"Now, Mr. Speaker, I do not wish to be misunderstood. I do not wish to be misrepresented in this matter. Let no man assert that I refer to the evils of those days as either excuse or palliation for the evils of ours. That generation was a frugal and honest generation in the main, and they would have visited with the swiftest condemnation and punishment, every breach of public trust, whether through dishonesty or usurpation. But they did not send to England for Benedict Arnold. They did not restore the Tories to power. They did not go down on their knees to George III. and ask him to take them back into favor. They believed that if the Constitution could not be administered honestly by a majority of the friends of the Constitution, it could not be administered honestly by a majority of its enemies; that if liberty were not safe and pure in the hands of those who loved her, then liberty was a failure upon the earth, and they did not think of intrusting her to the hands of those who hated her. So in this generation, had they lived to-day, they would have done simply what a distinguished president of the convention in my own State, whom the gentleman quotes, recommended; they would have taken the Government from the hands of the lovers of liberty who are dishonest and put it into the hands of men who entertain the same sentiments but who are honest. It never would have occurred to them that because among one hundred thousand men there are found some few who will not keep the eighth commandment, 'Thou shalt not steal,' which is a mandate for all the public service, they should put in power men who have no regard for the sixth, 'Thou shalt not kill.'"

There were several conspicuous instances of corruption with which I had personally to deal.

1. One was the Credit Mobilier.

Two Committees were appointed to investigate the affairs of the Union Pacific Railroad Company, and the Credit Mobilier of America. One Committee investigated the conduct of some members of the two Houses of Congress against whom some charges had been made. Of that Committee Judge Poland of Vermont was the Chairman. The other Committee investigated the history of the Union Pacific Railroad Company to report whether its charter had been forfeited. Of that Committee Jeremiah M. Wilson of Indiana, a very able lawyer and accomplished gentleman, was Chairman. The next member to him on the Committee was Judge Shellabarger of Ohio. Owing to reasons, stated later, it fell to me as the next in rank to conduct the greater part of the examination, and to make the report.

2. Another was the impeachment and trial of General William W. Belknap, Secretary of War, for receiving a bribe for the appointment of a Post Trader.

3. A third example of the prevalent laxity of morals that occurred was the case of the Sanborn contracts. I was a member of the House when they were investigated, but took no special part in the proceedings.

4. A fourth example was the claim of Senators and Representatives which had been asserted in Andrew Johnson's Administration, and to which General Grant had partly yielded, to dictate the appointment of executive officers. In that way a vast army of public servants, amounting to more than one hundred thousand in number, who were appointed and removed at the pleasure of the Executive, became first the instrument of keeping the dominant party in power, and afterward became not so much the instruments and servants of party as the political followers of ambitious men to whom they owed their office, and on whose pleasure they depended for maintaining them. I made, in a speech at West Newton in 1876, an earnest attack on this system, and afterward in the Senate had a good deal to do with framing the Civil Service Law, as it was called, which put an end to it.

5. Perhaps the most dangerous attack upon the purity of the Government was the attempt of General Butler to get possession of the political power in Massachusetts, and ultimately that of the country. What I was able to do to resist and baffle that attempt is the most considerable part of the public service of my life, if it has been of any public service.

I shall speak of each of these a little more fully.

The responsibility for three of these, I regret to say, rested upon Massachusetts men, members of the Republican Party. The Union Pacific Railroad Company and the Credit Mobilier were made up largely of prominent Massachusetts men for whom General Butler acted as counsel. When Mr. Ames was on trial before the House of Representatives General Butler, then a member of the House, appeared as a member and took part and made the extraordinary statement to the House that he was there as counsel for Mr. Ames.

Sanborn, who made the contracts, was a Massachusetts man. His profits were used largely in affecting elections in Massachusetts. The Treasury officials who were in fault, whether through carelessness or corruption, were Massachusetts men, and the arch contriver of the scheme was a Massachusetts man.

Yet the lesson which these things have taught me is that the American statesman who believes that the doctrines of his party are sound should never abandon his principles or quit political life because of its corruption. Let him never for any political advantage support or tolerate a corrupt man, or vote for a corrupt candidate. If a man whose principles are good will yield to an evil motive, it is not likely that the man whose principles are bad will resist it. The American people are upright and honest. They will vindicate and stand by any man in the contest for honesty and uprightness, be he Democrat or Republican, so long as they believe that the ends for which he is striving are for the public good. They will not sustain a man whose counsel they think bad, however honest he may be in his own conduct, or however much he may desire to secure honesty in the conduct of others. No man ever yet accomplished much good by abandoning his party while he continued to hold its principles. Many men have accomplished a great deal of good by striving to purify it.

Every account of political history from the inside will exhibit abundant evidence of wickedness, wrongdoing, and petty personal motives, of low ambitions, of bargains and sales, of timidity, of treachery. The reverse of the most costly tapestry looks mean and cheap. It is said that no man is a hero to his valet. The reason is not that the hero is mean or base, but that the valet cannot see anything that is great and noble, but only what is mean and base. The history of no people is heroical to its Mugwumps. But, thank God, what is petty and personal is also temporary and perishable. The voice of all history, especially the voice of the history of our Republic, speaks to us the lesson which our great philosopher taught and so implicitly believed,

Saying, What is excellent, As God lives, is permanent.

CHAPTER XXII CREDIT MOBILIER

During the election of 1872 many rumors appeared in the press of the country that there had been great corruption in the management of the affairs of the Union Pacific Railroad. It was charged that the members of the House and Senate, some of whom were named, had been bribed by gifts of stock in the Credit Mobilier to secure their influence in legislation affecting the Union Pacific Railroad.

The Credit Mobilier Co. had been formed to take the contract for building the Union Pacific Railroad. The stockholders of the two companies were identical. Each stockholder of the Credit Mobilier owned a number of shares of the Union Pacific Railroad proportional to his holding in the former company.

The Union Pacific Railroad Company and Central Pacific Railroad Company received liberal land grants from the Government of the United States, that they might each build a part of the line which should connect the Atlantic States with the Pacific Ocean. In addition to the land grants, each road was to receive a loan of Government bonds, payable in thirty years, of $27,000,000, for which the Government was to pay interest, which interest was not required to be repaid by the roads. The roads were also authorized to give a mortgage on their properties for a like amount, of $27,000,000 each, which mortgage was to be prior to the Government's lien for its loan. The charter of the Union Pacific Railroad was granted by the Government of the United States. That of the Central Pacific was from the State of California. The Government undertook to remove all Indian titles from the public land granted to the Union Pacific Railroad for a space of 200 feet in width on each side of its entire route, and conferred the right to appropriate by eminent domain necessary private land for depots, turnouts, etc., and public lands to the amount of ten alternate sections per mile, within the limits of twenty miles on each side of the road. It was required by the charter of the Union Pacific Railroad that its stock should be paid in full in cash, and that the interests of the Government should be specially protected by the appointment by the President of five Government Directors. The Government bonds were to be handed over on the certificate of an officer appointed by the President, as the road advanced to completion. It was required that a Government Director should be a member of every Committee, standing or select.

The managers of the Union Pacific Railroad acquired the franchise of a Pennsylvania Company, known as the Credit Mobilier, divided its stock among themselves in proportion to their ownership in the Union Pacific Railroad, mortgaged the road to the extent permitted by the act of Congress, being a little more than $27,000,000 and mortgaged their land grants for a further sum of $10,000,000. Then they made a contract with the Credit Mobilier Company to construct the road at a price which would exhaust all the resources of the road, including the proceeds of the bonds of all kinds, and divided the proceeds among themselves as dividends on the stock of the Credit Mobilier. This left the Union Pacific Railroad to begin business mortgaged to its full value, without any resources for its operation, and utterly stripped of the ample endowment which the bounty of the Government had provided for it.

Congress supposed when this munificent grant of land and loan of credit was made it would create a great public highway across the continent for the use of the Government and the people, in war and peace, which should be a strong, solvent corporation, ready for every emergency, and as secure for the public use as New York Harbor, or as the Pacific Ocean.

The devisers of this scheme soon got to quarrelling among themselves. One faction was made up largely of Boston capitalists, and the other of men belonging in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. The former wanted to have the headquarters of the corporation in Boston, with a Boston man for President; and the latter desired to have the management in New York. A suit in equity was brought, and the Boston men, headed by Oakes Ames, a member of Congress, and his brother Oliver, both eminent and highly respected business men of Massachusetts, were enjoined from voting at a stockholders' meeting held in New York for the election of officers. The injunction was issued by Judge Barnard, who was afterward impeached, and removed from office. On the day of the stockholders' meeting General Butler, counsel for the Ames faction, found Judge Barnard at lunch, and got him so to modify the injunction as to permit that the votes might be cast, the result of the election not to be declared until the further order of the Court. The other faction who had rested with fancied security under their injunction were taken by surprise.

The Ames ticket had a majority. Thereupon one of the other faction wrote a letter to Elihu B. Washburn, at Washington. He was an influential member of the House of Representatives, known as the "Watch Dog of the Treasury." The letter was put in the post-office. It exposed the whole transaction. He then informed his opponents what he had done. They knew very well that if Washburn moved an investigation by the House of Representatives, which was likely, the game was up. No further bonds would come from the United States Treasury. Judicial proceedings would in all likelihood be taken at once to annul the charter, or restrain further action under it. They instantly came to terms. The two factions agreed on a Board of Directors. The letter to Washington was withdrawn from the mail. Oakes Ames received a quantity of the stock of the Credit Mobilier, which he was to distribute among influential members of Congress at par, "putting it," according to his testimony given before a Committee afterward, "where it would do the most good." A list of members of the two Houses was agreed upon, to whom the stock should be offered. It was expected that they would pay for it at par. But there had been already a large dividend assigned to it, which with the dividend expected to be paid shortly, would amount to much more than the nominal par value of the stock. So the purchase of one of the shares was like purchasing for $1,000 a bank account which already amounted to, or shortly would amount to, more than double that sum.

A list of the men who were to be induced to take this stock was made out with wonderful and prophetic sagacity. It contained some of the ablest and most influential men in the two Houses of Congress, representing different parts of the country. It included men as conspicuous for integrity as ability. Each of them occupied already a great place in the respect of his countrymen, and nearly every one of them attained a much greater place afterward. This is the list of the members of Congress to whom stock was to be conveyed:

LIST OF MEMBERS OF CONGRESS TO WHOM STOCK WAS TO BE SOLD AGREED UPON IN NEW YORK, ENTERED IN OAKES AMES'S MEMORANDUM BOOK, AND TAKEN BY HIM TO WASHINGTON

James G. Blaine of Maine. Senator James W. Patterson of New Hampshire. Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts. Schuyler Colfax of Indiana. Thomas D. Eliot of Massachusetts. Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts. George S. Boutwell of Massachusetts. James A. Garfield of Ohio. Glenni W. Schofield of Pennsylvania. William D. Kelley of Pennsylvania. Joseph F. Fowler of Tennessee. John A. Bingham of Ohio. Senator James A. Bayard of Delaware. William B. Allison of Iowa. James F. Wilson of Iowa. Roscoe Conkling of New York. James Brooks of New York. John A. Logan of Illinois.

When Mr. Ames got to Washington he added the names of several Senators to his list, some of whom took the stock.

It will be seen by an examination that men of great ability and influence were very skilfully selected. Two of them afterward became Vice-Presidents of the United States. One of them became President of the United States. Another became Secretary of the Treasury. Two others became Speakers of the House. Five others were very prominent candidates for the Presidency. Another was Chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the House. Another became Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations and subsequently of Ways and Means. Nine of these gentlemen, then members of the House, were afterward elected to the Senate.

Mr. Blaine, Mr. Eliot, Mr. Bayard, Mr. Conkling and Mr. Boutwell refused absolutely to have anything to do with the transaction. All the others were fully acquitted on investigation, by the judgment of the House, of any corrupt purpose or any desire to make money or get private advantage by reason of their official influence, or of any expectation that they would be likely to be called upon to take or refuse any action by reason of their relation to these corporations. It was thought that they had been careless in that they had not been put on their guard by the fact that so large a dividend was to be paid on the stock. In all cases the amounts received were very small, in general not amounting to more than $1,000. In two or three instances the people thought there was want of candor or frankness in telling the full transaction to the public, when the newspaper charges first made their appearance.

Henry Wilson never had any of the stock. But some of his friends made a present of a small sum of money to Mrs. Wilson, and the persons having the matter in charge invested a portion of it in Credit Mobilier stock. As soon as Wilson heard of it, he directed that the stock be reconveyed to the person from whom it had been received, and gave his wife a small sum of money to make up the difference of what turned out to be the value of the stock and the value of the investment which had been made in its place. There was no lack of the most scrupulous integrity in the transaction. Wilson met at a great public meeting Gen. Hawley, who was one of the speakers. Hawley told Wilson on the platform just before his speech that he understood that his name had been mentioned in the papers as the owner of Credit Mobilier stock. Wilson answered that he never had any of it. Thereupon Hawley in his speech alluded to that matter and said he was authorized by Mr. Wilson to say that he never owned any of the stock. Mr. Wilson did not get up and say, No, I never owned any. But my wife once had a present of a little money which was invested in it, and as soon as I heard of it, I immediately had it returned to the person from whom it came, and I made up the loss to my wife myself. Such, however, was the public excitement that his omission to do that was held in some quarters as culpable want of frankness.

All the persons who received any of the stock and told the story frankly at the investigation were acquitted of any wrongdoing whatever, and never in the least suffered in esteem in consequence.

But Schuyler Colfax and Senator Patterson of New Hampshire were found by the Committee, and believed by the people to have been disingenuous in their account of the transaction. The Senate Committee of investigation reported a resolution for the expulsion of Senator Patterson. The case was a very hard one indeed for him. The Senate adjourned, and his term expired without any action on the resolution, or any opportunity to defend himself.

Schuyler Colfax was also held to have given an untruthful story of the transaction. But the public attention was turned from that by the discovery, in the investigation of his accounts which the Committee made, that he had received large sums of money from a person for whom he had obtained a lucrative Government contract. But his term of office as Vice-President expired before any action could be taken, and he died soon after.

Mr. Ames, whose character as a shrewd and skilful investor and manager of property stood deservedly high, recommended to his friends the stock of the Credit Mobilier as a safe investment, and one in his judgment very sure to prove profitable.

It has been often asked how the managers of the Credit Mobilier could be guilty of bribing men when nobody was guilty of being bribed. But the answer is easy. The managers of the Credit Mobilier knew that they had violated the law, and that an investigation would ruin their whole concern. The men who received the stock were in ignorance of this fact. It was as if the managers of a railroad whose route under State laws is to be determined by a city council, or a board of selectmen or some other public body, should induce the members of such a board to take stock in their enterprise, intending afterward to petition the body to which the subscribers belonged to adopt a route very near land owned by them, which would much increase its value, the receivers of the stock being ignorant of their scheme. The person who should do that would be justly chargeable with bribery, while the persons who received the stock would be held totally innocent. That was the judgment of the House of Representatives which acquitted the members who had received the stock, but held Ames, who had conducted the transaction, censurable. A large number of the members voted for his expulsion. Ames was a successful business man. He was regarded by his neighbors as a man of integrity. He was generous and public spirited. But he and his associates in the Union Pacific Railroad seemed, in this matter, to be utterly destitute of any sense of public duty or comprehension of the great purposes of Congress. They seemed to treat it as a purely private transaction, out of which they might get all the money they could, without any obligation to carry out the act according to its spirit, or even according to its letter, if they could only do so without being detected. They seemed to have thought they were the sole owners of the Union Pacific Railroad and of the Credit Mobilier corporation, and that the transaction between the two concerned themselves only and not the public. They treated it as if they were transferring money from one pocket to another.

When Congress met in December, Mr. Blaine, the Speaker, who had been one of the persons implicated by public rumor, although in fact he had refused absolutely to have anything to do with the transaction, left the Chair, and, calling Mr. Cox of New York to his place, introduced a resolution calling for an investigation of the affairs of the Union Pacific Railroad.

Two Committees were appointed. One, of which Judge Poland was Chairman, undertook to deal with the charges against the members of the House of Representatives. The other, of which Jeremiah M. Wilson of Indiana was Chairman, was directed to inquire into the entire management of the affairs of the Union Pacific Railroad and the Credit Mobilier. I was a member of this last Committee. A Committee was appointed also in the Senate, with direction to inquire into the charges so far as they affected Senators. The whole country was profoundly excited by the affair.

I stood third on the Committee on which I was a member. It was thought best that Mr. Wilson, the Chairman, who was a very able and distinguished lawyer, should go to Boston where the books of the Companies were kept, and make a searching examination of their books and accounts. Mr. Shellabarger of Ohio, the second member on the Committee, one of the ablest lawyers in the House, was in poor health. He consented to serve only on the condition that he should not be compelled to do any duty requiring any considerable labor. So I had to a large degree the charge of the investigation in Washington, where the witnesses were examined, and in the end the duty of preparing the report.

We did not deal in our report with the alleged misconduct of the individual members of the House, but solely with the two corporations. The report sets forth the transaction at length, and contains the following summary of the Committee's conclusions:

The purpose of the whole act was expressly declared to be "to promote the public interest and welfare by the construction of said railroad and telegraph line, and keeping the same in working order, and to secure the Government at all times, but particularly in time of war, the use and benefit of the same for postal, military, and other purposes."

Your committee cannot doubt that it was the purpose of Congress in all this to provide for something more than a mere gift of so much land, and a loan of so many bonds on the one side, and the construction and equipment of so many miles of railroad and telegraph on the other.

The United States was not a mere creditor, loaning a sum of money upon a mortgage. The railroad corporation was not a mere contractor, bound to furnish a specified structure and nothing more. The law created a body politic and corporate, bound, as a trustee, so to manage this great public franchise and endowment that not only the security for the great debts due the United States should not be impaired, but so that there should be ample resources to perform its great public duties in time of commercial disaster and in time of war.

This act was not passed to further the personal interests of the corporators, nor for the advancement of commercial interests, nor for the convenience of the general public, alone; but in addition to these the interests, present and future, of the Government, as such, were to be subserved. A great highway was to be created, the use of which for postal, military, and other purposes was to be secured to the Government "at all times," but particularly in time of war. Your committee deem it important to call especial attention to this declared object of this act, to accomplish which object the munificent grant of lands and loan of the Government credit was made. To make such a highway and to have it ready at "all times," and "particularly in time of war," to meet the demands that might be made upon it; to be able to withstand the loss of business and other casualties incident to war and still to perform for the Government such reasonable service as might under such circumstances be demanded, required a strong, solvent corporation; and when Congress expressed the object and granted the corporate powers to carry that object into execution, and aided the enterprise with subsidies of lands and bonds, the corporators in whom these powers were vested and under whose control these subsidies were placed, were, in the opinion of your committee, under the highest moral, to say nothing of legal or equitable obligations, to use the utmost degree of good faith toward the Government in the exercise of the powers and disposition of the subsidies.

Congress relied for the performance of these great trusts by the corporators upon their sense of public duty; upon the fact that they were to deal with and protect a large capital of their own which they were to pay in money; upon the presence of five directors appointed by the President especially to represent the public interests, who were to own no stock; one of whom should be a member of every Committee, standing or special; upon the commissioners to be appointed by the President, who should examine and report upon the work as it progressed; in certain cases upon the certificate of the chief engineer, to be made upon his professional honor; and lastly, upon the reserved power to add to, alter, amend, or repeal the act.

Your committee find themselves constrained to report that the moneys borrowed by the corporation, under a power given them, only to meet the necessities of the construction and endowment of the road, have been distributed in dividends among the corporators; that the stock was issued, not to men who paid for it at par in money, but who paid for it at not more than thirty cents on the dollar in road making; that of the Government directors some of them have neglected their duties and others have been interested in the transactions by which the provisions of the organic law have been evaded; that at least one of the commissioners appointed by the President has been directly bribed to betray his trust by the gift of $25,000; that the chief engineer of the road was largely interested in the contracts for its construction; and that there has been an attempt to prevent the exercise of the reserved power in Congress by inducing influential members of Congress to become interested in the profits of the transaction. So that of the safeguards above enumerated none seems to have been left but the sense of public duty of the corporators.

The Judge Poland Committee investigated the conduct of the members who were suspected and acquitted all but two. The House accepted their decision. They recommended the expulsion of Mr. Ames and of James Brooks, one of the Democratic members. There were some special circumstances in the case of Brooks, which it is not necessary to recite. Brooks died before a vote on his case was taken. The House by a majority amended the resolution reported by the Committee in the case of Mr. Ames, and recommended a vote of censure, which was passed. Ames felt the disgrace very keenly, and did not live very long afterward.

These disclosures did much to bring about the uneasy condition of the public mind which led to the Republican defeat in the election of members of the House of Representatives in the fall of 1874, and brought Tilden so near to an election in 1876.

But it may fairly, I think, be said for the majority of the Republican Party in both houses of Congress, and the majority of the Republican Party in the country, that they did their very best to deal firmly and directly with any fraud or wrongdoing that came to light, even if their own political associates were the guilty parties. The political atmosphere has been purified as compared with the condition of those days. The lobbyist is not seen in the Committee Room or the Corridor of the Capitol, as was the case when I entered Congress in 1869. I ought perhaps to say that I think the acquittal of Belknap on the ground that the Senate has no jurisdiction to render judgment against a civil officer on process of impeachment after he has left office, was influenced by political feeling. I do not think most of the Republican Senators who voted that way would have so voted if the culprit had been a Democrat. But there were many able lawyers who thought the opinion of these Senators right.

CHAPTER XXIII THE SANBORN CONTRACTS

The forty-second Congress, at its second session, repealed all laws which provided for the payment of moieties, or commissions, to informers, so far as related to internal revenue taxes. But a provision was inserted by the Conference Committee, which attracted no attention, providing that the Secretary of the Treasury might employ not more than three persons to assist the proper officers of the Government in discovering and collecting any money belonging to the United States whenever the same might be for the interest of the United States. The Secretary was to determine the conditions of the contract, and to pay no compensation except out of money received. No person was to be employed who did not file a written statement, under oath, stating the character of the claim under which the money was withheld or due, and the name of the person alleged to withhold the same.

Under this law John D. Sanborn of Massachusetts, an active supporter of General Butler, applied for a contract which he obtained on the 15th of July, 1872, for the collection of taxes illegally withheld by thirty-nine distillers, rectifiers and purchasers of whiskey. He was then himself an employee of the Government as Special Agent for the Treasury Department. Secretary Boutwell being then absent or otherwise unable to attend to his duties, this contract was signed by Assistant Secretary William A. Richardson. Sanborn had already been employed to work up certain whiskey cases for which he had been paid $3,000 by the Government, and these cases were included in the foregoing contract.

On the 25th of October, 1872, Sanborn made application to have added to his contract the names of 760 persons, alleged to have withheld taxes imposed on legacies, successions and incomes. An additional contract for that purpose was signed by the Assistant Secretary Richardson. On the 19th of March, 1873, Sanborn applied to have the names of more than 2,000 other like persons added to his contract, which Mr. Richardson permitted. On the 1st day of July, 1873, Sanborn again asked to amend his contract, and Assistant Secretary Richardson signed the contract by which the names of 592 railroad companies were included. That was substantially a complete list of the railroad companies of the country. Some of them had been examined by Government officials before the day of the contract, and the claims had been brought to light and found due. Sanborn had no knowledge of any delinquency, except as to about 150 of them. When he so represented to the officers of the Treasury Department he was told that it did not make any difference, and to put them all in. Thereupon he took oath that they were all delinquent, and had them added to the contract.

The form of this contract was taken, in part, from one prepared by Secretary Boutwell, which he had carefully considered with Mr. Kelsey, a subordinate in the Treasury, in June, 1872. That prepared by Mr. Boutwell, if adhered to, would have amply protected the Government. But it was departed from in essential particulars. Under Secretary Boutwell's contract only a small number of claims was included. Sanborn collected, in the course of a year or two, $427,000, on which sum he received 50 per cent.

The unanimous report of the Committee of the House who investigated the matter was written by Charles Foster of Ohio, afterward Governor, and Secretary of the Treasury. The Committee comprised the following gentlemen: Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts; W. D. Kelly of Pennsylvania; Horatio C. Burchard of Illinois; Ellis H. Roberts of New York; John A. Kasson of Iowa; Henry Waldron of Michigan; Lionel A. Sheldon of Louisiana; Charles Foster of Ohio; James B. Beck of Kentucky; William E. Niblack of Indiana; Fernando Wood of New York.

The Committee found that a large percentage of the $427,000 was not a proper subject for contract under the law, and that it would have been collected by the Internal Revenue Bureau in the ordinary discharge of its duty. The law provided that the person with whom it was made should assist the Treasury officials in discovering and collecting, so that the collections were to be made by the Treasury. But the contract in fact signed authorized Sanborn to make the collections, and required the Treasury officials to assist him.

The Committee further called attention to the fact that the law provided that no person should be employed who should not have fully set forth in a written statement under oath the character of the claim out of which he proposed to recover or assist in recovering the moneys for the United States, the laws by the violation of which the same had been withheld, and the name of the person, firm or corporation having withheld such moneys. This provision was disregarded utterly.

The Committee found that the Commissioner of Internal Revenue was not consulted in the matter, nor was any official of his Bureau, nor was he advised as to the making of the contracts or of the character of the claims, although the proper officials of the Government, referred to in the statute, could only have been the officials of the Internal Revenue Bureau. It was shown that the Commissioner of Internal Revenue wrote a letter protesting against the manner of these collections to the Secretary of the Treasury, which was never answered. The Committee found that the Commissioner was studiously ignored by the Secretary of the Treasury and the officials in his office.

The wicked and fraudulent character of the transactions is shown in the report.

When the Committee made their report the matter was debated in the House of Representatives by Governor Foster and other gentlemen who had taken part in the investigation. All these Sanborn transactions were with the Assistant Secretary in Mr. Boutwell's absence, until later Mr. Richardson became Secretary of the Treasury. The Committee unanimously agreed to report a resolution that the House had no confidence in the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Richardson, and demanded his removal. President Grant was notified of this conclusion. He sent for the members of the Committee and personally urged them to withhold the resolution, and offered that the Secretary should resign, and that he should be provided for in some other department of the public service. To this the Committee agreed. It was never thought that the Secretary himself profited corruptly by the transaction, but only that he had suffered himself to be hoodwinked. It was unfortunate that nearly all the persons who were connected with this transaction were from New England, most of them from Massachusetts, and several of them from Lowell.

CHAPTER XXIV BENJAMIN F. BUTLER

No person can adequately comprehend the political history of Massachusetts for the thirty-five years beginning with 1850 without a knowledge of the character, career and behavior of Benjamin F. Butler. It is of course disagreeable and in most cases it would seem unmanly to speak harshly of a political antagonist who is dead. In the presence of the great reconciler, Death, ordinary human contentions and angers should be hushed. But if there be such a thing in the universe as a moral law, if the distinction between right and wrong be other than fancy or a dream, the difference between General Butler and the men who contended with him belongs not to this life alone. It relates to matters more permanent than human life. It enters into the fate of republics, and will endure after the fashion of this world passeth away.

I cannot tell the story of my life at a most important period without putting on record my estimate of him, and the nature of his influence over the youth of the Commonwealth. Besides, it is to be remembered that he took special pains to write and to leave behind him a book in which he gave his own account of the great controversies in which he engaged, and bitterly attacked some of the men who thwarted his ambitions. This book he sent to public libraries, including that of the British Museum, where he had good reason to expect it would be permanently preserved.

I shall say nothing of him which I did not say in public speeches or published letters while he was living and in the fulness of his strength, activity and power. History deals with Benedict Arnold, with Aaron Burr, with the evil counsellors of Charles I. and Charles II., with Robespierre, with Barere and with Catiline, upon their merits, and draws from their lives examples, or warnings, without considering the fact that they are dead. This especially is a duty to be performed fearlessly, though with due caution, when it is proposed in some quarters to erect monuments of statues to such men for the admiration of the youth of future generations.

Benjamin F. Butler was born November 5, 1818. He was graduated at Waterville College, now Colby University, in the year 1838. He began the practice of law in Lowell. Compared with other men of equal ability and distinction, he was never a very successful advocate. Quiet and modest men who had the confidence of the courts and juries used to win verdicts from him in fairly even cases. He was fertile in resources. He liked audacious surprises. He was seldom content to try a simple case in a simple way. So that while he succeeded in some desperate cases, he threw away a good many which with wise management he might have gained.

Butler's practice in the beginning was chiefly in the defence of criminals, or in civil cases where persons of that class were parties. There was very likely to be a dramatic scene in court when he was for the defence. His method of defence was frequently almost as objectionable as the crime he was defending. He attacked the character of honest witnesses, and of respectable persons, victims of his guilty clients, who were seeking the remedy of the law. He had many ingenious fashions of confusing or browbeating witnesses, and sometimes of misleading juries. He once asked a medical expert who undertook to testify about human anatomy, in a case of physical injury, this question: "State the origin and insertion of all the muscles of the forearm and hand from the elbow to the tips of the fingers"; and another, "Give a list of the names and the positions of all the bones in the body." This was something like asking a man who claimed to know the English language to give off hand all the words of the English language beginning with a. But it confused a worthy and respectable country doctor, and misled the jury. The best citizen of a country village, or his wife or daughter, who had to testify against a thief or burglar who had broken into a house had to encounter his ruffianly treatment on the witness stand. So Butler became a terror, not to evil-doers but to the opponents of evil-doers throughout the county of Middlesex. Few lawyers liked to encounter his rough speech and his ugly personalities.

He was a Democrat in politics and became quite popular with the poorer class of foreign immigrants who gathered in manufacturing towns and cities like Lowell. He had at first little success in politics for the reason that his party was a small minority in Massachusetts. He was elected to the House of Representatives for the Legislature of 1853. During that session there was a memorable struggle on the part of the Whigs to repeal so much of the act providing for an election of delegates to a Constitutional convention as required the election to be by secret ballot. There was also, as an incident of this struggle, an angry contest in the joint convention of the two Houses held for the purpose of electing some officers required by the Constitution to be chosen by joint ballot. The dispute related to the extent of the authority of the President of the Senate, as presiding officer, to control the joint assembly. Butler was conspicuous in that scene of turbulence and disorder. On the occasion of some ruling by the Whig Speaker, Mr. George Bliss, a worthy and respectable old gentleman, Butler called out in a loud voice: "I should like to knife that old cuss." That utterance was quoted not only all over the Union, but in foreign countries, in England, and on the continent, and in the West Indies, as a proof of the degradation and licentiousness of popular governments. It is a singular fact that a like question as to the authority of the presiding officer of a joint convention of two legislative bodies came up in Congress when the electoral vote was counted, at the time of the election of General Grant in 1868. Butler repeated on a larger stage his disorderly conduct, until Schuyler Colfax, Speaker of the House—although Mr. Wade, President of the Senate, was then presiding over the joint convention—resumed the chair of the House, in order, as Mr. Blaine described it afterward, "to chastise the insolence of the member from Massachusetts."

He was chosen in 1860, when the Democratic Party was divided between the supporters of Douglas and the supporters of Breckenridge, a delegate to the National Convention at Charleston, South Carolina, by the Douglas Democrats of Massachusetts, under instructions to vote for Douglas. Instead, he voted thirty- seven times for Jefferson Davis. There has been but one other instance, I believe, in the history of Massachusetts of such a betrayal of trust. That other related not to candidates but to principles.

Under our political arrangements the presidential elector is but a scribe. He exercises no discretion, but only records the will of the people who elect him. The real selection of the president is made by the nominating conventions. The nominee of the party having a majority becomes the president. A breach of trust by a delegate to a nominating convention is an act of dishonor of the same class with that to which no presidential elector in the United States has yet stooped— a breach of trust by an elector.

General Butler's career upon the national stage began with the episode at Charleston. From that time until his death he was a very conspicuous figure in the eyes of the whole country. There are two or three public services for which he deserves credit. They ought not to be omitted in any fair sketch of his life and character.

First. When, in the earlier days of the Rebellion, there was a doubt whether the Democratic Party would rally to the support of the country, he promptly offered his services. His example was of great importance in determining the question whether the war of sections was also to be a war of parties. He had a large clientage, especially among that class of Irish Americans who were apt in Massachusetts to vote with the Democratic Party. His conduct so far was in honorable contrast with that of some of his influential political associates, and that of some of the old Whigs who never got over their chagrin at the success of the Republican Party.

Second. When the question what would be the treatment of the negroes by the commanders of the Union army was doubtful, and when many persons wished to conciliate the old slaveholders in the border states by disclaiming any purpose of meddling with the institution of slavery, General Butler made a bright and important contribution to the discussion by declaring the negro "contraband of war." I do not know whether this phrase was original with him or no. It has been claimed that he borrowed it. But he undoubtedly made it famous. This tended somewhat to obliterate the effect of the shock caused to the lovers of liberty by his offer to the Governor of Maryland on the day his regiment landed at Annapolis, of his own services and those of the forces under his command, to put down any slave insurrection, in case the negro people should attempt to assert their heaven-born rights.

Governor Andrew wrote to General Butler censuring his offer of the use of the Massachusetts troops, as the first operation of the war, to improve the security of rebels that they might prosecute with more energy their attacks upon the Federal government. The Governor adds: "I can perceive no reason of military policy why a force summoned to the defence of the Federal Government, at this moment of all others, should be offered or diverted from its immediate duty to help rebels, who stand with arms in their hands, in obstructing its progress toward the city of Washington." General Butler answered that "if the contest were to be prosecuted by letting loose the slaves, some instrument other than myself must be found to carry it on." He had been, with a large part of his party, an advocate and supporter of the Fugitive Slave Law, in the days before the war.

Third. He governed the rebel city of New Orleans with great vigor. He understood how to deal with a turbulent and ugly populace. He was not imposed upon by shams or pretences, and treated the old Southern Democracy with little respect. It is probable that his vigorous remedy saved the city from yellow fever.

Fourth. Another thing should be added to his credit, not of moral quality, but of that quality which accounts largely and naturally for his influence with the people. He had a gift of clear, racy and simple speech. He could convey his thought to the apprehension of common men without any loss in the process. His style was of the same class with that of William Cobbett and Horace Greeley, without ornament, not very copious, but simple, clear and vigorous. When these things have been said, nothing remains to be said in his favor.

He had a ready, though rough and coarse wit, suited to the tastes of illiterate audiences and to that class of men who are always delighted when anything is said in disparagement of anybody. I recall two or three examples. He was rather fond of appropriating the bright sayings of others, whether jesting or serious, and claiming credit for them. But he also had a capacity of his own for such things.

I heard him argue a case involving the constitutionality of the bill to annex Charlestown to Boston, before the Supreme Court of Massachusetts. He was interrupted by the Mayor, who was on the other side, a fussy and self-important little person. Butler made the point that the meetings at which the citizens had voted for annexation had not been legal, the notice being not sufficient. The Mayor, who had said it was the practice in Charlestown to hold public meetings on a notice not longer than the one in question. He added: "We only gave a week's notice for our election of Mayor." Butler looked at him a moment, and said: "I should think they got up their Mayor on short notice."

His thrust at S. S. Cox in the House of Representatives attracted the attention of the country. It was in a five-minute debate. Cox had attacked Butler savagely. Butler replied, taking up nearly the whole five minutes with arguing the question before the House, taking no notice of Cox till just he was about to finish. He then said: "There is no need for me to answer the gentleman from New York. Every negro minstrel just now is singing the answer, and the hand organs are playing the tune, 'Shoo Fly, don't bodder me.'"

In the Constitutional Convention of Massachusetts twenty- seven different schemes for a system of representation were pressed. Somebody moved to refer them all to a committee to consist of the persons who had proposed the schemes. "As well refer twenty-seven babies to their twenty-seven mothers to decide which is the prettiest," exclaimed Butler.

His military career was, with the exception I have stated, disgraceful to himself and unfortunate to the country. From the beginning of Butler's recruiting for the war, wherever he was in command came rumors of jobs, frauds, trading with the rebels through the lines, and the putting of unfit persons in responsible positions. The scandal became so great that Governor Andrew—than whom there was never a truer, nobler, braver or more upright man in the executive chair of any State in this country—was compelled to put on public record his indignant denunciation. He said in a letter to Charles Sumner and Henry Wilson, Senators in Congress, December 21, 1861:

"I am compelled to declare with great reluctance and regret, that the course of proceeding under Major-General Butler in this Commonwealth seems to have been designed and adapted simply to afford means to persons of bad character to make money unscrupulously, and to encourage men whose unfitness had excluded them from any appointment by me to the volunteer militia service, to hope for such appointment over Massachusetts troops from other authority than that of the Executive himself."*

[Footnote] * Schouler's "Massachusetts in the War," Vol. I., p. 276. [End of Footnote]

The first considerable military operation of which he took charge was a movement upon the rebel forces at Big Bethel. It was rash, unskiful, blundering and lacking both in perseverance and courage. His troops were repulsed with great and needless slaughter.

It is a doubtful and debated question whether General Butler was personally to blame for this terrible and disgraceful repulse. If it were only his misfortune, it is a sample of the misfortunes which attended him throughout the war. It would not have happened to a great or even a fairly good general officer. The best that can be said for him is that if he were without personal blame, that it is the chief incident of a campaign which he went through without credit.

But the worst example of timidity and inefficiency in American military history, not excepting Hull's surrender, was the attempt and repulse at Fort Fisher. I do not mean when I say timidity, personal cowardice. But I mean the fear of the ordinary risks which accompany every bold and successful operation in war. This timidity is not infrequently, as it was in this case, characteristic of men who thrust themselves into places for which they are not fit.

It was highly important to capture Wilmington, of which Fort Fisher was the key. It was the last remaining gateway for the admission of necessary supplies and ammunitions of war to the rebellious States from the outer world. It was a military position of great importance, a chief centre of the rebellion, and a great object in our military operations. General Butler entered upon this undertaking with every advantage. He had special detailed instructions from Grant, the greatest living military commander; and he had under him and to cooperate with him Admiral Porter who, with one possible exception, was the ablest naval commander in our service.

Wilmington was stripped of troops. The fort was garrisoned by four companies of infantry and one light battery. With all the reinforcements which the enemy could muster but a thousand and seventy-seven men were in the fort. The greatest armada ever in American waters was under Butler's command— fifty vessels, thirty-three for attack and seventeen in reserve, including four iron-clads. The iron-clads opened fire upon the fort, throwing one hundred and fifteen shells a minute.

"Fort Fisher replied at once with all its guns. But those on the northeast face were silenced almost as soon as the monitors opened their terrific fire, and by the time the last of the large vessels had anchored and got their batteries into play, only one or two of the enemy's guns were able to reply. The shower of shells had driven the gunners to the bomb-proofs. In one hour and fifteen minutes after the first gun was fired, not a shot came from the fort. Two magazines had been blown up, and the fort set on fire in several places. Such a torrent of missiles was falling and bursting that it was impossible for anything human to stand."*

[Footnote] * Badeau's "Military History of General Grant," Vol. 3, p. 314. [End of Footnote]

In this condition of things General Butler arrived upon the scene. Not a soldier had been hurt on the Union side.

"General Curtis was now within fifty yards of the fort, and sent word to General Ames that he could take the work, whereupon Ames, not knowing Butler's determination, gave orders for an assault. Curtis at once moved forward, but by the time he reached his position, night had come on, and the fleet had nearly ceased its fire .... At this juncture Butler's orders to reembark arrived, and no assault was made. Curtis and the officers with him, declared that the fort could have been carried; that at the moment they were recalled, they virtually had possession, having actually approached so close that a rebel flag had been snatched from the parapet and a horse brought away from the inside stockade.

"That night Butler informed the Admiral that he and Weitzel were of the opinion that the place could not be carried by assault .... I shall therefore sail, he said, for Hampton Roads as soon as the transport fleet can be got in order."*

[Footnote] * Ibid., p. 317. [End of Footnote]

"Porter replied that he could fire much faster than he had been doing, and would keep the enemy from showing himself until our men were within twenty yards of the fort, and he begged that Butler would leave some brave fellows like those who had snatched the flag from the parapet and taken the horse from the fort."

Butler was unchangeable. He got all his troops aboard, except Curtis's brigade, and started back. In doing this Butler made a fearful mistake. "My instructions to the officer who went in command of the expedition," says General Grant, "were explicit in the statement that to effect a landing would be of itself a great victory, and if one should be effected, the foothold must not be relinquished; on the contrary, a regular siege of the fort must be commenced and, to guard against interference by reason of storms, supplies of provisions must be laid in as soon as they could be got on shore. But Butler seems to have lost sight of this part of his instructions, and was back at Fort Monroe on the 28th."*

[Footnote] * Grant's "Memoirs," Vol. II., p. 394. [End of Footnote]

The Admiral, however, was of a different mind from Butler and replied to him: "I have ordered the largest vessels to proceed off Beaufort, and fill up with ammunition, to be ready for another attack, in case it is decided to proceed with this matter by making other arrangements. We have not commenced firing rapidly yet, and could keep any rebels inside from showing their heads, until an assaulting column was within twenty yards of the works. I wish some more young gallant fellows had followed the officer who took the flag from the parapet, and the brave fellow who brought the horse from the fort. I think they would have found it an easier conquest than is supposed."*

[Footnote] * Ibid., Badeau, p. 318. [End of Footnote]

"The Wilmington expedition has proven a gross and culpable failure. Many of the troops are back here. Delays and free talk of the object of the expedition enabled the enemy to move troops to Wilmington to defeat it. After the expedition started from Fort Monroe, three days of fine weather were squandered, during which the enemy was without a force to protect himself. Who is to blame, will, I hope, be known."*

[Footnote] * Ibid., p. 318. [End of Footnote]

Grant's statement, just quoted, was made when he had heard Butler's side of the story alone. What he thought when he had heard the whole story will appear a little later.

Admiral Porter said, in his official dispatch: "My dispatch of yesterday will give you an account of the operations, but will scarcely give you an idea of my disappointment at the conduct of the army authorities in not attempting to take possession of the fort . . . . Had the army made a show of surrounding it, it would have been ours; but nothing of the kind was done. The men landed, reconnoitred, and, hearing that the enemy were massing troops somewhere, the orders were given to reembark . . . . There never was a fort that invited soldiers to walk in and take possession more plainly than Fort Fisher . . . . It can be taken at any moment in one hour's time if the right man is sent with the troops."

On the 30th of December Grant sent this message to Porter:

"Please hold on wherever you are for a few days, and I will endeavor to be back again, with an increased force, and without the former commander."

Grant at once took measures for renewing the attack and for changing the commander. On the 31st of December the Secretary of the Navy telegraphs to Porter: "Lieutenant-General Grant will send immediately a competent force, properly commanded, to cooperate in the capture of the defences of Federal Point."

So in every instance in which the head of the military or naval department of this country issued an order to cooperate in this expedition he found it necessary to assure the officer to whom he gave his orders that the expedition would be properly commanded. The Secretary adds in his dispatch to Admiral Porter: "The Department is perfectly satisfied with your efforts thus far." On the next day Porter writes to General Grant: "I have just received yours of December 30th. I shall be all ready; and thank God we are not to leave here with so easy a victory at hand. Thank you for so promptly trying to rectify the blunder so lately committed. I knew you would do it." He adds, speaking of the late expedition: "We lost one man killed. You may judge what a simple business it was."

On the 2d of January Grant directs that Terry, who is to command this new expedition, be sent to City Point to see him. "I cannot go myself," he adds to the Secretary of War, "so long as Butler would be left in command."

January 4th, the next day but one, Grant asks for the removal of Butler. He says: "I am constrained to request the removal of Major-General Butler from the command of the department of Virginia and North Carolina. I do this with reluctance, but the good of the service requires it. In my absence General Butler necessarily commands, and there is a lack of confidence felt in his military ability, making him an unsafe commander for a large army. His administration of the affairs of his department is also objectionable."

Stanton had just left the capital on a visit to Sherman, at Savannah, and this letter at first received no answer; but Grant was very much in earnest, and on the sixth he telegraphed direct to the President: "I wrote a letter to the Secretary of War, which was mailed yesterday, asking to have General Butler removed from command. Learning that the Secretary left Washington yesterday, I telegraph you asking that prompt action be taken in this matter."

That was practically the end of Butler's military service. He never received another command.

There is no country in the world, other than ours, where an officer guilty of such conduct, whether it came from incapacity or cowardice, would not have been promptly cashiered and probably shot. This would have been true, as in the case of Admiral Keppel, if his fault had been merely a failure to attack. But Butler's fault was an express disobedience of orders. The order which he disobeyed was unknown to the subordinate on whose advice he claimed to have relied. General Grant expressly ordered him that in case of failure to attack the fort by assault, he should remain and entrench his troops on the peninsula, and cooperate with the fleet for the reduction of the place. When Grant learned the circumstances he declared that, in leaving after he had landed, Butler had violated his express orders.

It is a source of just pride that a New England commander, and one of Massachusetts descent, General Terry, was successful in the new attempt. Grant's instructions to him said: "I have served with Admiral Porter, and know that you can rely on his judgment and his nerve to undertake what he proposes . . . . The first object to be attained is to get a firm position on the spit of land on which Fort Fisher is built, from which you can operate against the fort. You want to look to the practicability of receiving your supplies, and to defending yourself against superior forces sent against you by any of the avenues left open to the enemy. If such a position can be obtained, the siege of Fort Fisher will not be abandoned until its reduction can be accomplished, or another plan of campaign is ordered from these headquarters."

The fort which had enabled 397 vessels to pass the blockade was taken by a great New England Captain, and largely by New England troops. Butler made one contribution, and only one, to that victory. That contribution was his absence. It was a curious coincidence which would have brought a blush of shame upon any forehead but his, that when he was testifying before an investigating committee of Congress, who were inquiring into the cause of his great and shameful failure to take the fort, and just after he had testified that Fort Fisher was impregnable and that it was impossible for any Union force to take it, a dispatch was received in the Committee Room announcing its fall.

General Grant says in his "Memoirs":

"I had no idea of General Butler accompanying the expedition until the evening before it got off from Bermuda Hundred, and then did not dream but that General Weitzel had received all the instructions, and would be in command. I rather formed the idea that General Butler was actuated by a desire to witness the effect of the explosion of the powder-boat. The expedition was detained several days at Hampton Roads, waiting the loading of the powder-boat. The importance of getting the Wilmington expedition off without any delay, with or without the powder- boat, had been urged upon General Butler. The powder-boat was exploded on the morning of the 24th, before the return of General Butler from Beaufort; but it would seem, from the notice taken of it in the Southern newspapers, that he enemy were never enlightened as to the object of the explosion until they were informed by the Northern press."*

[Footnote] * "Personal Memoirs, U. S. Grant," p. 604 appendix. [End of Footnote]

"General Butler, in direct violation of the instructions given, ordered the reembarkation of the troops and the return of the expedition."*

[Footnote] * Ibid., p. 605. [End of Footnote]

"I advised Admiral Porter to hold on, and that I would send a force and make another attempt to take the place. This time I selected Major-General A. H. Terry to command the expedition." "At my request Major-General B. F. Butler was relieved."*

[Footnote] * Ibid., p. 607. [End of Footnote]

I will not undertake to give a detailed account of the blundering strategy of what General Grant aptly called the "Bottling up at Bermuda Hundred" which enabled a powerful Union army to be held in check by a small Confederate force, leaving free the bulk of their army for hostile operations against the Union forces.

So the contribution of General Butler's military genius to the success of the United States in the war consisted of a scheme to blow up a powder-boat in the capture of Fort Fisher, somewhat after the Chinese fashion of warfare, which General Grant said hardly had the effect to excite the curiosity of the occupants of the fort which it had been intended to demolish; and of his scheme of engineering at Dutch Gap and Bermuda Hundred.

General Grant got tired of him at last and ordered him to report at Lowell. So ended the military career of incompetence, boasting and failure.

Massachusetts soldiers from those of the humblest origin to those who came from the most cultivated circles have always had the reputation of gentlemen. I know of but one conspicuous exception in her entire military history. During the trial of Andrew Johnson, Butler, who was one of the managers, employed spies to visit, in his absence, the room of William M. Evarts, counsel for the President, and to search his waste basket in the hope of spying upon his correspondence. Of this he shamelessly afterward boasted. Later he employed dishonest persons to get from the wires the private telegraphic dispatches of Henry L. Pierce, then his colleague in the House of Representatives, sent to the Hon. W. W. Rice at Worcester.

But this is not all. Wherever Butler is found in military command there were constant rumors of the same story which Governor Andrew told in the beginning. It is like the ointment of the hand which bewrayeth itself. Jobs, fraudulent contracts, trading through the lines, relatives enriched by public plunder, corrupt understanding with the enemy. These stories pursued him to New Orleans and from New Orleans back to Lowell. Is there another Union General, at least was there ever another Massachusetts General to whose integrity such suspicion attached? He scarcely undertook to discuss the matter himself. After the war a New Orleans bank, on which Butler had made a requisition for eighty thousand dollars in gold, employed the late Edwards Pierpont to bring an action against General Butler on the ground that the money had never been paid over to the Government, but that he had kept it himself. Butler saw the counsel for the plaintiffs and said he had received the money in an official capacity and had paid it over to the United States. Mr. Pierpont answered: "If you will show that, it will constitute a good defence." In the course of the conversation Pierpont said: "Your neighbors in Lowell will not think very well of it when they see you riding in your carriage through the streets, and know it was paid for out of the money you have taken unlawfully from this bank." Before the time came for the trial Butler surrendered and paid over the money. After the matter was settled he said to Mr. Pierpont: "Well, you beat me. But I want to tell you that you made one mistake. You said the people of Lowell would not think very highly of me when they saw me riding through the streets in my carriage and knew it was paid for by the money of this bank. The people would think I was a fool for not having taken twice as much."

General Butler was appointed treasurer of the National Soldiers' Home. He mingled the money of that institution with his own, got the use of it, got interest upon it, for which he never accounted. An attempt was made to investigate his accounts and he refused on the ground that he could not do it without showing his private account books, which he was not compelled to do.

He had a powerful political influence which made him an object of terror to timid and ambitious men. So, much to the shame of our public authorities, the investigation was not pressed. He was allowed to pay over only such sum as he himself admitted to be due.

General Butler's chief title to distinction in political life was a scheme which Massachusetts has pronounced a scheme of dishonesty and infamy in every method by which her sentiment can be made known. This scheme was to pay off the national debt and all other debts public and private, including all widows' and soldiers' pensions, in irredeemable paper money. He proposed to issue a series of government bonds bearing interest, payable like the principal, in greenbacks, and providing that the greenbacks should never be redeemed, but that the holder might at any time, on demand, get from the Treasury the equivalent in bonds. This scheme had been announced by General Butler for several years before the Presidential election of 1876. In that year General Butler, who had been defeated for reelection to Congress from the Essex district in 1874, was a candidate for the Republican nomination in the Middlesex district, which included his home in Lowell. There was much opposition to him. But the party feeling was very strong and no other person of large enough reputation or of conspicuous ability could be found to take the Republican nomination. General Butler was accordingly nominated with the distinct promise on his part that he would surrender his plans in regard to finance out of deference to the known wishes of his constituents, and would act with the Republican Party upon financial questions. To this pledge he owed, if not his nomination and election, certainly his great majority in the convention and at the polls. This pledge, as in the case of the trust which had been committed to him by the Douglas Democrats before the war, he most unblushingly and shamelessly violated. He renewed and advocated his fiat money scheme. The result was that at the next convention of the Republican Party in his district the following resolution was passed, without a dissenting vote:

"Resolved, That we warn the people of the Commonwealth, whose votes General Butler is now soliciting by promises to serve them faithfully, that his professions when seeking office have been found in our experience to be easily made and as easily repudiated when the time for redeeming them came.

"That they are neither gold nor good paper, but are a kind of fiat currency, having no intrinsic character, being cheap, delusive, irredeemable and worthless."

This convention represented a large and overwhelming majority of the people of the Middlesex district. It was made up as such conventions in Massachusetts always are made up, of men of high standing and character and of great personal worth. Can there be found in the history of Massachusetts such a record of shameless dishonor and such a terrible indictment and conviction?

A like judgment was expressed a little later by Mr. Edward Avery, a Democrat of high standing, who declared that the Democratic Party had found his promises and pledges could not be trusted.

He was once elected Governor. It so chanced that the Republican Party had been disappointed by the defeat in their State Convention of Mr. Crapo, a gentleman of the highest standing, who had rendered conspicuous service to his country in the National House of Representatives, and who was doubtless the choice of a majority of his party. His successful competitor was a man of much personal worth and highly esteemed. But it was thought that his nomination had been compassed by skilful political management by which the will of the people had been baffled and defeated, and many Republicans declined to vote. There was a certain curiosity, as many men expressed it, to see what Butler would do and to test his professions of reform, with a feeling that he would be quite harmless with a Republican Legislature and Council. So the experiment was tried. The people of the Commonwealth had no desire to try it a second time. The matter of General Butler's title to public respect, if the rest of his record could be erased as by a wet sponge, might be determined by the experience of a single year. There was never such an exhibition as that made by him in the executive chair of Massachusetts. He proceeded to attack, to promote his own ambitions, the fair name and fame of the Commonwealth itself. One of his speeches was so gross in its nature that the principal Democratic paper of Boston refused to print it, declaring it unfit for publication.

General Butler declared in one of his public speeches when a candidate for Governor, thereby insulting the Commonwealth, especially the citizen-soldiery of Massachusetts, that the soldiers of Massachusetts "needed but a word from him to clean out the State House."

But he had his eye on a still higher prize. He hoped to compass the Democratic nomination for the Presidency. That nomination depended on his conciliating the old Democratic, rebel element at the South, then powerful in National Democratic councils. He made an attack upon the administration of the State Almshouse at Tewksbury, in which he declared that "the selling and tanning of human skins was an established industry in Massachusetts." He charged the Commonwealth with desecrating the graves and selling the bodies of deceased inmates of her public institutions for money. General Butler's charges were refuted to the public satisfaction by the simple certificate of Mrs. Clara Leonard, a member of the State Board of Lunacy and Charities, who knew all about the matter, and in whose high integrity and capacity to decide the question everybody had implicit confidence.

There was an investigation, and Butler signally failed to sustain himself. One incident at the hearing revealed perfectly his character and that of his affected sympathy for downtrodden humanity. Some human remains were brought into the presence of the committee, which it was alleged had come from the almshouse. Butler was in an angry mood at something that had occurred and called out peremptorily: "Give me the skin that came off the nigger."

I will not undertake myself to impute the motive which inspired this attack upon his own State. Whether it were anger inspired by the knowledge of the estimate in which the majority of her people held him; whether it were a gross nature with blunted sensibilities; whether these expressions were uttered in haste or anger, I will not say. The Honorable William P. Frye, an able and justly distinguished Representative and Senator from Maine, with an intimate knowledge of General Butler, which came from a long association in the public service, charged General Butler in a public speech in Massachusetts, in the autumn of 1883, in my hearing, what he repeated at many places elsewhere in the Commonwealth—that Butler had made this foul charge against Massachusetts in order that he might win the favor of the slave-holding and rebel Democratic elements of the South by catering to their prejudices against her. If that be true, this charge of General Butler's is the most disgraceful single utterance that ever came from American lips. If it be not true, what must be the nature of which the gentle, charitable and kindly Senator Frye could believe it true after an intimate knowledge so many years?

General Butler was disappointed in his expectation of Democratic support in the country at large. He had thereafter no rest in politics for the sole of his foot. The remainder of his life was spent in speculation and manufacturing enterprises.

I repeat what I said of General Butler in his lifetime, when he was at the height of his power, with a full knowledge of his vindictive character, that the success of his attempt to use and consolidate the political forces of Massachusetts would have been the corruption of her youth, the destruction of everything valuable in her character, and the establishment at the mouth of the Charles River of another New York with its frauds, Tweed rings and scandals.

General Butler made an earnest effort to get the Republican nomination for Governor in 1871. He had built up what was called a Butler party, in which he had had the aid of the National Administration, and of all persons whom he could either seduce by hope of reward or terrify by fear of his vengeance. It was not a question in considering candidacy for office with him whether the man had rendered honest service in civil or in military life, whether he was a man of honor or of good or bad character, but only whether he was a Butler man. He conducted his own campaign for Governor in 1871 and again in 1873. In the former he summoned his adherents to the State Convention, issuing a circular in which he advised them to bring three days' rations in the expectation of a long and angry struggle.

I was invited by the State Central Committee to preside at the Convention of 1871. It was quite likely that the Convention might break up in disorder and the result would be two factions, each claiming to be the regular Republican organization. I told the gentlemen of the State Central Committee, who communicated to me their desire, that I would do it on condition that there should be provided one hundred skilled and trustworthy police officers who would obey my orders, and, if it became necessary, would remove from the hall General Butler or any other person who should defy the authority of the Convention. This the committee promised to do. This promise was in substance kept. The gentleman who made it as the organ of the State Central Committee had himself been for many years a sheriff of the County of Worcester, and had been a General in the Civil War, and was a man of large capacity for handling disorderly assemblies. He came to me afterward and said that in a hall like Mechanics Hall a well-disciplined force of not more than fifty men would be better for the purpose of keeping order than a more numerous one, and he had taken the liberty of departing from our agreement to that extent. To this I assented.

When I went to the Hall that morning in taking leave of my wife I told her that the chances were that I should come home the most disgraced man in Massachusetts. If General Butler succeeded in breaking up the Convention in disorder the blame would be laid upon the presiding officer.

But we got through safely. General Butler had calculated that his opponents, who were divided among several candidates, could not agree upon any one. But such an agreement was effected upon William B. Washburn. His plan then, I supposed, was to find some excuse for breaking up the Convention under circumstances which would enable him to claim to President Grant that he represented the regular Republican organization and that his opponents were the bolters. My duty on the other hand was so to conduct the Convention that there should be no pretext on his part for such a course. The Convention was in continuous session from 11 o'clock in the forenoon until half-past one next morning. There were several contests in which Butler conducted the case on his own side. But his opponents held together and nominated William B. Washburn. With the exception of the National Convention of 1880, at which I also presided, this was the most difficult duty in the way of presiding over a deliberative assembly which ever fell upon any person in this country so far as I know.

In the year 1873 General Butler made another attempt to get the Republican nomination for Governor. A meeting was called at Hamilton Hall, in Boston, of a few persons opposed to his candidacy, which resulted in an address to the people recommending the reelection of Mr. Washburn. I signed the address of which I wrote a few sentences. Judge Hoar made a bright and characteristic speech in which he said that "the people of Massachusetts would not yield the office of Governor to a Tichborne claimant, whether with or without a bond." This name, "the Claimant," stuck to Butler for the rest of his life.

In 1871 my opposition to General Butler and support of Governor Washburn was well known. I announced my preference for the latter in a letter to the Springfield Republican. This did not occasion any personal quarrel with Butler, although our relations were never cordial. But in 1873 he was very angry with the persons who signed the address in favor of the renomination of Governor Washburn. He wrote a letter to the people of Massachusetts in which he angrily attacked many persons in the Republican party whom he believed to be his opponents. Among them he bitterly attacked me. He sent a copy of this letter in the form of a broadside to every newspaper in Massachusetts, I believe, and had it folded into every copy of the paper. I instantly replied, setting forth as well as I could the character and quality of General Butler and the nature of his influence upon the youth of the Commonwealth. The letter contained the following sentences:

"When General Butler proposed to pay off our national debt in irredeemable paper, General Grant silenced him with the ringing sentence in his inaugural, 'Let it be understood that no repudiator of one farthing of our public debt will be trusted in public place,' because he knew that he was trying to tempt this people to escape from a burden by a mean and base act.

"He has quarrelled with Grant and Wilson, and Colfax and Blaine, and Andrew, and Sumner, and the Washburnes, and Bingham, and Schenck, and Dawes, because he is quarrelsome. They have been compelled, each in his own way, to chastise and punish him because he deserved to be whipped.

"Among the unprincipled adventurers who gained favor in the corrupt times of the Stuarts, and whose evil counsels brought Charles the First to his doom, the most notorious was Buckingham. Gaining favor by lending himself as the subservient tool in accomplishing every evil purpose: restless, ambitious, unscrupulous, selfish, revengeful, thrusting himself into military employments for which he was unfit and from which he was compelled to retire in disgrace, getting a 'competent private fortune' by dishonest practices, which he lavished in overcoming the virtue of timid and venal men, his name is the shame of England. Nugent says of him: 'His shrewdness in judging of men was employed only to enable him to found his influence upon their weaknesses and vices; so that, when opposed to men of capacity, or thwarted by what remained of public virtue in the country, he found himself in conflict with weapons of which he knew not the use; and his counsels were dangerous, and his administration unprosperous. His only wisdom was the craft with which he managed weak or bad men, and his only virtue the courage with which he overawed timid ones.' Such counsellors, fatal to a monarch, are full of peril to a republic. Such men can only prosper in times of public corruption.

"General Butler has done, unless he has egregiously imposed upon us, two things well. He out-blackguarded a New York mob in 1864, and with a United States army at his back, he kept down a rebel city in 1862. Massachusetts is not likely soon to stand in need of either of these processes. But he never has accomplished anything else of much importance when his point could not be carried by sheer blustering. The history of all his other attempts may be comprised in three words— Swagger, quarrel, failure.

"Other men have aspired before now to the office of Governor of Massachusetts. It is an honorable ambition. They were content to leave their claims to be set forth by others, and were glad to waive them if by so doing they could promote the harmony of the party. This man seeks nothing but his own selfish ends, utterly regardless of the wishes, the welfare, or the harmony of the great party to which he professes to belong. The people of Massachusetts have sometimes elected to this high office men who in some particulars are not deserving of respect. But the people respected them, and chose them because they deemed them worthy, and the persons so chosen endeavored to deserve the public confidence. This man, if he is chosen at all, is to be chosen without having the respect of the men to whom he looks for support. It would be harder to find a leading supporter of General Butler who will say that he deems him honest, truthful, disinterested, or incapable of using power to gratify both his ambition and his revenge. The men whom General Butler will beat are the men whom he persuades to support him."

The morning after his defeat in the State Convention each of the principal morning papers in Boston headed its account of the Convention with the words, "Swagger, Quarrel, Failure."

General Butler made no further reply by letter. But he came to Worcester, where I dwelt, and addressed an enormous meeting in Mechanics Hall. I suppose many more people than those that got in were obliged to go away because the Hall would not hold them. The General devoted his speech largely to a powerful and bitter attack upon me. I replied at a meeting at the same place a few days after. My speech ended with the following sentences. After describing the heroism of the youth of Worcester in the battle with slavery and the battle with Rebellion, I added:

"And now, after the war, another enemy, unarmed, but bringing even greater danger, menaces the Republic. The battle with corruption is the duty of the hour. The blow which rebellion aimed at the Nation's life you could ward off. The wounds it inflicted are already in the process of cure. But this poison, this rotting from the core, is far more dangerous to the Republic. There is already danger that the operations of the Tweeds and Goulds in New York may be repeated on a more gigantic scale at the National capital. The mighty railroads to whom our public domain has been so lavishly granted, in some cases I doubt not, wisely, afford infinite opportunity for plunder and corruption. All these are at the cost of the labor of the country. The increased tax falls in the end on the consumer. With the waste of our public land are diminished the resources of the laborer. Following bad precedents Congress has itself been induced to set the pernicious example of which you have heard so much discussion. (This referred to the measure known as the Salary Grab.) The author of the measure tells you that he knew what he was doing, and if you didn't like it you could vote against him. Are you quite ready to declare to the country that in this great contest with extravagance and corruption, wherever the Republicans of the rest of the country may array themselves, the Republicans of Massachusetts fight under the banner of General Butler?

"You are doubtless familiar with Victor Hugo's description of the marine monster said to be found in the vicinity of the Channel islands, and known as the Devil Fish. It is apparently formed of an almost transparent jelly, colorless, almost indistinguishable from the water which surrounds it, armed with long slender limbs, numerous as the feet of the centipede, and strong in their grasp as hands of iron. The bather in those waters habitually provides himself with a long keen blade, which, when he finds himself encountered by one of these monsters, he elevates above his head in his extended right hand. As the creature approaches, the bather feels himself slowly enveloped in the powerful limbs which twine about him, holding him in their iron grasp. Suddenly a head appears, and drawing itself nearer the animal seeks to fasten its mouth upon the lips of the victim and deprive him of life. At this moment the bather strikes with his knife into the head of the monster. Instantly the limbs relax their hold, the hideous creature slowly disappears, and the bather is left unharmed and safe. Our Republic finds itself to- day assailed by a monster as dangerous, unpalpable, soft, horrible but strong—strong as hands of iron. The limbs of this monster of Corruption have seized upon our noble Republic, but at last there is a head coming in sight, and I think the Republicans of Massachusetts are able to bear the knife and strike the blow which will destroy its horrible life so that it shall fall powerless forever!"

That closed the discussion so far as we were concerned for that campaign.

In 1876 Judge Hoar, who had been, very much against his will, elected to Congress from the Middlesex District declined a renomination. General Butler, who had been defeated at the polls in the Essex District two years before was thereupon nominated, having pledged himself to the Republicans that he would abandon his fiat money doctrines in obedience to the declared will of the people; a pledge which as stated above he shamefully violated. There was no expectation of defeating him. But some few Republicans who were unwilling to support him desired a candidate on whom to unite, and they applied to Judge Hoar. He said he had no desire to go to Congress. But he thought there ought to be a Republican candidate against Butler and that he had no right to ask another man to take a position from which he flinched himself, and accordingly he was nominated. But Butler was elected by a large majority.

That however was substantially the end of his relation with the Republican Party. After the Inauguration of President Hayes he tried to have the public officers in his District who had refused to support him removed. On President Hayes's refusal he left the Republican Party and became, a year or two after, the Democratic nominee for Governor for two or three years and, as has been seen, was elected in 1883. I of course supported the Republican candidate and made, I suppose, thirty or forty speeches in each of those years. He had said in explaining and defending his fiat money scheme that the word "fiat" means "let there be." God said "fiat lux," "let there be light," and there was light. He argued that fiat money was excellent from the very fact that it cost nothing and had no intrinsic value. So if a bill were lost or destroyed a new one could be supplied without cost. He also said that it would stay in the country and would not be sunk in the morasses of Asia, especially in China and India, where silver and gold were absorbed and never heard of in civilized nations afterward. I quoted these sentences with the following comment: "That, Fellow-citizens, is precisely the difference between Omnipotence and Humbug, between the Almighty and General Butler. God said let there be light and there was light. General Butler says let there be money and there is—rags. This is the first time in our history that the American workingman has been gravely asked to take for his wages money it costs nothing to make, that it is no loss to lose, that it is no gain to get, and that even a Chinaman won't touch." Butler was very angry and answered, rather irrelevantly, as it seemed to me, by saying that I did not go to the War, to which I replied as follows:

"I see that the Greenback candidate for Governor has seen fit to taunt some persons, including myself, who have ventured to exercise the privilege of free speech in this campaign, that they did not go to the war; while he boasts that he not only went to the war but hung a rebel. Those persons who did not go to the war may, perhaps, possess at least this advantage, that they can form an impartial opinion of the merits of those who did. It is the pride and the honor of this noble Commonwealth of ours, that of the hundred thousand brave soldiers and sailors she sent to the war, there was but one notorious braggart; there was but one capable of parading up and down the Commonwealth, vaunting that he had hung a man; exhibiting himself as the Jack Ketch of the rebellion. I bow reverently to the brave, modest, patriotic soldier, who, without thought of personal gain, gave youth, health, limb, life to save the country which he loved. I am willing to abide by his opinion, and to yield to him every place of honor and of office. But to you, General Butler, whose military career is made up of the blunder and slaughter of Big Bethel; of the powder explosion at Fort Fisher; of the engineering at Dutch Gap; of the "bottling-up" at Bermuda Hundred; of the trading with the rebels through the lines in North Carolina; of the scandals of New Orleans; to you, who were ordered by General Grant to go home in disgrace; to you whose best service had been, if you, too, had stayed at home, I have no such tribute to offer. When Benedict Arnold taunts Jefferson that he did not go into battle in the Revolution, when Aaron Burr taunts John Adams with want of patriotism, then it will be time for you to boast yourself over the men who performed the duties of civil life during the Rebellion."

We have had turbulent and exciting times in our State and National politics before and since that day. But I think there has been nothing in Massachusetts, and so far as I am aware there has seldom been anything in the country anywhere like the years from 1869 until 1877, when General Butler's power was at its height. You could hardly take up a morning paper without dreading that you should read of the removal from some position of honor of some brave honest soldier who had deserved well of his country, and the substitution of some disreputable person in his place. All the dishonesty of the time seemed to be combined and rallied to his support. Three of his trusted lieutenants in different parts of the Commonwealth were convicted of crime and sent to the State Prison. Another was detected in crime punishable by imprisonment in the State Prison, but escaped prosecution by a compromise. Still another was compelled to flee the country for a series of forgeries, finding refuge in a South American State with which we had no treaty of extradition. Still another was indicted for frauds which wrecked a National bank, and escaped conviction by a technicality. Still another was compelled to flee from the Commonwealth by the detection of some notorious frauds. And now more recently, in 1898, another has been arrested, a fugitive from justice, and brought back to Massachusetts, having wrecked two banks and embezzled their funds.