Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

[1035] I seized and strongly fortified the important strategic point of Newport News, at the mouth of the James River, which was held during the war, thus keeping open a water-way for the transportation of troops and supplies to the intrenchments around Richmond, and by which the Army of the Potomac under McClellan escaped from Harrison's Landing.

In co-operation with the navy I captured Fort Hatteras and Fort Clark, thus making the holding of the sounds of Virginia and North and South Carolina practicable.

I raised a division of more than six thousand men for the United States without payment of bounties or impressment. With the division thus raised, aided by an equal number of troops added to that force, co-operating with the fleet of the immortal Farragut to his entire satisfaction, we opened the Mississippi River, captured New Orleans, subdued Louisiana, and held all of it that was ever afterwards permanently held as a part of the United States. I enforced respect there to the nation's flag, its laws and power.

By proper sanitary regulations I rescued New Orleans, the commercial port of the Gulf of Mexico, from its most potent danger, the yellow fever, from the ravages of which in no year had it ever escaped, a foe which the enemies of my country surely relied upon to destroy my army, as it would have done if uncontrolled.

I enlisted there the first colored troops ever legally mustered into the army of the United States, thus inaugurating the policy of arming the colored race before Congress or the President had adopted it, by so doing, pointing the way to the recruitment of the armies of the United States by the enlistment of colored men to the number of one hundred and fifty thousand, and establishing the negro soldier as a component part of the military resources of the country forever.

In the spring of 1864 I devised, organized, and perfected the strategy for a campaign against Richmond by having an impregnable intrenched camp containing thirty square miles of territory within its boundaries, which could be held by ten thousand men against the whole rebel forces forever, within eight miles of the rebel capital, like a hand upon its throat never to be unclenched, as it never was. I fortified it as a refuge to which the Army of the Potomac could repair in safety as a base of supplies, as it did when it failed to drive Lee's army in retreat to the defences of Richmond.