Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

At the Lowell High School I finished my fitting for college, to which I went very unwillingly. Just before I was to enter, my mother asked the Hon. Caleb Cushing, then a member of Congress from Massachusetts, to give me an appointment at West Point, a thing of which I was very desirous. He had known my mother, and knew that she was a soldier's widow, and he expressed a willingness to appoint me at the next vacancy. But that vacancy would be a little time thence. My mother then made application to the Hon. Isaac Hill, of New Hampshire, who was supposed to be all-powerful in such matters with Jackson's administration. He replied that he would see to it that such appointment was given to the son of a soldier who was his own early friend. But here a difficulty arose. My much loved mother was a very devout Christian, believing in the doctrine of Calvin, and viewing unbelief as the unpardonable sin. I had been very religiously brought up. I had been taught in the Sunday school, and by her, until I was, for my years, fully conversant with the Scriptures. I had committed to memory the four Gospels, and once had recited them at call for a quotation in every part. I knew every word, not even excepting the first eighteen verses of the first chapter of Matthew, where everybody begat everybody else. That chapter was my hardest lesson, but I was once master of it. My mother's clergyman, a good Baptist, was consulted upon my being sent to West Point. He advised strongly against it. He said that I was a religiously inclined boy, and one well versed in religious principles; and at West Point there was, he understood, a great deal of free-thinking among the pupils, if not among the teachers He felt that if I went there my religious feelings and principles would be derided and scoffed at, and that I should doubtless be converted into a free-thinker myself. And, therefore, as my mother earnestly desired that I should be a clergyman of her persuasion, he thought that I had better be sent to a good Baptist college, at Waterville, Me. (where he had graduated) in the labor department, where I could do something to earn my subsistence. He was convinced that there, aided by the example of those around me, I should probably fulfil my mother's long-cherished expectations by becoming a clergyman. He was a very good man, but had very litle insight into human nature, or at least into the nature of the boy for whom he was dealing.