VP Beast Butler?

[Eva Elisabeth]

Just to add (quoted from this article: http://abrahamlincolnsclassroom.org/abra...nd-cotton/ )

"General Benjamin F. Butler and his brother were widely suspected of enriching themselves through the cotton trade in Louisiana. Historian Ludwell H. Johnson wrote that Butler’s “name became almost a synonym for contraband trade, with all its undertones of corruption and treason. Wherever Butler was, whether New Orleans or Norfolk business boomed, and much of it was in the hands of his friends and relatives." Historian Albert Bushnell Hart wrote: “The most profitable trade was in cotton and sugar. Cotton inside the Confederate lines was worth not more than ten cents in specie, but once on its way North or abroad it was worth seventy cents and upward. The temptation was too strong to be resisted. George S. Denison, collector of revenue, Chase’s confidential and upright representative in New Orleans, wrote him letter after letter about the trade across the border, which was going on under his own eyes, but which he could not check because it was authorized by the general in command. General Butler professed indignation, and promised amendment; but Mr. Denison reported — what everybody in New Orleans suspected — that the brother of the general was profiting by this unwarrantable trade, and that the general winked at it." Butler defended his brother but wrote Secretary Chase, who had heard that “Colonel Butler’s gains amount to between one and two million dollars,” that “no appearance of evil shall exist to rob me of the fair earnings of a devotion of life and fortune to the service of my country. I have therefore asked Colonel Butler to close up his business and go away from New Orleans, so as to leave me entirely untrammeled to deal with the infernal brood of slandering speculators who have maligned me because I will not allow them to plunder the government.”

"Butler…ordered his troops to force entry to the Dutch consulate, where they found several hundred thousand dollars worth of Confederate gold. Despite protests from all the foreign consuls in the city, the general refused to allow diplomatic immunity to protect Confederate property from legitimate seizure.”

"General Butler made extensive use of the Confiscation Act of 1861 to seize rebel estates and dun rebel merchants to support charitable funds."

Lincoln himself considered Butler "as full of poison gas as a dead dog."

"In fairness, Butler had some good intentions, noted historian Anthony Santoro, who wrote that Butler “was instrumental in arranging food and trade to feed the starving city. Believing that festering garbage contributed to rampant disease, he directed work crews to keeping the city clean.”