Hoover asked his secretary of the Navy to court-martial Butler! For the first time since the Civil War, a general officer was placed under arrest; confined to his post! A man with eighteen decorations—outrageous! But I guess our appeasement of Fascist dictators isn’t anything new. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, then governor of New York, volunteered to testify on Butler’s behalf, and ultimately, Butler got off with a “reprimand” and his court-martial withdrawn.