Stormy Ben Butler (review)

Book Reviews321 and discovered a typed copy of Ramsey's autobiography in the Lawson-McGhee Library of Knoxville. While working on the Lyman C. Draper collection of historical material on the early history of die trans-Allegheny region, Mr. Hesseltine had Tound many of Dr. Ramsey's letters and had become increasingly impressed with the importance of his contribution to early Tennessee history. The present volume is the result of Mr. Hesseltine's further investigation. It is a remarkable portrayal of life on the frontier west of the Allegheny Mountains and covers the tragic period of the Civil War in East Tennessee. Historians will be impressed with the versatility of Tennessee's early historian . Born of Scotch-Irish pioneers in western North Carolina and Tennessee, Dr. Ramsey was a physician, historian, canal commissioner, school commissioner , bank president farmer, Presbyterian elder, poet, register of deeds, contributor to magazines, Confederate treasury agent, railroad promoter, postmaster , operator of a ferry, college trustee, and a true Soudiern gentìeman representing the culture and aristocracy of the Old South. Civil War students will be primarily interested in Ramsey's recital of his experiences as a Southern partisan in East Tennessee where loyalties were bitterly divided and feelings ran high. He was an arch-enemy of Parson Brownlow , sharp-tongued Unionist preacher and newspaperman. Serving for a time in the Confederate Congress, he was a friend and acquaintance of many Confederate leaders, including President Davis and members of his cabinet, and acted as a depositary in the Bank of Knoxville for Confederate funds. In his autobiography he describes Sanders' raid in East Tennessee, discusses the activities of General Buckner while in command of the Confederate forces in Knoxville, and recounts his own experiences in die war until General Bumside conquered Knoxville and drove out most of the Soudiern troops in East Tennessee . Safeguarding the money entrusted to his care, Ramsey fled first to Atìanta and later to Charlotte, North Carolina. This book, although concerned with die first seventy years of the nineteenth century, is predominantìy a Civil War story and offers an admirable portrayal of conditions in East Tennessee as observed by a prominent Southern sympathizer . Mr. Hesseltine has added greatly to its value by including Dr. Ramsey's letters to Lyman C. Draper during the period when Ramsey was writing his history of Tennessee and later, after the Civil War, when he assisted Draper in gathering material for the latter's monumental work, King's Mountain and Its Heroes. Robert L. Kincato Harrogate, Tennessee Stormy Ben Butler. By Robert S. Holzman. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1954. Pp. xvii, 297. $5.00.) the ctvtl war and reconstruction era brought to national attention some of the strongest personalities ever to achieve prominence on the American scene. Perhaps one of the reasons for continued interest in the period lies in the fact that diere were aggressive and exciting men involved. Benjamin F. Butler ranks at the very top when such personal qualities as color, audacity, vigor, and 322CIVIL WAR HISTORY ability are considered, but it should be kept in mind that in his makeup these qualities included a rare seasoning of greed, grossness, vindictiveness, and self-aggrandizement. Abundant accounts of Butler's activities run through the literature of the period, but Mr. Holzman's book is the first attempt at an analytical biography of this complex man. Butler grew up in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, where his early years were not conspicuously different from the standard of the times, except that he developed a precocity for fighting whenever his father's shady past or his own unfortunate appearance was ridiculed. He never lost this urge for combat and self-vindication. As a young lawyer, he quickly earned a reputation for his lively and inventive imagination, and also acquired notoriety for his ability to put aside troublesome standards of ethics when these might interfere with his winning a case. But, and this was to be true for many years and in many ways, he did win. In addition to practicing law, Butler interested himself in politics, which was a usual procedure for lawyers, and in active participation in the Massachusetts militia, which was not. The fact...