(December 14, 1795–November 8, 1858), was an American politician and Union General during the Civil War. He served as the U.S. Attorney General, 1833–38, under President Andrew Jackson; the U.S. Secretary of War, 1836–37; and U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, 1838–48. In addition to serving in the New York State Legislature, Benjamin Franklin Butler was the head of the electoral College of New York in 1845. In an address delivered in 1834 at Alexandria, D.C., Benjamin Franklin Butler stated:
He is truly happy, whatever may be his temporal condition, who can call God his Father in the full assurance of faith and hope. And amid all his trials, conflicts, and doubts, the feeblest Christian is still comparatively happy; because cheered by the hope … that the hour is coming when he shall be delivered from “this body of sin and death” and in the vision of his Redeemer … approximate to the … felicity of angels.
Not only does the Bible inculcate, with sanctions of the highest import, a system of the purest morality, but in the person and character of our Blessed Saviour it exhibits a tangible illustration of that system.
In Him we have set before us—what, till the publication of the Gospel, the world had never seen—a model of feeling and action, adapted to all times, places, and circumstances; and combining so much of wisdom, benevolence, and holiness, that none can fathom its sublimity; and yet, presented in a form so simple, that even a child may be made to understand and taught to love it.2104