More than a century after his death, Ben Butler remains one of the most colorful and controversial figures in American history. Personally vociferous and often abrasive, he nonetheless was more often than not on the side of the angels when it came to the big issues of the day. Unfortunately, those choices were often unpopular (for Black freedom, and the innocence of the Haymarket anarchists), and that, taken with an almost suicidal genius for controversy, have led people then and now to judge him at his worst -- he was a bungling commanding officer -- and to pay an inordinate amount of attention to unproveable but persistent rumors about his integrity, and even his mental stability. You can read his own words and start to make up your mind, though in the interest of full disclosure, the biographies by Holtzman and Trefousse are more reliable. ( )