Terry L. Jones from the New York Times wrote this insightful article in 2012 on Benjamin Butler.
The Beast in the Big Easy
“After Flag Officer David Farragut captured New Orleans in April 1862, Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler occupied the city at the head of some 10,000 Union soldiers. That Butler should be in charge of the Union occupation of the South’s largest city is surprising: a former member of the Massachusetts State Senate, he had been chosen as a delegate to the 1860 Democratic National Convention, where he voted 57 times to nominate then-Senator Jefferson Davis for president, on the belief that only a Southern moderate could keep the party from splitting.”
FST Stage Directions 