By “RRC”, dated “1867”—penciled in lower corners, left & right. 4.75 x 6.25, mounted on period brown card, 6” x 8., triple matted in green, white, & cloth, mounted in triple gilt trimmed green wooden frame, 15.25” x 18.5, w/nailed wooden backing plus white card w/ hang-wire.

Although the brown cartoon-backing exhibits light chips at the extremities, the cartoon itself is sharp & clean. It is essentially a caricature of the notoriously controversial Butler, depicting his pot-bee belly as more considerable than it actually was.  The pigmy-sized negroid featured soldiers in the right margin are obviously intended intended to recall Butler’s role in raising a regiment of free black troops in 1862 New Orleans. During Butler’s tenure as military governor of New Orleans he earned the nickname “Beast Butler” for proclaiming that any New Orleans females treating federals soldiers with contempt was liable to be held as “a woman of town” plying her vocation. Nor were southerners alone in detesting General Butler. Although beloved of Northern Radical Republicans, U.S. Grant regarded him an abysmal soldier (which he was),  as did many others, and summarily removed after a failed 1865 Union assault on FT. Fisher, NC.

A finely executed Civil War era pencil-sketch caricature, nicely capturing the essential arrogance  of Benjamin F. Butler. [jp][ph:L]