delta of the Mississippi River, at which rendezvous the
rest of the troops had already been assembled. From this post the
reduction of New Orleans was executed.

On the morning of April 24, the fleet under command of Captain Farragut
succeeded in passing the forts, and a week later the transport
Mississippi with General Butler and his troops was alongside the levee
at New Orleans.

On December 16, 1862, General Butler formally surrendered the command of
the department of the Gulf to General Banks. What General Butler did at
New Orleans during the months he was in command in that city is a matter
of history, and has been ably chronicled by James Parton. He there
displayed those wonderful qualities of command which made him the most
hated, as well as the most respected, Northern man who ever visited the
South. He did more to subject the Southern people to the inevitable
consequence of the war than a division of a hundred thousand soldiers.
He even conquered that dread scourge, yellow fever, and demonstrated
that lawlessness even in New Orleans could be suppressed.

The new channel for the James River, known as the Dutch Gap, planned by
General Butler, and ridiculed by the press, but approved by the officers
of the United States Engineer Corps, remains to this day the
thoroughfare used by commerce.

The fame of General Butler's career at New Orleans, and his presence,
quieted the fierce riots in New York City, occasioned by the drafts.

General Butler resigned his commission at the close of the war, and
resumed the practice of his profession. He is now, and has been for many
years, the senior major-general of all living men who have held that
rank in the service of the United States.

IN CONGRESS.

In 1867, Mr. Butler was elected to the fortieth Congress from the fifth
congressional district of Massachusetts, and in 1869 from the sixth
district. He was re-elected in 1871, 1873, and in 1877. He was a
recognized power in the House of Representatives, and with the
administration. In 1882, he was elected Governor of Massachusetts, and
gracefully retired in December, 1883, to the disappointment of more than
one hundred and fifty thousand Massachusetts voters.

Mr. Butler is a man of vast intellectual ability--in every sense of the
word a great man. He possesses a remarkable memory, great executive
abilities, good judgment, immense energy, and withal a tender heart. He
has always been a champion of fair play and equa