Word: butler
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...flush of success, Butler sent poorly officered troops into combat at Big Bethel-the war's first battle-and got whipped. Though Big Bethel was soon forgotten in the greater Union calamity at Bull Run, it established Butler's reputation as an inept field commander. But when New Orleans was taken, Butler was sent to take over the occupation...
...Woman Order. New Orleans' haughty grandes dames scorned the occupying Union Forces, spat at the blue-coats passing in the streets. Rather than jail these indelicate flowers of Southern womanhood, Butler hit on a stratagem: any woman who insulted Union officers in the streets would be "treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation." To Southerners, this "Woman Order" sounded like an invitation to rape (though no incidents developed), and the Confederacy proclaimed Butler an "outlaw" to be hanged...
...Butler was a tough administrator, and his "sins" multiplied in Southern eyes: he hanged a man named William Mumford who had torn the Union flag from atop the U.S. Mint (though Southern and Copperhead critics conveniently forgot that Butler also hanged Union soldiers caught looting in New Orleans); he confiscated property and gold that the rebels had hidden (but passed it all along to Washington...
...called "Miss Nancyism"-in this case a sympathetic approach to Reconstruction of the South. With his sharp lawyer's mind, he was a natural choice for prosecutor when the Congress tried to impeach President Andrew Johnson. Caustic and too clever by half in many people's opinion, Butler attacked Johnson as if he were a horse thief. The impeachment move failed by one vote...
...Butler went on to crusade for Negro civil rights. In 1875, he introduced a "radical" but prophetic civil rights bill before the House: it demanded that Negroes be granted "full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances, theaters, places of public amusement; and also of common schools and public institutions of learning." Congress passed it (sans the education clause), but the act was declared unconstitutional in 1883 by the Supreme Court...