leadership. Still, he advocated harsh treatment of those he deemed disloyal, declaring that any woman showing disrespect for a Federal officer should be treated as a prostitute—a dire insult in the prideful South. He ordered the execution of a citizen who tore down the U.S. flag from the U.S. Mint in New Orleans, and earned the sobriquet “Beast Butler.” He was so unpopular among the Rebels that Confederate President Jefferson Davis declared him a “felon,” fated for hanging if he could be captured by southern agents.
Late in 1863 he returned to Fort Monroe. Here he proposed an operation against Richmond itself and, just after the new year, he was given permission to try. The Army of the Potomac, some distance to the north, demonstrated along the Rapidan River, holding the attention of Robert E. Lee, while Butler moved out with a smaller force from Monroe. He moved up the James peninsula at a fairly brisk pace, until his leading elements encountered a broken bridge just a few miles from the Rebel capital. After a few days of pondering the bridge, wondering what to do, Butler called off his operation and retired to Fort Monroe.
It was just a few months later that General Ulysses S. Grant arrived to take command of all the Union armies, including Butler’s. While Grant, Meade, and the Army of the Potomac would make the main effort against Lee, the commanding general had in mind plans for other generals with far-flung commands, including Banks on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, Franz Sigel in the Shenandoah Valley, and of course Butler on the James peninsula. Abe Lincoln reacted to Grant’s plan with a typically colorful phrase: “Those who aren’t skinning the hog can hold a leg.”
But none of the political generals proved very adept at leg holding. Butler, in particular, was provided with a splendid opportunity to earn some of that military glory that he had so long coveted. Knowing that the Richmond defenses were very poorly held, and desiring that such Rebel troops as were there would stay rather than reinforce Lee, Grant ordered Butler to advance against the rail lines linking the capital city to Petersburg, an important transportation hub some twenty-five miles to the south.
Embarking on naval transports, Butler took his troops—now designated as the Army of the James, numbering some 33,000—up the James River and landed at a little fishing village known as the Bermuda Hundred. While Grant was skeptical of Butler’s military capabilities, he knew he could not remove the political general from command, not when the hotly contested presidential election of 1864 was far from decided. He tried to support his subordinate by supplying him with experienced corps commanders, but Butler’s vanity would not allow anyone but himself to make key operational decisions.
The Army of the James arrived at Bermuda Hundred on May 5, the same day Grant moved the Army of the Potomac into the Wilderness to commence the Overland Campaign. Butler’s men moved out to cut the railroad line, and met with some initial success, pushing the Rebels back to Swift Creek and for a brief time driving the enemy off the front. Instead of exploiting the opening, however, Butler contented himself with destroying some railroad tracks. In the meantime, the Rebels regrouped, as they had a way of doing.
Some 18,000 men were mustered for the Richmond/Petersburg defense under the command of P.G.T. Beauregard. These troops included every available male from boys to old men. They were poorly equipped and trained. But they were willing to attack, and in a series of engagements they drove the Army of the James back to the Bermuda Hundred. Here Butler knew that he had a strong position, protected on three sides by a wide loop of the James River and on the fourth by his fieldworks.
However, the Rebels had the same advantage and constructed an equally impressive line of fieldworks, called the Howlett Line, that would prove impervious to any of Butler’s desultory attacks. In effect, he had marched his army into a prisoner-of-war camp and pulled the gate shut behind himself. As a result of Butler’s ineptness, Beauregard was able to send about half his men to reinforce the Army of Northern Virginia. Butler, in the meantime, languished behind his fortifications until Grant finally sent some ships to collect him and his troops, which were employed during the siege of Petersburg.
Later in the year Butler was sent to North Carolina, where he refused to attack the objective, Fort Fisher, assigned to him by Grant because he viewed it as impregnable. The election being over, Grant ordered Butler removed from field command—but this was a fight Butler was ready to wage. He went before the congressional committee on the conduct of the war, supported by witnesses and vast sheaths of documents attempting to prove his position that Fort Fisher was impervious to attack.
Unfortunately—and embarrassingly—for this political general, the fort was captured by another general even as the hearings were going on, an act that proved a fitting and appropriate coda for Benjamin Franklin Butler’s military career.