PBA Galleries

Includes 27 typed letters signed, and 2 autograph letters signed. Most are 25.5x20.5 cm (10x8"), on letterhead of the Law Offices of Benj. F. Butler, Washburn and Webster.

Interesting archive of letters from the one-time Civil War general, lawyer, politician and businessman, to an associate based in Washington D.C. who occasionally travels on business of mutual interest. During the Civil War Butler was noted for his brutal occupation of New Orleans, his freeing of slaves as "contraband" of war, and questionable financial dealings. After the war, as a congressman from Massachusetts, he was a leader in the impeachment proceedings against Andrew Johnson. The letters in the archive cover a range of concerns, often related to business and land transactions in the West, and give indication is astuteness as a lawyer, and his firmness and aggressiveness as a businessman, as in a letter of August 16, 1886, "I have already told you why I cannot go into any land speculation at all now, and I can further inform you that I have had a bona fide offer now from the Prairie Company to put on cattle and to form a Company large enough with cattle enough to pay for all the land and more to, and then they proposed to issued bonds enough to make a payment with such a discount for one hundred and fifty dollars of them as to enable the money I have no doubt to be raised. It has been approved by the Scotch company at home..." On September 9, 1886, "You had better go out to the ranch. You will find Mr. Jayne upon it. I think we should have a copy of every deed that by the remotest possibility can bear upon the title of the ranch. In regard to Mrs. Houghton, and I suppose she is the widow of Joab Houghton who figures so largely in the Maxwell grant, and who was once Chief Justice, I think it would be convenient to get that deed; but I am afraid that an attempt to get the deed from her would at once lead to an inquiry and raised a doubt about the title, which you would wish to cover by it... You do not give me the age of the children and I cannot guess them. In any future litigation I should rely with great confidence on the law of Colorado which give ten years as the limitation..."