Confederate Col. John Bankhead Magruder, a West Point graduate who had served in the Second Seminole War and the Mexican-American War, resigned his U.S. commission at the start of the Civil War, became a Confederate colonel, and was assigned to defend the Peninsula. Praised for his success at Big Bethel, he failed at Malvern Hill under Gen. Robert E. Lee a year later, was reassigned to Texas, and won the Battle of Galveston on January 1, 1863. After the war, he fled first to Mexico, served in the army of Emperor Maximilian I, and then settled in Houston, Texas, where he died. Union Gen. Benjamin Franklin Butler, a Massachusetts lawyer and politician, was appointed a general when the Civil War erupted and secured the vital rail link between the North and Washington, DC by occupying Baltimore in May 1861. President Abraham Lincoln then appointed him commander of Fort Monroe. Although Big Bethel was a debacle for him, he remained in service until November 1865, refused to return escaped slaves to their owners and thereby set Federal policy, insisted that black troops serve in combat, led a successful expedition to eastern North Carolina, gained notoriety as military governor of Louisiana, and later failed at Bermuda Hundred and Fort Fisher. After the war, he served several congressional terms and was governor of Massachusetts.