E 554 
 H5 B9 
 
 2 LETTER 
 
 Copy 
 
 
 GENERAL BENJ. E.' BUTLER, 
 
 HON. E. R. HOAR. 
 
 GIVES HIS OFFICIAL AND POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY, WITH A 
 
 KEPLY TO THE JUDGE'S IMPUTATIONS UPON 
 
 THE GENERAL. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY REQUEST. 
 1876. 
 

LETTER. 
 
 Lowell, October, 1876. 
 Judge Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar : — 
 
 Dear Sir, — I have read with attention and careful consideration 
 the remarks reported to have been made by j-ou at a meeting of 
 persons who assembled at Young's Hotel to defeat the nomination 
 of the Republican convention of the Seventh District, in order to 
 re-elect the Democratic incumbent, and also your letter accepting 
 its nomination with that intention ; and take leave to reply to 
 some of your suggestions. 
 
 That such was the purpose of the meeting, I rely upon your own 
 reported words: "If by using my name the result shall be that 
 Gen. Butler shall be defeated, and if, knowing the sentiments of 
 the people of the district, it is the opinion of gentlemen that it can 
 be done, I should see no objection to it." 
 
 If there had been an}' purpose or hope expressed in that meet- 
 ing of the election of even as uncertain and unreliable a Republi- 
 can as Judge Hoar shew himself to be by his election of Mr. Tarbos 
 to the present Congress, I should have felt it my dutj- in this crisis 
 of public affairs, — of peril so imminent to good government and 
 the peace of the countr}-, — at least to have endeavored to do 
 something, to make any concession, b}' which the honest, patriotic 
 Republicans of this district could have found representation, and 
 a Republican majority been secured in the House of Representa- 
 tives. 
 
 But, quoting j-our words again, you saj^ : "If you, gentlemen, 
 consider that the best thing to do, and that 3'ou can carry on the 
 fight, of which there is some reasonable prospect of success," then 
 you are willing to allow your name to be used. This is conclusive 
 that the movement is a mere personal " fight" upon me, and not in 
 aid of the Republican part}'. Therefore I must accept the gage 
 as it is thrown down, and meet a personal " fight" personally. 
 
 You say that ' ' it [the fight] simply involves my submitting for 
 the next thirty days, if I choose, to the abuse of Gen. Butler's 
 
speeches and 'The Traveller,' and such little organs as he owns 
 and can buy, to an unlimited quantity of personal abuse." 
 
 Surely. Judge, I never have said any harsher things of the news- 
 papers than that. You thus aver that newspapers can be bougnt 
 for " unlimited personal abuse." I have believed and felt that for 
 a long time of some newspapers, and I am glad to have the iugh 
 authority of one intimately connected with, and so persistently 
 puffed and boosted by the newspapers, for my belief. Don t be 
 alarmed. Judge; from me you will receive no personal abuse, and 
 I do not own a dollar in any newspaper, nor shall I buy one, 
 even if otherwise inclined, now. Newspapers only make or 
 mar little timid and shuffling men. You have disarmed me, for 
 YOU say you will take no active part in the canvass. I can- 
 not, therefore, meet you face to face before our neighbors; 
 and after I subscribe my name to this communication, during 
 the present canvass I promise you that I shall hardly make 
 a personal allusion to you, except upon some new provocation. 
 I never have made an unprovoked personal assault upon any one 
 in a political canvass; or during my eight years' service in the 
 House made such personal attack, as I think all my co leagues 
 will bear me witness : and I may be permitted to say at the same 
 time, that, when once attacked, the attack has been repelled in 
 such manner that nobody has ever repeated the experiment. 
 
 If you had contented yourself with accepting a nomination, 
 against the will of the Republican organization of the district, 
 making no personal onslaught upon me, no word of unkind allu- 
 sion to you, or other, except to bring your better qualities before 
 your wished-for constituents, would have passed my lips, as has 
 been the case in all my pubhc utterances heretofore. The personal 
 relations on which we have stood, as members of the bar, of the 
 same party, and neighbors in the same county, constrained me to 
 this, although I have been painfully aware of your political oppo- 
 sition to me ever since you so unceremoniously left the cabinet of 
 
 President Grant. . 
 
 You say^ in your carefully prepared letter, written at Concord, m 
 the peace and quiet of your home, where kindly thoughts, even of 
 one's enemies, usually visit the most jaundiced mind, that you 
 write it " with no personal hostility to Gen. Butler." If you can 
 use such harsh language, make such unfounded accusations and 
 
such degrading imputations in regard to a man against whom you 
 have no personal hostility, I may be permitted to think the reader 
 of your letter curious to know what you would have said if you had 
 happened to have a little personal spite toward the unfortunate 
 object of 3-our invective. If the readers of your letter credit 
 your statements in this regard, I fear, after reading it, they will 
 deem 3'our good-will hate ; your kindly feeling toward all men, 
 chronic bitterness ; and the best throbbings of 3'our heart, malig- 
 nity. 
 
 I am afraid you do not quite understand your own nature. You 
 will pardon me, therefore, if I hold the mirror up before you for a 
 little while, and let you see 3'ourself as others see you, and thereb}' 
 convince 3'ou how little you have realized the gi'and old Greek 
 apothegm, " Know th^'self." 
 
 As one, but not the most remarkable of the examples of your 
 entire ignorance of 3'ourself and the motives which govern 3'our 
 life, I take the astonishing assertion among the closing sentences 
 of 3'our letter : " I have never held public office by my own desire, 
 and certainly wish for none now." 
 
 I believe I can show you that you appreciate as little the yearn- 
 ing desire of 3'our heart for office as you do the chronic feeling in 
 your inmost soul of hate and malignity toward me. Let me simply 
 recall certain facts. 
 
 You never held a public office by your own desire ! ! ! "Why, 
 Judge ! jon were appointed Judge of the Court of Common Pleas 
 more than a quarter of a century ago, — August 2, 1849, — a very 
 3'oung man for such an office in those times. 
 
 You remained on the bench of the Common Pleas until 3'ou 
 thought }'0u had got reputation enough from its prestige to enable 
 you to compete with Farley, Wentworth, Abbot, Nelson, and 3-our 
 other associates of the Middlesex bar, so successfully as to earn by 
 3'our profession larger emoluments than the ver3'' moderate salar3^ of 
 an inferior judge, of $2,000 a year ; then 3-ou resigned the office and 
 tried to earn a living by your profession. Failing in that experi- 
 ment evidentl3', because after a short trial at the bar in competing 
 with 3-our peers, when the first opportunit3^ offered, and at 3'our 
 own solicitation, — was it not so, Judge? — 3-ou were appointed 
 upon the bench of the Supreme Court, where you served all through 
 the war, sitting on its soft cushions until March 10, 18G9, while 
 other men about 3-our own age left their business, quite as lucrative 
 
6 
 
 as your salary, and went to the front to do what they could do, to 
 save the country from dismemberment in its hour of peril. 
 
 I am bound by candor to say that I never heard any criticism 
 upon your conduct as a judge, save that the infirmity of your tem- 
 per, the peculiarity of your mind, and the state of your stomach 
 were so unfortunate, that it was said of you by a very distinguished 
 member of the bar, that you were in a continual condition of ill- 
 manners on the bench, both towards your associates, the members 
 of the bar, and the suitors before the court ; because you could not 
 gratify the bitterness of your heart, by giving judgment against 
 both parties, in every case. 
 
 ludeed with all these infirmities, I am free to say that you made 
 a very passable judge to try small cases, wherein there were no 
 circumstances to excite the Ebenezer of your nature. I am im- 
 pelled to this observation to demonstrate that I have " no personal 
 hostility" toward Judge Hoar, which might be suspected from the 
 severity of the facts I reluctantly narrate. 
 
 Upon the retirement of Chief Justice Bigelow, were you not an 
 applicant for the Chief- Justiceship of that court? and were you not 
 so enra-ed that Judge Thomas was uominated for that position by 
 Governor Bullock, that you put your resignation of your seat on 
 the bench into the hands of your councillor, Mr. Talbot, to be 
 presented to the council in case Judge Thomas should be confirmed, 
 to show, that should the council confirm Thomas, the State would 
 lose Judo-e Hoar from the bench ; an argument, however, which was 
 a very dangerous one? I am informed, as both your associates of 
 the bench and your brethren at the bar were anxious to be relieved 
 from the burden of bearing your ill-temper and worse manners as a 
 iudo-e, that to get rid of you and get Thomas, both at once, came 
 very near overcoming the political prejudices of the council against 
 confirming him, and I guess would have done it if I had been at 
 the time in full practice before the Supreme Court. 
 
 Did not your friends, acting with your knowledge, bring every 
 influence to bear on the council to prevent that confirmation, in 
 which they succeeded ? Did not your friends approach by telegraph 
 and otherwise the humble writer of this letter, to advise one of 
 his personal friends, who was a member of the council, to vote 
 acainst Judge Thomas, and did I not so advise? -not because I 
 doubted his ability as a lawyer, uprightness as a judge, or integrity 
 of life, but because I felt that he was not quite sound on the con- 
 
stitutionality of the legal-tender act, one of the great measures of 
 the war, against which he argued in the case of Parker and Davis, 
 in which I was of counsel. And did not my friend, yielding to 
 such advice as he received from others more capable, as well as 
 myself, vote against Judge Thomas in 3'our favor, giving the deter- 
 mining majority of one on that question? "Were j'ou not urged bj- 
 your friends, with your knowledge and connivance, upon Governor 
 Bullock, for the place of Chief Justice? Now, my dear Judge, as 
 a man accustomed for many years to weigh evidence, does not all this 
 implj' on your part, some slight desire for public office ? You see 
 that any desire for office, however slight, will convict you of not 
 knowing yourself. 
 
 And when fortified by the representations of some of j^our 
 associates upon the bench, that you were not qualified for the 
 place of Chief Justice, because the infirmities of heart and 
 bod}" of which I have spoken make you liable to take unjust prej- 
 udices against one partj' or the other, in cases where undoubtedly 
 3'ou think yourself unbiased, did not Governor Bullock peremp- 
 torily refuse to appoint you, and appoint the late lamented Chief 
 Justice Chapman? As soon as 3'ou lost the Chief-Justiceship, were 
 j-ou not, through thj recommendation of your representative in 
 Congress, Governor Boutwell, nominated as Attorney-General, 
 another and more lucrative office, upon the first formation of the 
 cabinet of President Grant ? 
 
 And now, Judge, as to your appouitment to the office of Attor- 
 nej-'General of the United States. Is there nothing suggestive of 
 a desire to hold office in that chapter of your political history? 
 Let me recall the facts. 
 
 Not being known to President Grant, you were nominated as 
 a member of his first cabinet on a suggestion made by Mr. 
 Boutwell, when the latter gentleman, having declined the posi- 
 tion of Secretary' of the Interior, tendered to him by the 
 President, was asked to name a suitable person from Massa- 
 chusetts for the office of Attorney-General? Being thus nomi- 
 nated, you were confirmed by the Senate at an early day, not 
 without surprise on the part of the friends of the administration 
 that you had been selected by the President as one of his consti- 
 tutional advisers. At the same time Mr. Stewart of New York was 
 nominated Secretary of the Treasury, — anomination which, failing 
 to be confirmed, was thereafter withdrawn ; leaving that office free to 
 
8 
 
 be tendered to Mr. Boutwell, for whom tlie President had originally 
 intended it, in conformit}" with the general wish and approval of 
 the Republican party. Now, Judge, what was your conduct 
 toward the President and his administration at that important 
 emergency ? Were you not notified authoritatively from the Presi- 
 dent by a telegram from his most confidential friend, the Hon. 
 Elihu B. Washburn, then Secretary of State, that if you would de- 
 cline the office of Attorne5'-General, you would release the admin- 
 istration from embarrassment ? You will not den}^ Judge, that 3'ou 
 received a communication to that effect. And now, in what man- 
 ner did you respond to the suggestion of the President, thus at the 
 opening of the administration placed in a dilemma for which he 
 was not responsible, having two cabinet officers from the same 
 Eastern State? Did 3'ou decline the appointment as you were 
 requested to do? By no means. Hastening to Washington 
 without delay, you took the oath of oflSce, thus consummating your 
 official tenure, giving the friends of the administration to under- 
 stand that you had no thought of retiring, but that you intended 
 "to stick," or perhaps to bring j^ourself within the terms of the 
 tenure-of-office act. And when it was suggested to you from more 
 than one quarter that you ought to retire from the cabinet in Mr. 
 Boutwell's favor, whom the President desired for his Secretary of 
 the Treasury, especiall}- as yoxx owed 3'our appointment to him, did 
 you not answer in substance, "Let Boutwell go; wh}^ should I 
 be asked to? " adding personal ingratitude to the weightier oflTence 
 of indecorous intrusion into the administration ? 
 
 Now, Judge, you sa}' that you never lield a public office "by 
 3'our own desire." As, under the circumstances, nobody else desired 
 that 5-0U should be' Attorney-General at that time, by whose desire 
 were you there? Were not these facts well known and the subject 
 of discussion at the capital? 
 
 One who does an ungraceful and ungrateful act to a friend, in 
 order to get in office, ought to desire office very much, in order to 
 excuse his conduct. 
 
 You were in office as head of the Department of Justice but 
 eight months when, as the head of that department, it became 
 3'our duty to recommend the appointment of a judge to fill the 
 vacanc}^ that occurred in the Supreme Court. Upon the first occa- 
 sion, whom did the department send to the President for that 
 place? EBENEZER ROCKWOOD HOAR! If the Department 
 
of Justice recommended anybody to the President for that office, 
 Mr. Hoar must have named himself. Mr. Stanton, the great "War 
 Secretar}', was cr/te^-wards nominated, so that ^'ou must have pre- 
 ferred j^ourself as judge to him. But 3'ou were rejected by the 
 Senate — but of that more in its proper phice. 
 
 Do you reall}^ think. Judge, upon the whole, that I am un- 
 charitable when I believe that appointment of judge did not rain 
 down on 3'Ou without some scintilla of a desire to hold public 
 office, or without anj- procurement, wish expressed, or knowledge 
 on the part of Gen. Grant of that wish, that he should appoint you 
 to a public office for life, out of which you could not be got except 
 you committed an impeachable offence, and bad manners have 
 never been held to be such an one even by m3-self, who advocated 
 a somewhat broad doctrine as to impeachment? If you insist, how- 
 ever, that I shall believe that the President did appoint you against 
 j-our desire and will, then I am driven to the other horn of the 
 dilemma, — that he made that appointment without your desire, as 
 an easy and graceful mode of getting yon out of his cabinet, which, 
 after j^our rejection by the Senate, he did do in such a manner that 
 3'Ou sent him a very short and curt note of resignation, which did 
 no credit to 3'our good temper or taste. 
 
 You ma3^ answer, in 3'our own choice language, borrowed from 
 the servant-girls, that he " gave 3"0U a character." True, — kind- 
 hearted, good-natured man that he is ! — but so he did other 
 cabinet officers, with whose names 3'ou would hardl3' like to have 
 3-ours coupled. 
 
 In a short time, at the next fii'st possible opportunit3-, we find 
 you holding the office of one of the Commissioners of the United 
 States to settle the treatj- as to the "Alabama claims." Did this 
 office also rain down on 3'ou without an3^ shadow of desire on 3'our 
 part to hold it? You certainl3' accepted it with the same alacrity 
 with wliich 3'OU accepted 3-our present bolting nomination for office, 
 at Young's Hotel, being in waiting, as the newspapers tell us, in 
 that building until the committee called you into a meeting which 
 I have reason to know 3'ou yourself took pait in causing to be 
 organized, to receive your acceptance of a nomination, the letter 
 of which had been before written in Concord, and was in 3'our 
 pocket. 
 
 How recklessl3^ you gave up the great fishing interests of Mas- 
 sachusetts, which you were expected to defend and protect, by 
 
10 
 
 agreeing to the articles in that treatj?^ which bring all the British 
 Provinces in competition with our own fishermen, and left the 
 United States subject to a reclamation of manj'^ millions of dollars 
 by Great Britain on account of those very fisheries, I, in mercy, 
 spare you the recital ; besides, I fear a bare statement of the facts 
 about that treaty, in the most courteous language, might, by some 
 uncharitable persons, be construed into " personal abuse." 
 
 You are next found holding the oflice of Pi-esidential Elector, an 
 office with very little to do, indeed, it is true ; but then the smallest 
 offices are, by some persons who do not "desire public oflTice," 
 thankfully received. 
 
 Once more an office-holder, we find you Representative of the 
 Seventh District. Do you saj' that you did not want this office ? 
 Your son was a delegate to the convention which nominated j-ou, 
 and there are members of that convention who will say, I have 
 been informed, that he actually canvassed in your behalf. Is he 
 so undutiful as to force office on his father 'against his desire? A 
 bright boy, did he not detect some infinitesimal yearning for office 
 on the part of his parent, and strive to please him by getting it 
 for him ? 
 
 Next we learn that you made a small run in the Legislature for 
 the office of U. S. Senator from Massachusetts, and were defeated, 
 although the Republican party was largely in the majorit}'. Of 
 course we are to believe that you allowed j^ourself to be a candi- 
 date, and suffer defeat in the candidature for the office, without any 
 desire for the place, precisely as you insist you are running now 
 for an office which you told your friends in the Russell convention, 
 held in the same room at Young's Hotel, that you would not take, 
 if 3'ou could get every vote in the district. Now, m}'^ dear Judge, 
 don't deny that, because I have it from the gentleman who asked 
 3'ou to be their candidate instead of Russell. Or was your motive 
 in then running for the Senate, as it is now, not to be elected, but 
 simply to defeat the Republican candidate in order to elect a Dem- 
 ocrat ? 
 
 You have your choice of motives. 
 
 Either you desired the office and wanted to be elected, or else 
 the same malignity, envy and jealousy which some well-disposed 
 persons believe prompt the present candidature, actuated you then. 
 But much as I have cause to impute bad motives to you, Judge, I 
 prefer to believe it was a desire for the office of Senator which led 
 
11 
 
 you to run, because I prefer not to believe tliat j-ou are actuated by 
 "malice toward all mankind and charity to none ; " for, upon the 
 very next vacanc}' in the Senate, I find you running again for that 
 high office ; and I must either believe — the second time certainly 
 — that you desired the office, or believe you hate every Republican 
 and wish to defeat everybody except Democratic candidates. 
 
 Another thing, Judge, which is evidence to m}^ mind that j-ou 
 " desired" the office of Senator, is that although the dying Sumner 
 had confided his Civil Rights Bill to your care, when you sat by his 
 cleath-bedside, — a fact which was telegraphed all over the country 
 b}' your procurement evidently, as he could not have done it, — jet 
 when you were running for the Senate, J. B. Smith, his life-long 
 friend, then a member of the Legislature, desirous of voting for 
 3'ou, tried in every proper wa}- to get an authorized expression from 
 you in favor of Sumner's bill, which was to be the safeguard of the 
 colored race. He could obtain no expression, and why? A bold 
 stand in favor of the bill would have repelled the Democrats, 
 whom you hoped would come over to you and elect you over your 
 Republican competitors. I should desire public office very much 
 indeed, Judge, before I would seal my lips as to my position on any 
 great measure ; but then, j^ou know. Judge, I am onl}^ a common 
 erring mortal, and not a " pure-minded," cold-blooded, unselfish 
 statesman, who has spent half his life in office not " hy his own 
 desire." 
 
 I wish to do you justice. I admit that you might have been 
 elected to the present Congress instead of Mr. Tarbox or Dr. A3'er, 
 and refused the office when 3'ou might have had it. I am bound to 
 say thus much, because it is the first office I ever knew you to refuse. 
 Still, you will remember, my dear Judge, j^ou told me the reason 
 was that 3'ou could not afford to take it ; that a man could only live 
 in "Washington respectably on the salary ; and yet, my dear Judge, 
 one of your objections to me in your letter is what you are pleased 
 to call a " salary grab," which means, I suppose, that I voted for 
 an increase of that inadequate salary which has deprived the pres- 
 ent Congress of 3'our great talents. 
 
 When you ssxy " salary grab," you certainl}' could not refer to the 
 fact that I took what is called ' ' back pay ," —that is, pay received for 
 services for a time previous to its being voted — service rendered 
 under a contract, as it is claimed — to work for a smaller salarj^ 
 because when you were Judge of the Supreme Court in 18G6 your 
 
12 
 
 paj was raised from thi'ee thousand to four thousand dollars a 
 year, and you took the " back pay " which the Legislature voted 
 3'ou, with the same alacrity that you have always run for and taken 
 office without any " desire " for it. True, you may say that your 
 back pay was not a large amount; but then, if it is a " salary 
 grab " to take " back paj^," j^ou fell with much slighter temptation 
 than I dill, for the amount which came to me was considerabl}- 
 larger. Now don't misunderstand me, Judge. I do not think it 
 was wrong for 3'ou to take that "back pa}- ; " but, having taken it, 
 it does not seem good taste to make railing accusations against me 
 for doing the same thing, because j'ours was " such a little one." 
 Such a procedure does not seem the emanation of a judicial mind. 
 
 The last public office — for I think it is a high and honorable 
 one — which 3'ou held was that of Delegate to the Cincinnati Con- 
 vention for the selection of a presidential candidate for the Repub- 
 lican party. True, j'ou might not have desired that office, although 
 3'ou accepted, because there was no pay attached to it except what 
 seems to me the highest compensation for public service, — an 
 opportunity to do good to the countr}-. 
 
 To use a mode of statement copied from your letter, " as the 
 newspapers inform us," — by which one can make an injurious 
 imputation without making himself responsible for it, an in- 
 genious device, which does credit to your cuAning but not to 3'our 
 courage, — not wanting the office, j'ou got elected to it b}' repre- 
 senting yourself, or being represented, as an advocate of the can- 
 didature of Mr. Blaine; and, "as the newspapers infoi'm us," 
 when 3'ou got to Cincinnati 3'ou turned up something ver}' different 
 entirely ; not a friend of Governor Hayes, for whom you now 
 express admiration, because j'ou so managed yourself and ^'our 
 colleagues that j'ou not only contrived to cover yourself and the 
 State with merited ridicule, bat also never cast its vote for Gov- 
 ernor Hayes ; for, with a perversity of political senselessness which 
 I always, in you, attribute to bad health, or bad temper, or both, 
 you kept the vote of the Massachusetts delegation on other candi- 
 dates, so that owing to your management Massachusetts in the 
 convention never cast her vote for Hayes at all. He was nom- 
 inated without her aid', and you now seem to be managing the 
 Republican party of Massachusetts in the best manner, if it were 
 possible so to do, to have Hayes elected without her vote. I liope 
 
13 
 
 and believe you may not so divide and distract the party as to be 
 successful in what seems to be your aim, — its destruction onl}-. 
 
 Now, my dear Judge, let us count up. You have been appointed 
 to four different ofiices, and elected to three. Your services in 
 them, covering by far the largest part of your business hfe, were in 
 the appointive offices, being of the class of the largest emolument, 
 and the three elective offices having but little or no emolument, for 
 I do not think a representative in Congress has au}'. You have 
 been appointed to, candidate for, and voted for, and failed to get 
 six of the highest offices in the gift of the appointing power or of 
 the Commonwealth, which if you had got would have occupied the 
 whole of the rest of 3-our lifetime, and are now running for another, 
 with about the same show of success that you had of being Chief 
 Justice of the Commonwealth, or a Justice of the Supreme Court 
 of the United States. 
 
 In view of these facts, which I have been compelled to set out 
 with a tediousness in length, — for which I owe you, who have to 
 read this letter, an apology, which is, if 3'ou had not held so many 
 offices, and been candidate for so manj- more, I could have made 
 it shorter, — do you, mj' dear Judge, reall}^ think I add the sus- 
 piciousness of unbehef to my other short-comings which you have 
 enumerated, when I say I cannot believe j-ou when you say "I 
 never held public office by jny own desire " ? To others the invet- 
 eracy of 3'our office-holding seems only equalled by the continuity of 
 3-our office-seeking : both are chronic and have been the business, 
 not the episodes, of your life. 
 
 Let us tabulate 3'our want of " desire " for public office : — 
 
 TABLE OF OFFICES HELD, APPLIED FOR, RUN" FOR AND LOST BY HON. 
 E. R. nO^Ul, WITHOUT ANY DESIRE FOR ANT OF THEil. 
 
 Appointed. 
 
 Elected. 
 
 Candidate for and lost. 
 
 Judge of Common Pleas. 
 Judge of Supreme Court. 
 Attorney General. 
 Commissioner on Ala- 
 bama Claims. 
 
 Member of Congress. 
 Presidential Elector. 
 Delegate to Convention. 
 
 Chief Justice Supreme 
 Court, Mass. 
 
 Judge of Supreme Court 
 of United States. 
 
 Senator in place of Sum- 
 ner. 
 
 Senator in place of Wil- 
 son. 
 
 Member of Congress 
 (bolted to get it). 
 
 Total .... 4 
 
 Total .... 3 
 
 Total .... 5 
 
 Grand total 
 
 12 
 
14 
 
 I have no doubt that you beheved yourself when 3'ou wi'ote that 
 " 3'ou had never held public office by your own desire ; " but then, 
 as I told you to begin with, you don't know yourself or see your- 
 self as others see 3'ou. 
 
 I doubt not you as firmly believe that 3-ou " have no personal 
 hostility to me " as you do that you " never held public office by 
 your own desire." The trouble seems to be that you have got the 
 cardinal virtues and the deadly sins so mixed up in 3'our mind that 
 you mistake greed for office for public virtue, coretousness for 
 generosity, hate for love, malice for good will, prejudices for con- 
 victions, dyspepsia for a conscience, and cultivate malignity as a 
 parlor plant, believing it to be one of the Christian graces. Indeed, 
 your state of feeling toward me seems formulated by Tennyson's 
 lines, wherein he describes the kind of love his heroine bore to her 
 lover who had betra^-ed her sister : — 
 
 " I hated him with the hate of hell, 
 But I loved his beauty passing well." 
 
 Not to compare small things with great, let me, in a word, give 
 3'ou my own record as a public officer. I have never held office 
 or received a dollar of public money for pay as an officer, save as 
 a soldier in the service, or as a legislator. But I held both these 
 positions by " my own desire," and sought them to gratify an 
 honorable ambition, and to be of service to my country. I leave 
 it to the just judgment of all men which has been the " office-job- 
 ber." 
 
 Having exhibited to 3'ou as well as I may the condition of your 
 mental and moral organism at the moment j'ou wrote your 
 letter, " to suppty the ripe wants of a friend," I break a custom 
 and reply to some of its statements. As long as thej^ are simply 
 the emanations of newspaper slang- whangers, I make it the rule 
 of my life to live down slanders, not to reply to them. But com- 
 ing from so respectable a source, it is due to yourself to set 3'ou 
 right about many things in regard to mj'self, where 3'ou are clearly 
 wrong, as 3'our statements, distorted by the medium of a perverse 
 imagination, clouded b}' a deep-seated feeling of revenge for fan- 
 cied wrongs, make evident. 
 
 You say that " at the last State convention at which he [roy- 
 self ] sought the nomination for Governor, and led his own forces, 
 it was only after they had been detected in a large amount of 
 
15 
 
 double voting, that lie yielded to the will of the honesi; majorit3\ 
 It was on that occasion that he asked, with a humor of his own, 
 wli3' it was alwa3's insisted on taking extraordinary precautions to 
 secure an honest vote whenever he happened to be a candidate." 
 
 You will pardon nie, Judge, for saying that I never used that 
 expression, and no reported proceedings of the convention made at 
 the time will so show. You say " they were never needed in a 
 Republican State convention in Massachusetts before." You are 
 mistaken. Judge. The record of the ballot taken for Lieutenant- 
 Governor, when I was not a candidate, showed a vote largel}' in 
 excess of the true one. Ask Gov. Talbot how he was treated. 
 At this ver}- convention of which 3'ou speak, / am prepared to show 
 that I teas cheated out of the nomination. Up to this hour I have 
 steadily declined to make the charge or pi'oduce the evidence. I 
 have covered it as did the sons of Noah the disgi-ace of their 
 father, when they walked backwards and threw over him their 
 cloaks to conceal the sin of the old man. In the first place, at 
 nearly twelve o'clock at night, more votes were thrown after hun- 
 dreds of the delegates had gone home, than the entire number 
 which could properly' be members of the convention if all were 
 present. And no unprejudiced man can believe that such a vote 
 could possibly be thrown at that hour of the night. The oppo- 
 sition, led by a political priest, a kind of man that all history 
 shows is the most unscrupulous and dangerous of all men in 
 political affairs, was organized on the cry " Anything to beat 
 Butler." 
 
 Who were the unauthorized voters who carried that convention at 
 Worcester against me at midnight ? I have the evidence, and can ex- 
 hibit it in the shape of sworn testimon}^ when called for b}^ the party 
 organization. If the Republican party desire that I shall go far- 
 ther into the investigation, and produce the evidence to its disgrace, 
 unwilling as I am to blot the record of the party, I will do it. But I 
 state the fact to be, sustained by sworn evidence, that, at midnight, 
 after mau}^ members of the convention had given up their tickets 
 and left to take the cars for their homes, as they declared, in reply 
 to the inquiry of the door-keeper if they wished to return to the 
 convention, the Chairman of the Committee on Tickets, under 
 whose instruction the door-keeper was acting, came to him and 
 took a package of tickets from him, and went downstairs with 
 them ; that immediately thereupon a large number of new dele- 
 
16 
 
 gates appeared, passing in on the strength of those tickets. This 
 Chairman of the Committee was an anti-Butler man, by genus, 
 and of the Hoar species, and of course acting against me. I know 
 him and his name, and whenever he chooses to deny the fact he 
 will be very efficiently answered. Whether correctlj^ or not, I 
 firml}' believed at that time that I was disgracefully jocke3'ed out 
 of that nomination by you and 5"our associates ; but I refused to 
 bolt the nomination, lest that bolt should affect the integrity- of the 
 party, and for no other reason whatever. In other words, I did 
 what I doubt 3'ou, from your mental constitution, are capable of 
 doing, — I sacrificed my personal feeUngs for the good of the party 
 and the country. 
 
 A word in j^our ear privately, Judge : the less you say about 
 that convention the better. 
 
 Again : You say that ' ' when he boasted to two of his colleagues 
 in Washington in 1874, that he got tJieir telegrams before they 
 did ; that he had a man who read them off the wu-es by the click." 
 I deny that I made any such boast. Let any two of my col- 
 leagues come forward and say that I used those words to them. I 
 knew of but one man who was telegraphing from Washington to 
 Boston upon the occasion you speak of, and therefore I could not 
 have said it. Second : I never said " I had a man" who read the 
 telegrams from the wires by the click. 
 
 When a foolish contest was raised over the confirmation of the 
 Collector of the Port of Boston, the whole country became in- 
 terested in the fight, and information poured in to me from all 
 quarters. Do jon mean to saj' that 3-ou would not have received 
 such information? The ver}^ next sentence of your letter convicts 
 you. You say, " And if, as the newspapers inform us, he employed 
 such an agent as John D. Sanborn to dog the steps of Mr. Peirce 
 in New York, and find out his business there. General Butler 
 showed that he regarded as legitimate weapons of political war- 
 fare, means which in private or professional life he would undoubt- 
 edly think base and dishonorable." 
 
 " And if, as the newspapers inform us," where did you and the 
 newspapers get that information ? From a telegraphic dispatch of 
 mine, filched from a committee-room by a dishonest subordinate, 
 for I won't believe that even a committee of a Confederate Congress 
 would permit the publication of private dispatches of private in- 
 dividuals. And 3'ou make use of that information derived from 
 
17 
 
 that telegram, so stolen and published, to make a charge against 
 me. You sa^- the use of information derived from the telegram of 
 another, in your o^Yn choice language, is "on a level with listening 
 at ke^'-holes or picking pockets ; " 3'et in this ver}" letter you have 
 done that very thing, and shelter 3'ourself under, " And if, as the 
 newspapers inform us." Speak up like a man now, Judge, and say 
 whether you did not know that the information 3'ou use was from 
 one of m}' own private telegrams, and no other source whatever. 
 
 I have no cause to be ashamed or disturbed at the publication of 
 that telegram, or in stating exactly what I did. The Simmons 
 fight was over. I had been informed that Mr. Henry L. Peirce 
 had gone to New York to get a New York man to apply, for the 
 position of minister at Venezuela, as against the present minis- 
 ter, a distinguished citizen of Massachusetts, whom I favored ; 
 Peirce hoping, as the Secretar}- of State was from New Y^'ork, 
 he might break my recommendation with the State department 
 by producing a New Yorker as a candidate for the place. Wish- 
 ing to ascertain if the information I had received was true, I sent 
 to a constituent of mine, Mr. John D. Sanborn, whom I knew 
 to be in Naw York, to ascertain the facts, and who Peirce's 
 candidate was to be, if he had one, so that I might put the Secre- 
 tar}^ of State on his guard. Is there an^'thing iMegitimate or im- 
 proper in so doing ? Y"et you indulge in a spiteful fling at a man 
 in these words : "He emplo3'ed such an agent as John D. San- 
 born." Now, Judge, Mr. Sanborn is j'our equal in everj-thing that 
 makes an honest man, and jonr superior in many things which 
 make up a good member of society, and I know you both ver}' well. 
 Thi'ough 3'our machinations, and those of another member of the 
 delegation whose name I will not now mention, — for I am waiting 
 for him to take a hand in this fight, as it is m}' custom not to be the 
 aggressor, — an investigation for weeks was had of Mr. Sanborn, 
 particularly because it was supposed that through that investiga- 
 tion you could get at me. The Committee of Ways and Means 
 found that Mr. Sanborn had done nothing that the law did not 
 direct and authorize him to do ; and if there was any fault in what 
 he had done, it was a fault of the law. A majority of the Repub- 
 lican members of that committee recommended the Commissioners 
 of Internal Revenue to again employ him in the collection of delin- 
 quent taxes ; and he has been employed from that day to this more 
 or less in that work, under Mr. Bristow, for whom you voted as 
 
18 
 
 candidate for President, as against Governor Hayes, and that, too, 
 without any recommendation or interference on my part. 
 
 Your malice toward me seems to make joa unjust to everj-body 
 else, for you say, " Collectors detail subordinates to attend to his 
 errands and run his caTupaign." Now, if you did not know that 
 to be true, Judge, then you told what you did not know to l3e 
 true, as if it were true ; and that j'ou will recognize j-ourself as 
 being the most vicious kind of falsification. No collector, past 
 or present, has ever detailed any man to attend to m^' errands or 
 run any of my campaigns. Men do kindl}' things for me from 
 motives which 3'ou cannot possibly appreciate and can hardly 
 understand, because 3'ou never did a ser^-ice to an}- man without 
 pay down that I ever heard of; therefore, you never knew what it 
 was to have men grateful enough to you, and kindty enough dis- 
 posed towards j^ou to, of their own free will and friendliness, do 
 everything thej^ can do for 3'ou. I would advise 3'ou to try to act 
 kindly towards somebody once, and get somebody to feel in that 
 way towards j^ourself once. It would be a new sensation, and 
 would please 3'Ou with its novelty, if it did not touch 3'our heart. 
 
 In your kindly manner, you speak of me as one "whom the 
 voters of the Sixth District could tolerate no longer," meaning, I 
 suppose, that I was defeated in the Sixth District in my last candi- 
 dature. Would you not think it personal abuse if I should say 
 of }'ou that you were not fit to run for Congress, because in your 
 last two Senatorial candidatures you were ignominioush* beaten, 
 and that, therefore, the people of the Commonwealth never would 
 " tolerate " 3'Ou at all? Or would jou think I was dealing kindly 
 with your brother, George F. Hoar, if I taunted him with the 
 words, " The people of Worcester will not ' tolerate ' 3-oa, because 
 in the same campaign of 1874 in which I was defeated he lost a 
 greater number of votes than I did of his former Republican 
 Inajority in the heart of the Commonwealth, and was onl3' elected 
 b3^ 462 votes, when he had a plurality the election before of 
 7,684 votes? this great loss, in m3' judgment, being in part caused 
 by the unjust acts of yourself and 3'our associates towards m3-self 
 in the gubernatorial convention. He yielded, however, to what 
 he seems to have regarded as the popular verdict, and has not 
 dared since to tr3' the result of an election by the people in any 
 'di.strict. 
 
 Your next objection is expressed in these words : " Gen. Butlei 
 
19 
 
 was in favor of paying the national debt in greenbacks, — a meas- 
 ure which the Eepublican party has thought inconsistent with the 
 national honor, — and has recentl}' avowed his belief that the 
 pclic}- of providing for a speedy return to specie xKiyments is un- 
 sound, oppressive and mischievous." 
 
 One would have supposed that a man who has been accustomed 
 to charge juries upon facts would state an opponent's position with 
 more accuracy. I never was in favor of paying the " national 
 debt " in greenbacks. The larger part of it could not be so paid. 
 I said, what 3'ou do not dare to den}' as a lawyer, that the contract, 
 under which the five-twenty bonds were issued in 1862, was that 
 the}' should be paid in greenbacks ; and no respectable member of 
 the bar, who has ever examined the question, has come to a differ- 
 ent opinion, — but they were but a small part of the national debt. 
 
 Again : I never have ' ' avowed my belief that the policy of pro- 
 viding for a speed}' return to specie pa^-ments is unsound." My 
 proposition has always been, and j'ou will find it in ni}^ letter of 
 acceptance, that what I have objected to is the policy of attempting 
 hy law to return to specie paj'ments ivithout providing the means by 
 which our currency might be raised to specie values, and thus make 
 specie paj'ments possible. In case of some men I should be chari- 
 table enough to suppose that the}' did not see the difference between 
 the two statements ; but you. Judge, I know to have a too discrimi- 
 nating mind in dealing with propositions not to understand the 
 exact difference ; and your looseness of statement of my position 
 shows that you dare not go to the people with an accurate state- 
 ment of it. Having, many times over, and in my letter of acceptance 
 of the candidature, said that my difficulty was that I thought it 
 impossible to return to specie payments by legal enactment alone ; 
 that such a course would be oppressive to the debtor ; and that I 
 thought it far better that the country should so grow in credit so that 
 provision might be made for a return to specie values, but that, 
 as the party had resolved to the contrary, and the Democratic 
 party had apparently come on the same platform, the experiment 
 would have to be tried, — I am quite willing you should make all 
 out of that objection to me you can ; but please don't delude any- 
 body by a garbled statement of my position. 
 
 Again : You are pleased to say that the convention which nomi- 
 nated me, although composed of delegates elected by the Republi- 
 cans in the several towns at meetings called for that pui-pose, and 
 
20 
 
 at one of which you yourself presided, according to the exact 
 usage of the Republican party, if it does not nominate to suit you, 
 " becomes a bolting convention." Be it so. Then why not have 
 the State Committee or the District Committee call another? 
 "Where did 3'ou get your credentials to call one at Young's Hotel ? 
 If 3-ou will call another convention, Judge, in the Seventh District, 
 of the voters, through the regular party organization, and prom- 
 ise not to bolt if you lose, I will resubmit my nomination to that 
 convention, and you yourself may run as a candidate. I promise 
 to abide by the result. 
 
 You say that the convention which nominated me " was not the 
 entertainment to which 3- ou were invited ; " but this is an enter- 
 tainment to which 3'ou are invited. I will even contest Concord 
 with 3^ou, for a delegation, provided you won't hold the hat at the 
 caucus in which the votes are deposited, as j^ou did at the last 
 one. 
 
 If you are right that the late convention in the Seventh District 
 was a bolting convention only, there would seem to be a necessity 
 for the call of another, because that convention nominated an 
 elector for President and Vice-President of the United States, for 
 the Eepublican votes of the district, and there certainly ought to 
 be a regular nomination by the Republican party for Elector for 
 President, and there is none now if that convention was a " bolting 
 convention." 
 
 Again : At the State convention the delegates from my district 
 put me in nomination before that convention as a member of the 
 State Central Committee. That would have been a good oppor- 
 tunity for 3'ou to have contested my status in the Repubhcan party. 
 The State convention would surety have a right to reject the nomi- 
 nation of anj' man on the State Central Committee who was not a 
 Republican ; but 3'ou thought it, doubtless, easier to get a vote 
 on m}^ republicanism in a convention of your thirty-five friends 
 at Young's Hotel, than in the State convention, composed of 
 Republican delegates. I will try that question with you, Judge, 
 in any State convention where you will agree that the chainnan of 
 the Committee on Tickets won't take packages of tickets, deposited 
 with the door-keeper by delegates that have gone home, out and 
 distribute them among 3'our friends to come in and vote as delegates 
 of the convention. Without precaution against such " methods" 
 
21 
 
 as that, I am willing to admit I should again be beaten ; because 
 those are not the " methods " that I employ. 
 
 Your next objection is, that I am " a scoffer of civil-service re- 
 form." No, Judge, 3'ou mistake ; I am only a scoffer at hypocris3\ 
 If I understand civil-service reform, it means, members of Congress 
 shall not interfere with the executive departments in the selection 
 of their subordinates, by which those departments are to be carried 
 on. Am I right in that as a part of the scheme of civil-service 
 reform? Very well : let me state a fact. Judge, which illustrates 
 the difference between preaching and practice. 
 
 When the Secretary of the Treasury directed the cutting down of 
 the expenses of the Boston Custom House some $40,000, by the 
 dismissal, among other things, of useless officers, I never interfered 
 or advised in the selection of the officers that were to be dismissed, 
 nor did I ask to have any friend or supporter of mine retained. I 
 assumed that the Collector would know what was for the benefit of 
 the public service in that regard, and I did not know. Now, Judge, 
 let me ask you two or three questions. 
 
 In the process of that reduction did not the Collector relieve 
 from duty two officers from the Seventh District, appointed with 
 your recommendation as its representative in Congress, discharged 
 as a part of the necessary reduction of his force ? 
 
 Was he not called to Washington thereupon by Secretary 
 Bristow, and did he not meet 3'ou, then a member of Congress, be- 
 fore the Secretary? Did you not then insist to the Secretary that 
 the Collector should restore those men, and argue at length 
 that your men should be retained in office, although the Collector 
 had certified to the Secretary that their services were no longer 
 needed, nor the services of anybod}^ else in their places ? Did not 
 the Collector in 3'our presence state to 3'ou that these men's services 
 were not required, and did 3'ou not still insist that the3' should be 
 kept because the3^ were 3'Our appointees ? 
 
 When, in the course of 3'Our speech to the Secretary, 3'Ou referred 
 to m3' district, did not the Collector call 3'our attention to the fact 
 that I had not interfered with his action in behalf of an3' of the 
 Custom House emplo3-es in m3' district, but had left him to do 
 according to the dictates of his own judgment, and that 30urself 
 and brother, who, I think, was present, were the onl3' two members 
 of Congress who had ever interfered with him as to which 
 of his subordinates he should discharge? Yielding to your 
 
22 
 
 importun.ties, pressed with great vehemence, did not the Secretary 
 finally order these men — good men, I doubt not, but not needed 
 — to be retained, and did not the Collector obey that order? And 
 were not two men thus fastened upon the Treasury by j'ou, a 
 member of Congress, that were not needed, in opposition to the 
 judgment of the officer charged with the carr3'ing on of that branch 
 of the public service ? 
 
 That, Judge, is the kind of civil-service refonn I scoff at ; and 
 nothing but my personal respect for you, and the entire absence 
 of " personal hostility " toward me on your part, prevents my 
 scoffing at the reformer ! 
 
 Now, Judge, how, after that, could you go to Cincinnati and 
 vote for civil-service reform? or were you, in that regard, as well 
 as in regard to the candidature of Mr. Blaine, one thing in Massa- 
 chusetts and another in Cincinnati? " Thou h^'pocrite, first cast 
 out the beam out of thine own eye, and then thou shalt see clearly 
 to cast out the mote out of th}" brother's eye." 
 
 The difference between us, Judge, is this, as I understand it : I 
 do full as well as I preach ; 3'ou preach a great deal better than 
 you do. 
 
 Your next objection I find to be that " the.nomination of General 
 Butler in this district by a Republican convention, and the placing 
 him on the State Republican Committee b}" the delegates of Lowell, 
 is doing our part}" incalculable harm throughout the countr}'." 
 
 Where do j-ou find the evidence of that. Judge? I have had in- 
 vitations to speak during the campaign from twent}" odd political 
 organizations in the States in the North, and four in the South. In 
 this campaign I have been obliged to refuse in every instance but one. 
 Called by public business to the State of Ohio, I spoke there at 
 the most earnest request of the Republican organization of the 
 county. After that I received the most urgent appeals from the 
 Republican organization of the State of Indiana to go there ; but I 
 learned while in Ohio of the initiation of 3-our Young's Hotel cabal 
 against the integi'ity of the Republican party in Massachusetts, 
 and I refused to go to Indiana, as I had before refused, and pub- 
 lished my refusal. And while I don't claim that I could have done 
 much good b}* taking part in the canvass, 3'et I will state a fact or 
 two. 
 
 Your letter dates your objections to me as a Republican as far 
 back as 1867 ; and what I have done has not been done in a corner. 
 
23 
 
 You will hardly claim that I am any different now, either for 
 better or worse, than in 1872, when, at the request of the Na- 
 tional and State Committees, I canvassed almost the entire States 
 of Maine and Indiana, and a large portion of New York, a por- 
 tion of Illinois and Ohio, for the Republican nominees for Presi- 
 dent and Vice-President, travelling some 3,000 miles and making 
 sixty speeches. Indiana was then carried by an overwhelming 
 majority'; and from the earnest appeals of its Republican organiza- 
 tion, and of Senator Morton and others to me, to come there again 
 this year, I infer that they thought my " methods " of canvass had 
 done, and would do, good. Mischievous interference with the 
 politics of the Seventh District has kept me out of Indiana this 
 year, and it has gone Democratic. If you will look at the returns 
 in tlie precinct where I spoke in Ohio you will find that it quite 
 maintained its majority of last year. Now I don't say propter 
 hoc, but I have a right to say post hoc. I had rather take the 
 opinion of the true, fighting, earnest Republicans of Indiana and 
 Ohio who did not vote for nor elect Democratic Congressmen two 
 5'ears ago, upon the question of the value of my services to the 
 Republican party, than that of yourself or your associates, w^ho 
 sent a Democrat to Congress from the Republican State of Massa- 
 chusetts by your votes. 
 
 Whenever the Republican party can say to me, "Gen. Butler, 
 j-ou have wilfull}-, b}' 3'our influence and votes directl}" used for that 
 purpose, caused the return of Democratic members of Congress," 
 I, in common decenc}', shall withdraw myself from that part}^, and 
 shall certainl}' not attempt to dictate to its voters their nominees ; 
 nor shall I have the hardihood to present myself for their suffrages 
 on the ground that I am a better Republican than anj' one who 
 for sixteen 3'ear3 has done all in his power for its success. 
 
 I have again to complain. Judge, of 3'our attempt in your letter 
 to so word it as not to make charges for which I can hold 30U 
 responsible, but simpl}- to make a statement in such manner as to 
 leave the charge to be inferred. I quote as follows : — 
 
 " "What, but the deep-seated and wide-spread dissatisfaction ex- 
 cited at the North at the Sanborn moieties, salary-grabs, the bar- 
 gains, contracts, ofl!ice-jobbing and caucus-packing, which occur to 
 eveiT man's mind when Gen. Butler's name is mentioned in con- 
 nection with politics ? " 
 
 Thus you mean to leave it to be inferred that I had something 
 
24 
 
 to do with the " Sanborn moieties." You know — and therefore 
 you ought not to have made such a statement — that, whether the 
 " Sanborn moieties " were right or wrong, I had nothing to do with 
 them whatever. I neither advised his emploj'ment, recommended 
 him, or did anything about them, directly or indirectly. Months 
 of investigation, inspired by 3'ou and one of your colleagues, 
 demonstrated that fact, as it now stands upon record. "Whether 
 the "Sanborn moieties" were right or wrong depended upon the 
 law which authorized them, which did not emanate from any com- 
 mittee of which I was a member, and with which I had nothing to 
 do, and with the administration of which law I never interfered or 
 took part. 
 
 Under a law passed by Congress after debate, Mr. Sanborn was 
 emploj'ed to collect taxes from railroads that had cheated the 
 government out of them and withheld them for more than five 
 years. The law gave him half for making the collections and dis- 
 covering the frauds, and for that I had no respousibilit}' ; and he 
 was not emploj^ed to do the business until two other parties had 
 been emplo^'ed and failed to make the collections. But I will now 
 say that, in my belief, more than $5,000,000 of withheld taxes 
 have been lost to the United States because of the raid upon that 
 law instituted in part by yourself in the hope of striking at me. 
 
 " Bargains" did you sa}-. Judge? Why, I never made but one 
 political bargain of suflflcient consequence to be in my memory for 
 a day, save with 3'ou and j'our free-soil friends, in 1849-50, by 
 which the Democrats were to give the free-soilers the Senator, in 
 case of success, and 3'ou were to give us the State Government. 
 That bargain was fairly- carried out, was called the "coalition," 
 and elected Sumner; and we thought it all right and "pure," 
 didn't we, Judge? But, bless us! Judge B. R. Curtis published 
 a pamphlet, in which he gave it as his deliberate legal opinion that 
 our " bargain" or " coalition" was an indictable conspiracy at com- 
 mon law. How differently different people look upon the acts 
 even of as " pure" a man as yourself, to be sure ! That ought to 
 teach you, Judge, to have a little charity and leniency in your 
 judgment of poor me. 
 
 In the matter of "contracts," I have never had or made any 
 contract with the government, nor have had any interest in any 
 except as a member of a Company which has done work for the 
 
25 
 
 government, precise!}^ the same as an}' other individual in the com- 
 munit}'. 
 
 "Contracts" in relation to government matters, do I hear you 
 sa}'. Judge? "Well, I will tell you what I think would be a contract 
 about government affairs wliich would be disgi'aceful for me to 
 enter into ; and I think yon will agrSe with me. If I should be 
 employed by the government, or anybody else, to give a legal 
 opinion upon and manage a law case, and, after I had done so, and 
 become conversant with all the points on that side, I should take 
 employment on the other side, and receive large fees for my ser- 
 vices, specially because of my knowledge of the case, got when I 
 was the law3'er for the first party, I should say I had disgraced my- 
 self, my profession and my State ; and I am certain if I had done so 
 you would have mentioned it in your letter as a reason why you 
 could not support me for Congress. 
 
 "Well, then, Judge (correct me if I get the facts wrong — and I 
 shall not need correction), did not the Central Pacific Railroad 
 have a claim for many millions of land grant and bonds, to be 
 given by the United States as a subsid}', depending upon cer- 
 tain law points, and also upon the approval of a map of location, 
 which w'as so preposterous that even Andrew Johnson would not 
 approve it, as it would take many milhons out of the Treasury 
 without any equivalent ? 
 
 "Were not these law questions pending before the Department 
 of Justice, having been reported to it before j-ou became Attorney- 
 General? Did 3'ou not hear, or read printed arguments upon them, 
 while acting for the United States as its Attorney-General ? 
 
 Did not those arguments fail to convince you that j-ou ought to 
 advise the President to approve that map, and you did not so ad- 
 vise him ? AVas not that all so ? 
 
 You did right, Judge ; nobody had bribed you or offered to bribe 
 3'ou to give a different opinion that I know of. 
 
 Immediately after you resigned your office of Attorne3--General, 
 did you not receive a large retainer (wof too large for such a ser- 
 vice) on behalf of the Central Pacific Railroad, to argue this very 
 case of theirs before the Executive or other departments of the 
 government ? And did j'ou not so argue ? 
 
 Nay, did ^you not, under the pressure of your fees, go to the 
 President and use all possible political, personal and legal influ- 
 ence upon him, as his late law adviser, to prevail upon the Presi- 
 
26 
 
 dent to approve that map and thereby lay the foundation for filching 
 out of the people of the United States, in land and bonds, quite as 
 many millions as j^ou are years old? Do you yourself believe that 
 5'ou received j-our retainers on 3-om' supposed merits as a lawyer, or 
 simpl}" because of the knowledge obtained and influence acquired by 
 you in the case — because 5'bu had been Attorney-General? Of 
 course the railroad got j'ou as ex^ Attorney -General^ not as lawj-er. 
 If the latter had been what they paid for, they would have retained 
 you before, as you were a better lawyer before you were Attornej^- 
 General than after. M}^ dear Judge, getting into high office seems 
 to have shrivelled 3'ou up as a law^-er somehow, as a ripe pear is 
 sometimes by too much light in the fall ; at least I thought so 
 when we tried the "Weld case together, when 3'ou let j'our clients in 
 for a $400,000 judgment. 
 
 I am making this letter too long. Judge, so that I will not say 
 an^'thing now about the other retainers you took against the gov- 
 ernment in other railroads and the wool case, where you not 
 only argued what the law was, but testified what j'ou, as legislator, 
 enacted it to be, and so the government lost three-quarters of a 
 million. 
 
 M}^ quiver is by no means exhausted. I am keeping a few 
 arrows for the next fight. 
 
 As to office-jobbing, by which, if I understand, 3"ou mean selling 
 offices, I never received, directly or indirectly, one penn}" for put- 
 ting any man in or out of office. Nor have I ever known but a 
 single officer of my recommendation fail in his duty to the govern- 
 ment, and as soon as I had knowledge of that failure I recommended 
 his removal. 
 
 The next charge which 3'ou leave to be inferred against me is 
 '■' caucus-packing." I hardly know that I precisely understand what 
 you mean by that. If you mean that when I have been a can- 
 didate for elective office I have wished my friends to attend the 
 caucus in m}' behalf, I have done that, and no more ; and yon, I 
 am certain, have done- the same. First, because at that State Con- 
 vention where j-ou appeared to oppose me, I am informed that you 
 were elected a delegate at a caucus in Concord where there were 
 but seven indi\aduals present, and foui- of them j-our relatiACS by 
 blood or marriage. I never packed or unpacked a caucus so badly 
 as that in my life. Again, at the last caucus in Concord to nom- 
 inate delegates to the Seventh District Convention, the action of 
 
i7 
 
 which you bolt, when 3-011 presided, fearing that there were not 
 enough of your friends present to carrj'the caucus, delayed the pro- 
 ceedings until your son and your retainers scoured the streets of 
 Concord and hauled men into the caucus, and were enabled by so 
 doing to get twelve majority, out of one hundred and eight voters, 
 against me, j-ou yourself holding the hat into which the ballots 
 were deposited ; so that I am told some men on whom you had 
 influence or other claims did not vote as they had previously 
 declared they would do. But of this I speak of information and 
 belief, and not of personal knowledge. 
 
 I believe now I have examined ever}' charge j-ou bring against 
 me in your letter. I have opposed to every one that aflects my 
 personal character my denial, and I challenge the proof in a single 
 instance to invalidate that denial. You yourself have been careful 
 to so word the charges that I cannot hold you responsible for either 
 of them in any forum where the questions can be tested by evi- 
 dence. Make any charge reflecting on my character as an honest 
 man and a good citizen, directly, and 3-ou will have an opportunity 
 to make good that charge before some tribunal that can take 
 jurisdiction over it. 
 
 Your dislike, to give it no harsher name, toward me will incite 3'ou 
 to destroy a political rival who, you think, — but there 3'ou are 
 wrong, — defeated your nomination before the United States Sen- 
 ate. I want to assure 3'ou now, in this public manner, — and any 
 Senator that knows to the contrary will inform 3'ou if I am wrong, — 
 that in that contest I took no part. I deemed you unfit for a Judge 
 of the Supreme Court of the United States for reasons of fitness 
 not affecting your personal integrity, but for reasons of the same 
 nature as would prevent my putting a balky horse in a team, even 
 if he were well blooded. I did not interfere, however, with ^'our 
 confirmation, because everj-body in Washington knew that 3'ou did 
 not stand a ghost of a chance of being confirmed. You had been 
 there just long enough for people to know j'ou, and the Senate of 
 the United States is too august a body to be aflected in their action 
 b}' the personal clacque of a mutual-admiration society in Massa- 
 chusetts. Therefore you were rejected, with but twelve Senators, 
 as I arn informed, of either party, voting in j'our favor, after most 
 strenuous efforts in 3-our behalf b}' the two Senators from Massa- 
 chusetts, with the added prestige of a nomination by President 
 Grant, then in the zenith of his power and influence. I don't re- 
 
28 
 
 member now of a single other instance where the nomination of an 
 Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States has 
 been rejected when the majority of the Senate was in political accord 
 with the President. Therefore I infer that there must have been 
 some radical defect as to your personal fitness which caused the 
 catastrophe. I doubt if you fully comprehend what the matter was 
 yourself; because, as I have already toldj'ou, you don't see j'our- 
 self as others see j^ou. 
 
 Now, Judge, you and I have lived in the County of Middle- 
 sex forty-eight years together ; you have known of my incomings 
 and outgoings ; you are a lawyer of ability ; you know the power 
 of evidence. If you know of any act of mine which affects my 
 personal integrity, or believe you can prove one, state it over j^our 
 name specifically, " I know or can prove this or that ; " and if you 
 do prove it, you will destroy me and gratify j'our spleen. 
 
 Ha\'ing thus disposed of yonx political charges against me, I 
 come to what ought, in my judgment, to affect your candidature for 
 any office in the minds of all just men. " Caucus-packing" may 
 be very bad, if by it you understand bringing men into a caucus 
 to carry a political point against fair and honest judgment. Be it 
 so ; but how does that compare in enormity with packing the bench 
 of the Supreme Court of the United States in order to reverse a 
 fair and honest judgment upon a great question of constitutional 
 law and right, and involving the interests of every man in the 
 country? Of this political wickedness. Judge, you are guilt}-, and 
 I now submit the proof. My allegations, j'ou see, are specific, 
 direct, positive ; and I am responsible for them. 
 
 The facts are as follows : — 
 
 As we have seen, you were Attorney-General, at the head of the 
 Department of Justice of the United States, in 18G9. The case of 
 Hephurn vs. Griswold, involving the constitutionalitj- of the legal- 
 tender act, had been and was before the Supreme Court for its 
 final determination in November of that year. On the 27th day of 
 which month the Court came to a conclusion, by a majority of five 
 to three. Chief Justice Chase presiding, that the legal-tender act, 
 even as a war measure, in its action in time of peace, was beyond 
 the constitutional power of Congress. Upon the recommendation 
 of the Department of Justice, of which 5'ou were the chief. Con 
 gress had passed an act (April 10, 1869) , to take effect on the first 
 Monday of December, that there should be appointed an additional 
 
20 
 
 judge. The Court had postponed the announcement of their deci- 
 sion of November 27, 1869, as to the constitutionality of the legal- 
 tender act until the seventh day of February, 1870, in order to give 
 time to write up their opinions. 
 
 It was the duty of the Attornej'-General, as head of the Depart- 
 ment of Justice, to advise the President as to the appointment of 
 judges of the Supreme Court. The President was so advised 
 that you^ yourself, the Attorney-General, were nominated on 
 the 14th of December, 18G9, to that seat so created. You had 
 alread}' made a decision in favor of the constitutionality of the legal- 
 tender act in what was known as the " Essex Company Cases" 
 when on the bench of Massachusetts, as well as in the case of 
 Davis and Parl'er. 
 
 On the day after you were nominated — to wit, the 15th day of 
 December — Judge Grier resigned his seat on the Supreme Ben^h, 
 to take effect on the 1st day of February, 1870. On the 20th day 
 of December, the President, on the recommendation, it is to be pre- 
 sumed, of the Department of Justice, nominated Secretary Stanton 
 to the vacancy to be created by the resignation of Mr. Justice 
 Grier. Secretary Stanton's views on the question of the constitu- 
 tionality of the legal-tender act were as well known as 3'our own ; 
 but, to the grief of all, he died some four daj^s after his nomination. 
 Meanwhile the decision of the Supreme Court on the constitution- 
 ality of the legal-tender act had become known, and was commented 
 on in the public press, — the opinion of Mr. Justice Grier having 
 been directed by the Court to be read on the 29th of Januar}', 
 before his resignation took effect on the 1st of February. On the 
 third day of February, your nomination, as I have before stated, 
 was quite unanimously rejected by the Senate. If Stanton had 
 lived and 3'ou had been confirmed, then you would thus have added 
 two judges t-o the bench to make a majority to reverse the 
 decision against the constitutionality of the legal-tender act. 
 You know, without my telling you, how much your conduct 
 in regard to this decision of the Court affected the judg- 
 ment of the Judiciar3' Committee of the Senate upon 3-our 
 case. The opinions of the Court were read on the 7th day 
 of February. On the 8th day of February, it appears by 
 the record of the Senate, being cabinet da}', you advised the 
 nomination of two judges who had already formed and given 
 legal opinions in favor of the constitutionality of the legal- 
 
50 
 
 tender act. It was not the fault of these gentlemen that they 
 were thus put upon the Court to make a given decision, be- 
 cause they knew nothing of the purpose ; but, b}- your action, 
 the majority of the Court was changed so that thc}' would stand 
 five to four upon that question, as they afterwards, upon a reargu- 
 ment of it, did stand. You had tried to call up the original case for 
 reargument and reconsideration, but failed. Having thus packed 
 the Court on j'our side of the question, 3-ou applied to the Court to 
 bring forward two other cases for argument, which application 
 was granted, so that the question whether greenbacks were money 
 was brought before a Court to which j-ou had added two judges 
 who had formed and expressed an opinion favorable to your side 
 of the case. What would you sa}- of me, if in one of m}' cases I 
 had used official power to put jurors on the panel whom I knew had 
 formed and expressed an opinion in favor of my client's case ? Is 
 it any better because the Attornej'-General does the same thing in 
 behalf of the government? The jurors would not be to blame if 
 the}' did not know why the}' were put on the jur}-, as did not the 
 judges in this case. I do not speak of the decision, whether right 
 or wrong. Of course, the decision was 3'our way. B}'' your 
 action, and yours alone, as the head of the Department of Justice, 
 in advising the President, the Court was packed with a majority of 
 judges to determine one way a great constitutional question and 
 reverse a solemn decision already made. 
 
 You now claim to be in favor of the immediate resumption of 
 specie payments. If you had let the first decision of the Court stand, 
 and not taken this extraordinary means to reverse it, which j-ou did, 
 the countr}^ would have returned to specie payments then and there, 
 because we should have had no other constitutional mone}-, the green, 
 back having been declared no longer to be money, or legal tender for 
 debts, and we should have had no money but gold and silver. You 
 think such a return to specie pa3'ments desirable. To that you alone 
 were the obstructionist. It is your action alone which prevented a 
 resumption of specie payments more than six years ago, which 30U 
 think now so vital, "affecting the industry, the wages, the prop- 
 erty, the prosperity of every member of the communit}-." I quote 
 from your letter. Whj^, then, did you not let the resumption of 
 specie paj^ments alone when it had come by the action of the 
 Supreme Court of the United States ? 
 
 If the resumption of specie paj'ments will do all you claim for it, 
 
31 
 
 what mischief you have done by preventing it, and how? By 
 packing, with judges whom you knew would decide the question in 
 your favor, the Supreme Court of the United States, — an act of 
 political corruption, and fraught with dangers greater than any 
 other which has ever occurred in the history of the nation. 
 
 Following j-our teaching, what shall prevent the Democratic 
 party, if the}' can get in power, from creating additional judgeships, 
 to which the judges can be appointed by President Tilden, con- 
 firmed by the Senate, who will make a majorit}' of the Court, to 
 decide that every act of the government by which the rebellion 
 was suppressed, by which the rebel debt was repudiated, and by 
 which payment for slaves was inhibited, are unconstitutional and 
 void? You taught the Democratic party that lesson. You set 
 them the example. You shew them that trick, and I doubt not 
 the}' will profit by j-our teaching and jonr example. 
 
 Judge Hoar, if I ever do anything so terribl}- mischievous to the 
 institutions of m}' countr}- as this, I will hide my head in shame, 
 and never again let it be seen among men, lest I should be pointed 
 at as one who has polluted the courts of justice in the highest 
 Court of his countr}'. 
 
 I wish, for 3'onr sake, and the sake of Massachusetts, I could 
 stop here ; but justice requires still further illumination of yoiM 
 record. Having done what 3'ou had done, and resorted to the 
 demoralizing proceeding j'ou had to secure a judgment of the 
 Supreme Court of the United States in favor of the constitu- 
 tionality of the legal-tender act, and to have the gi'eenback sus- 
 tained as the true and constitutional money, and to prevent an 
 immediate resumption of specie payments, — you were elected as a 
 representative to Congress from the Seventh District, and there in 
 3'our place made a motion that the resumption of specie paj^ments 
 should take place on the first da}- of September, 1874, or in less 
 than five months, which motion, when amended to the fourth day of 
 July, 1876, hardly obtained twenty votes in a house composed of a 
 two-thirds majority of your party friends. But, wonderful to relate ! 
 in advocating that motion, you made an argument that greenbacks 
 were not money, — the very greenback money which you had caused 
 to be decided to be money and legal tender, even by debauching the 
 course of justice in the highest com't of the land. 
 
 I give your words from the Congressional Record : — 
 
LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 
 
 32 013 785 494 6 
 
 " Vol. 2, Part 3, 43d Congress. 
 
 " April 9, 1874. 
 "I have no time or inclination to discuss with any gentleman 
 the question whether whatever the government chooses to call 
 money is money ; whether by putting a government stamp upon a 
 piece of paper you can make it money. I believe that you might 
 just as well say that you make a man an honest or sensible man 
 by giving him a certificate that he is elected to Congress." 
 
 Can political tergiversation, —can corruption in "method of 
 political procedure,"— can tampering with the judiciary of the 
 country, — can playing, as if with dice, with great interests and 
 great constitutional questions, — can undermining and sapping the 
 very foundations of all our liberties and rights by interference with 
 the course of justice in the Supreme Court — further go? 
 
 I grieve that I am obliged to make these disclosures. I would I 
 were permitted to draw a veil over them and blot them out from 
 the record forever ; but it is impossible. They stand there written 
 in letters of light for the condemnation of every true, patriotic and 
 right-thinking man. 
 
 I submit this record of yours to the judgment of the people 
 and of your peers in the profession of the law. I submit it to the 
 learned judges, your brothers upon the bench in the several courts 
 of the Union, and ask, with all the solemnity the gravity of the act 
 demands, what ought to be done to the man who has thus pulled 
 down the main pillar which supports the fabric of the government, 
 the trust and credit which all men ought to give to the decisions of 
 the highest judicial tribunal of the United States? 
 
 My'sense of right and propriety of conduct may not be too 
 keen. Of that others must judge. But I thank God I can go to 
 my pillow, as I am about doing, as I finish this communication to 
 you, without the stain of such an act upon my conscience. 
 I have the honor to subscribe myself, 
 Very respectfully, 
 
 Your friend and servant, 
 
 BENJ. F. BUTLER. 
 
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