History seems to have forgotten Benjamin Franklin Butler (1818-1893), though he was one of the most colorful-and reviled--figures in American politics in his day. A brilliant lawyer from Massachusetts, Butler served in Congress for a number of years, but is best remembered for his Civil War leadership, and the enmity he earned at home and in Washington for his uncompromising views.

Butler was born on November 5, 1818, in Deerfield, New Hampshire. He was the sixth child of a father from whom he inherited his adventurous streak: John Butler captained a company of dragoons during the War of 1812, and later became a privateer-and possibly a pirate--plying the Caribbean seas. When he died of yellow fever on the island of St. Kitts, his ship and its contents were lost, and with it his family's financial resources. His mother eventually became proprietor of a boarding house for textile-mill workers in Lowell, Massachusetts...