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A CHAPLAIN'S

Campaign with Gen. Butlee,

FEINTED FOE THE A.TTTIIOE.
1865.

A CHAPLAIN'S
CAMPAIGl^ WITH GENEEAL BUTLEE.

New-Toek, Jan. 4, 1865.
To Major-Oeneral B. F. Butler, Commanding Department
of Virginia and Worth- Carolina :
Geneeal : Under date of Sept. 26th, 1864, I wrote out and
sent to you a pretty full Statement of my case, being advised
thereto by Colonel Edward W. Serrell, speaking, as I under
stood him, at your instance or request. I now beg leave to
lay before you another statement, and to invite your special
attention to it. The main particulars of this latter statement
were noted down by me a few days after their occurrence, so
that I feel pretty confident I have them about right. And I
think it may do you good to reproduce them to you, and to
give you a fair opportunity to ruminate them at your leisure.
For the better understanding of the matter in hand, I will
preface it with a few items from my Statement of Sept. 26th.
Before going to the seat of war, which was in February,
1862, I entered into an engagement with Parke Godwin,
Esq., of the !N"ew-Toi'k Evening Post, to write for that paper.
While in the Department of the South under Generals Hun
ter, Mitchel, and Gillmore, I made that engagement known
to them, and had occasional interviews with them, or their
representatives, in reference to it. Soon after landing at Ber
muda Hundred, last May, I went to your Provost-Marshal,
told him who I was, informed him of my engagement with
Mr. Godwin, and asked if there were any restrictions on

4 A chaplain's CAMPAIGN
newspaper correspondence, or any regulations concerning it.
I understood him to say there were none, and so thought I
should not be wrong in continuing to write for the paper.
My articles written for publication in the Evening Post
were signed "Loyalty," and published with that signature.
Besides these, I often wrote private letters to Mr. Godwin,
which were not meant to be published, and were not pub
lished. Soon after your grand defeat up on Proctor's Creek, near
Drury's Bluff, I wrote a private letter to Mr. Godwin, giving
what I believed to be a fair and truthful account of that ad
venture. I put the matter in that form, partly because I had
some doubt as to the propriety of setting it directly before the
public. Most of the letter appeared in the Evening Post of
May 24th. As a private letter, it was signed with my own
name, but was printed without any signature, the editor in
troducing it with a sort of voucher for its authenticity.
On the 29th of May, General Gillmore ordered me to
New-York on special duty ; which duty, he said, was to
superintend the printing of some official matter to be pub
lished by Mr. Yan Nostrand. The General, on giving me
the order, said he would send to the publisher for me particu
lar instructions in what I was to do. As I had, the night be
fore, learned by telegraph, that my son "William was very dan
gerously ill, the General gave me at the same time permission
to go to my family in Massachusetts.
My son died the first week in June ; and his mother,
broken down with grief and care, was sick nearly all the
Summer ; so much so, that at one time she was hardly expected
to live. I was also very much out of health myself, from the
effects of a bilious intermittent fever, contracted while on duty
in South-Carolina. About the middle of June, I wrote to
Mr. Van ISTostrand, to know if any instructions had come for
me from General Gillmore. He replied that none had come,
and if any should come he would notify me at once. Not
very long after this. General Gillmore was relieved of his
command of the Tenth Army Corps, so that I was no longer
subject to his order.
Early in July, I was in New-York, and there received an

WITH GENEEAL BUTLER. 5
order from you remanding me to my regiment. As our Colo
nel was then in the city, I called on him to know where I
should report. He replied, in effect, that he could not tell,
the regiment being so scattered that he hardly knew where
the headquarters were : "I do not know," said he, " but I
am as much the headquarters as anywhere." The next day,
I learned that my wife was a good deal worse ; and, being
somewhat perplexed as to my duty, I ventured to return to
my family, where I was soon after so prostrated with illness
as to be unable to travel. Owing to these causes, I was de
layed from day to day, till I became discouraged, and resolved
to offer my resignation. Accordingly I went to New- York,
and on the first of September handed my resignation to Col
onel Serrell, who said he would forward it to you, and that
he thought there was no need of my going on to the seat of
war. On the 13th, the Colonel, being still in New- York, as I also
was, received a telegram as follows :
" Butlee's Headqttaetees, Sept. 13, 1864.
" To Colonel Serrell, 57 West Washington Place :
" Find Chaplain Hudson, of your regiment, who has been
ordered to report to his regiment, and has failed to obey the
order. Take his parole in writing forthwith to appear at
these Headquarters : if he fails to give his parole, have him
sent here to me under guard. Your special attention is called
to the executing of this order.
(Signed) "B. F. Butlee,
" Major-General."
I had been told you were a vindictive man, but was loth to
believe it. This order looked rather threatening indeed ;
nevertheless, I gave my parole at once, hastened forward as
fast as I could, and " appeared" at your Headquarters on the
19th. As for your words — " if he fails to give his parole,
have him sent here to me under guard" — I thought them
somewhat brutal in temper and spirit ; for you did not know
me personally ; the fact of my being a clergyman ought not
to have been with you any presumption against me ; that I

6 A chaplain's campaign'
had expressed, an adverse opinion of your military leadership,
was no certain proof of a bad heart in me ; and you had no
doubt seen my resignation, which had been approved and for
warded to you by my Colonel, and from which you might
have learned that I was suffering from " continued and obsti
nate ill-health, such as to render me unfit for the service."
But let that pass : " you must think, look you, that the worm
will do his kind."
I had schooled myself well for the meeting with you ; was
thoroughly armed with the soft answer that turneth away
wrath, though not able .to turn away your wrath. I did not
fear to meet you, Sir, for I supposed you to be so much like
other men, that integrity of purpose and a fair cause would
be some security with you. In this I was mistaken. In due
time I was summoned to an interview with you, which proved
to be somewhat long, and rather interesting — at least to me.
It was very soon evident that you had called me before you,
not for the purpose of hearing me or of learning any thing
about me, but merely for the pleasure of browbeating and
condemning me. During the interview I observed and studied
you intently; of that you may be sure. And, however it
may have been before, I know you now — know you like a
book. Indeed, my General, you disappointed me much.
You did not appear nearly so weU as I had expected ; your
wits seemed badly out of tune, your whole inner man distem
pered with unbenevolent passion. You put on airs, indeed
you did, that were both mean and silly. Some parts of your
performance reminded me of — " Then, a soldier, full of strange
oaths, and bearded like the pard, seeking the bubble repu
tation even in the cannon's mouth." But pardon me : I
do not mean to stick upon you the latter part of this descrip
tion ; for I know of no cannon's mouth that you have ever
" sought unto" for reputation or any other bubble. I have
seen you ride, and I have heard you swear, though I never
saw you doing both at the same time ; but, from what has
been told me of your accomplishments in that line, I am
moved to suggest that you take this as your motto : " Come,
wilt thou see me ride ? and when I am o' horseback I will
swear."

WITH GENERAL BUTLER. 7
Was it because I was a clergyman. Sir, that you thought to
storm me into confusion or to strike me dumb by a coarse ex
hibition of Butlerism ? Did you hope to gefyourself honour
on me by enacting the court-room ruffian at me ? and this too
in a place where there was no court to protect me against
you, or, which was of more importance, to protect you
against» yourself? where you were at once accuser, attorney,
and judge ? You proceeded with me throughout just as
though you were cross-examining a witness. But your repu
tation as a low criminal lawyer forbids me to think that you
often work through the process so infelicitously as you did on
that occasion. I have stood a much sharper cross-examina
tion. Sir ; but the lawyer who conducted it was also a gentle
man, and therefore I was not disgusted with it.
You first called me to account for having been absent with
out leave. But I soon explained this, so that you did not
seem to think much could be made out of it ; not much, that
is, save as a handle for working out some other purpose.
For, of course, you knew well enough that in the matter of
"voluntary absence" custom and usage allow a somewhat
wider margin to chaplains than to other officers. And rightly
so, inasmuch as chaplains, besides being on rather small pay,
have no chance of promotion, but must end in that respect
just as they begin ; so that ambition, the soldier's virtue, can
have no place with them : not to mention that their office
does not stand in so close connection with the efficiency of an
army as in case of other officers. But, in truth, the circum
stances of my case were such as, with all fair-minded men,
would go far to excuse any officer in doing as I did.
And so, on my explaining , the matter, you presently left
this topic, and, with a good deal of unnecessary swaggering
and bluster, took me up on that which, as I knew right well
all the while, was the real " head and front of my offending."
In my letter to Mr. Godwin, already mentioned, I had faulted
your generalship in the military operations of last May near
Bermuda Hundred. It was for this that you wanted to pinch
and wring me. And when I gave you a true account of the
matter, this, instead of appeasing your wrath, only seemed to
kindle it the more ; perhaps because it placed the responsi-

8 A chaplain's CAMPAIGN
bility of the publication on those whom you could not reach.
And here I found you thoroughly in earnest ; but I also
found that you could not well be in earnest without playing
the old bruiser. Your motive, my General, was revenge, too
palpably so to admit of any question ; indeed, I think you
hardly cared to disguise it. And your passion made you un
wise, or at least unshrewd ; its effect being, I should think, to
disedge your wits and dismantle your judgment. At times
you waxed pretty decidedly tempestuous, especially when
General Gillmore was your theme ; repeatedly denouncing
him as " a damned scoundrel" and " a liar ;" — language which,
had you been perfectly cool, I doubt whether even you would
have considered exactly "becoming an officer and a gentle
man." You seemed, indeed, to be labouring under some ma
lignant hallucination about General Gillmore, as though he
were ghosting you, and to have got me strangely mixed up
with him therein. At first, you insisted upon it that I had
colluded with him, and knowingly lent myself to some naughty
designs of his against you. And when I refuted this charge,
you then ventilated your inward parts, in effect, and nearly in
words, as follows : " As for the great villain in this case, he is
beyond my reach, I cannot get at him directly ; but, sir, I
have got you : he has been making use of you as a poor tool
against me ; and now, sir, you must serve my turn against
him." In proof of my having conspired with him to injure
you, you alleged that his ordering me to New- York on special
duty was a mere pretext for getting me out of the way, and
that I knew it to be so. I assured you that I had no know
ledge of the sort ; that I had received the order and acted
upon it in perfect good faith, honestly believing General Gill
more had some real and legitimate work for me to do in New-
York ; and in proof of this, I cited the fact of my having writ
ten to Mr. Van Nostrand for the instructions which he was to
send on for me.
At one stage of the dialogue, when you were trying to
make me say something untrue of General Gillmore, my an
swer not being such as you wanted, you exclaimed, " That's a
lie, sir ! a damned lie !" which, though polite enough as com
ing from you, did not strike me as in perfectly good taste.

WITH GENERAL BUTLER. 9
But I forget : your taste was formed in an atmosphere which
I probably cannot appreciate. I have indeed read the Bible
some, read Shakespeare some, preached some ; you have —
^practised. That you are a brave man, I am willing to be
lieve; but I doubt, yea, I doubt very much, whether you
would have dared to speak thus to one who was in a condition
to resent it. Being a brave man, you ought not, my General,
thus to use the dialect of a cowardly ruffian. Eemember, I
pray you, what it is that defileth a man. And the next time
you feel the inspiration of valiantness upon you, don't at
tempt to make proof of it by assaulting one whose hands are
tied. At another time, on my pleading ignorance in a matter
where you did not want me to be ignorant, you exploded
nearly thus : " Don't tell me that, sir ; come, sir, you are not a
fool ;" and then you added, with, I thought, more of truth
than politeness, " You are an ordinary man, sir, an ordinary
man." This, I believe, was the nearest approach to wit that
you were guilty of during the interview. And this was in
deed pretty fair, though not nearly so good as I had expected
from you. I had it in my mind to reply, "And you. General,
are a very extraordinary man ;" but it was not my part to
bandy wit or words with you, and so I refrained. On the
whole, it was pretty clear that you did not regard me as a
gentleman. But were you not something at fault in suppos
ing this to be a good reason for not behaving like a gentleman
yourself? In the course of our interview, you made several Scripture
allusions, but I did not think you particularly happy in them ;
in truth, you seemed more pedantic than learnedly-wise in
your drawings from that source. For instance, you charged
me with malice in writing the letter to Mr. Godwin. I as
sured you otherwise ; that I was indeed very much distressed
at the turn things took on the 16th of May ; but that I had
all along, both before and after that event, been praising you
and standing up for you ; though, to be sure, I thought you
would be more useful, and do yourself more credit, in some
high administrative position, than where you were. To which
you replied nearly thus ; " I understand you, sir. You are

10 A chaplain's CAMPAIGN
doubtless familiar with the Scriptures. Was it not Ahab — I
think it was Ahab," (you probably meant Joab,) " who said
to some one, ' 0 my brother, my brother ! ' and at the same
time thrust his dagger into him ?" " But, General," said I,
"how does that apply to me?" whereupon you exclaimed:
" You stabbed me in the dark, sir ! you stabbed me in the
dark ! But I have caught you at last ; I have you in my power
now, sir, and I am going to punish you." Again : I had oc
casion to remark that our regiment was very much split up
and scattered. " Yes," said you ; " when the shepherd is
away, the sheep will get scattered." I replied : " But, Gen
eral, in this case the sheep were pretty well scattered before
the shepherd went away." Indeed, Sir, I thought you must
be rather hard up for matter against me, thus to allege my
absence as the occasion of that which you could not but
know to have sprung from the necessities of the service.
You accused me of stealing from the Government, in that
I had been taking pay without doing any duty. I told you
that I had drawn no pay for any of the time since the date of
your order remanding me to my regiment ; and that I was
willing to lose it, if it were judged that I ought to lose it.
But, as an offset for this interval of leisure, I then told yon
that, if I had been in the way to receive pay without work
ing for it, I had also done a good deal of work without get
ting any pay for it ; that I was on duty in New- York and on
Staten Island upward of three months before I could get
mustered into the service, our officers in command assuring
me, meanwhile, that I would be paid ; that, during this time,
I did some very hard and important work, but had never re
ceived any pay, and had given up all hope of getting any.
Whereupon you remarked : " That was no credit to you, sir ;
you expected to be paid." " Of course I did," said I; "for.
General, I am a poor man, with a family to support ; so that
I cannot afford to work without wages, neither would it be
right for me to do so." I then told you, further, that while I
was thus on duty, word came that our men were suffering
dreadfully for want of rubber blankets, and an earnest appeal
was made to me to procure them relief That this was for
me a very hard undertaking, but I set right about it, and did

WITH GENERAL BUTLEE. 11
not pause till it was done. That, after working with a;ll my
might for many days, I at last engaged some dealers to fur
nish the blankets, on my undertaking to pay for them when the
men should be paid. That, accordingly, I gave my written
obligation in the sum of $756.25, and thus got the men sup
plied ; the blankets being put to them for precisely what they
were put to me. That, owing to some misunderstanding, it
was a long time before the men were paid; and when at
length a payment was made, some had died, others had been
discharged for disability, and the regiment, moreover, was so
scattered that I could not get at them. That for two years I
used my best diligence in collecting the money, and still was
more than $150 out of pocket on that score. And that all
this extra-official work was done purely out of kindness to the
men and concern for the good of the service. I told you this
in all honesty and simplicity, for I still supposed you to be a
man. And I spoke of it, not in the way of complaint, but
as a fair argument of integrity and earnestness in the cause.
You replied to it all by comparing me to Judas ! and, as I
did not see the aptness of the comparison, you then observed,
that I had doubtless taken care to see myself well paid for
bearing the bag in that business. You, my General, you were
base enough to say that ! And I shall hold you to it.
Once more : The current of our talk led mo to assure you
that I had had none but friendly feelings towards you, and
had wished nothing but good to you ; and I stated certain
facts in evidence of this : at which you turned upon me your
most eloquent look, and went to expressing, with tongue and
eyes, the utmost contempt for me and my feelings ; in fact,
you could hardly find words big enough, or-looks black enough,
to convey your magnanimous scorn. I was truly shocked, Sir,
to see that pure and beautiful face of yours all marred and
turned awry by so distortive an effort. " Bless us," thought
I, " what if his face should marble in that shape ! 'twould be
enough to scare all the gods and goddesses from their pedes
tals." Otherwise, I found no fault with your grim mirth, and
I still find none ; for I really did not think myself worth your
revenge ; and my greatest wonder all along has been, that you
did not see that I was far too insignificant to justify any such

12 A chaplain's campaign
emphatic notice as you were taking of me. Indeed, my Gen
eral, I must say, you have been hunting rather small game for
a man of your size. But I doubted whether even your huge
resentment could lift me out of my proper obscurity into any
sort of consequence. To be sure, your violence, though un-
heroical enough, was in some respects rather flattering to me ;
yet I was not altogether pleased with it.
But I was much struck with the disproportion, or what
seemed such, between your scorn of me and your resentment
of what I had done. For you spoke with exceeding bitterness
of the outrageous abuse that had been poured upon you by the
Press all over the country, in consequence of what I had writ
ten about you. So, too, on my telling you that I should have
resigned long ago, but for the necessity of being at hand to
collect the money for the rubber blankets, you exclaimed :
" Would to God you had done so, sir ! would to God you had
never come here !" Perhaps it was my vanity that led me
to note these passages, but note them I did. And it really
seemed to me that if I had been, as I certainly had not, the
guilty cause of defeating your aspirations for the Presidency,
you could hardly have been more fluent of railing and bitter
ness against me. I have indeed been credibly informed since,
that you hoped and intrigued for the nomination, first, at Bal
timore, and then, failing of that, at Chicago ; but I am perfect
that you never stood the slightest chance at either place, nor
would have done so, though I had spent all the brains and all
the ink I ever had, in writing up your generalship.
One passage of our conversation I am sure it will delight
you to be reminded of. I told you, and truly, that I had
often, on hearing you assailed, defended you, and upheld you
to be a just and kind-hearted man. You replied that you
meant to be just, but, as for kind-heartedness, you spurned the
imputation ; that you were not kind-hearted, and you scorned
to be thought so : it was too like the Yankee phrase " clever
fellow," as applied to one rather weak in the upper storey. To
which I answered, that I had used the word in a good sense ;
and that I had found kindness of heart to be of some use
among the soldiers. I noticed that, at the hearing of this, your
countenance fell somewhat, thus slightly indicating that you

WITH GENERAL BUTLEE. 13
wanted much to be popular with the soldiers, and that you
were sensible you were not so.
I spoke then as I thought, but I now understand you better.
And I acquit you of being kind-hearted : whatever may be
your deserts, you clearly deserve no such imputation as that.
It has been said that against stupidity the gods themselves are
powerless. And so I admit that against the notes of compas
sion you have the strength of an ox, the firmness of a bear.
Certainly my experience of you failed to discover the slightest
stirring of a humane or generous chord in your bosom : touch
you where I might, I still found you as hard as a ffint ; and as
your hardness is that of burnt clay, and not of any wintry
congelation, of course no warmth can damage it ; it is sun
proof and sky -proof : whether it is proof against all other
forces, will be better seen when " even-handed justice com
mends the ingredients of your poisoned chalice to your own
lips." If you are covetous of such honour, take it, for it is
yours. Yet I remember. General Sherman, in rehearsing the
noble traits of his beloved McPherson, that great young sol
dier — " the garland of the war " — 0, too soon withered ! —
mentions kindness of heart as among the noblest. But then
General Sherman, like his fallen brother, the theme of his
praise, is framed of other stuff than you ; being indeed as dif
ferent from you in this respect as he is in warlike achievement.
And I shall henceforth be careful, withal, how I accuse you
of being just ; I have tasted your vindictiveness too much to
repeat that mistake. It is certain, moreover, that a man with
out kindness of heart cannot be just; for in the nature of
things such a man is all compact of selfishness, which is not
the complexion of justice ; and it is not in him to know the
power or respect the order of so high and sacred a thing, how
ever he may counterfeit the forms and language thereof
" Where pity's held intrusive, or turned out,
There wisdom wUI not enter, nor true power,
Nor aught that dignifies humanity."
For you must know, my General, that such a man wants
the corresponding faculty, the answering sense. So that you
might as well discourse the harmonies of justice to a congre-

14 A chaplain's campaign
gation of wild asses, as to him. You, Sir, a just man ! and
fearing nothing else so much as a bodily hurt or a popular
hiss ! You a just man ! and comprehending no higher force
in human affairs than terror and torture 1 As for your sense
or idea of justice, one half of it, I think, must have been in
high glee when you juggled and spirited off — whither, O !
whither ?— that $50,000 of gold in New-Orleans. For the
other half, why, when a Shylock or a General Butler talks of
justice he means revenge. The smell of blood, sweeter to
such than the perfumes of Arabia, is all the sympathy with
justice they have. And so, in the name and behalf of this
august power, " whose seat is the bosom of God, whose voice
the harmony of the world," it may with special fitness be said
or sung, — note it, my General,* —
" The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils ;
The motions of Ms soul are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus :
Let no stjoh man be teustbd."
Out of divers other noteworthy passages in our interview,
I shall stay to cite but one more. Referring to my sacred
Calling, you scoffed at me as a " hypocrite," tossed off a char
acteristic sneer about my unfitness to be a Christian minister,
and then went on, in what sounded very like cant, to lecture
me somewhat on the duties of that office. I made no reply to
this at the time. But let me assure you now, my General,
that I am a clergyman, " in good and regular standing," of
the Protestant Episcopal Church. You ought to have known
this, for I had preached and ministered a good many times in
St. Anne's Church, Lowell, where your own family used to
attend. The worthy Eector, Dr. Edson, has known me pretty-
well for some fifteen years ; probably he has learned as much
about me in that time as you could learn during the fifteen
minutes we had been together when you emptied your scoffs
upon me ; and, if you care to have any information concerning
me, I daresay he can give it you. Meanwhile, as regards the
* It is well known in the army that General Butler has a strong aversion to music.

WITH GENERAL BUTLEE. 15
matter in question, I demur to your sentence ; you are not the
proper judge of me in that respect. And a man of your fln-
ished proportions should not take upon him to know too much.
Be content, I pray you, with your mastership in the art of
war, and with the exercise of those unique graces which have
made your name a proverb. A bishop's mitre can hardly sit
well on the laurelled brows of such a mighty conqueror as the
hero of Big Bethel and Proctor's Creek.
Such are a few items of what I experienced at your hand
during our interview. You charged me to my face with lying,
stealing, fraud, and hypocrisy ; you hkened me to " Ahab," the
traitor-murderer, and to Judas, the traitor-thief; all this, too,
when you knew you had me in your power, so that I could
not answer your reproaches nor repel your insults. I do not
claim to have given the passages in the order of their occur
rence, but I do claim to have set them forth with substantial
truth. And I think these specimens are a pretty fair average
of your behaviour on that occasion. What do you think of
them now, my General ? Do they not something smack of
what Hamlet calls " the insolence of office ?" Can you, on
cool reflection, can you think it was altogether handsome in
you, a Major-General in the army of the United States, thus
to insult over a minister of the Gospel, who was in your pow
er, and could not help himself against you ? Have you read,
and do you remember, the well-known saying of Burke, that
" the hatefuUest part of tyranny is its contumelies ?" For
myself, permit me to say, that I cannot think the performance
was very creditable to you either as a gentleman, a general, a
lawyer, or a theologian. It seems hardly possible that such an
achievement should have come by imitation, so I suppose it was
purely the result of character. Yet I am persuaded that you
did yourself great injustice, and that you would have made a
much better showing of your parts, had you deigned to exer
cise a little of that kind-heartedness which you so pointedly
disclaimed. Malice, my General, malice is a potent stultifier.
It is not for me to boast, and I certainly have nothing to
boast of in this affair ; but I believe I bore your savage inso
lence tolerably well, considering the inflammable stuff which
my friends tell me I am made of. But, whether I bore it like

16 A chaplain's campaign
a man or not, I certainly felt it as a man. And I am bold to
say, that " if I blushed, it was to see a general want manners."
I felt, too, more than once, a pinch of grief, that the higher
officers of our army, soldiers and gentlemen as they are, who
know what belongs to honour, and civility, and manhood, should
have such a low-minded savage consorted with them. But I
do not remember to have been once betrayed into any loss of
temper or of self-control. Either I was not disconcerted at all,
or else I was too much disconcerted to be conscious of it. The
interview, I confess, was not perfectly delightful to me ; yet I
thought you enjoyed it rather less than I did. The worst part
of it was, that you had a lieutenant, a short-hand writer, sit
ting behind the table, who kept writing all the while, evident
ly taking us down. I was partly amused, partly vexed, to see
this shoulder-strapped underling, the doer of your dirty work,
laughing at his master's wit ; but I could not help fearing, for
I knew something of your tricks, lest the sequel of all this
should be, a Butlerized version of our interview published to
the world. I bethought me, however, that in that case my
cue also might be,
" A chield's amang yon taking notes,
And, faith, he'll prent it."
Thus much, my General, for the, to me, memorable inter
view which I had the honour of holding with you. Your offi
cial eloquence did not lead me to expect any very gentle usage
from you, and I am bound to say that my usage was far more
ungentle than I anticipated. For I still hoped that the
laws of the service, which both you and I had solemnly en
gaged to observe, would be some shield to me. The inter
view ended (for all such exploits of manhood must have an
end) in your placing me in arrest, and handing me over to
Captain Watson, commandant of your headquarters guard,
who took me to your provost-guard prison, and put me in
what he called a magazine tent. This was a tent nearly filled
with open boxes of powder and other explosive ammunition,
or what seemed such, and among the rest a considerable heap
of large shell, charged, as the Captain said, with Greek fire.
There was little more than vacant room enough for me to lie

with GENEEAL BUTLEE. 17
down, and that was close beside the heap of loaded shell.
The Captain cautioned me jiot to allow a spark of fire in the
tent, and especially not to disturb the shell, lest they should
explode and blow me up. What may have been the motive
of this warning I cannot say, but it had the effect of the 'most
studied inhumanity : I could not help being in continual ap
prehension lest some unlucky step of mine should set the shell
a-tumbling ; but I found out afterwards that they would bear
much rougher handling than I had been led to suppose.
I had never before heard of a magazine tent being set up
in any provost-guard prison. I presume the thing had been
hit upon by you as a novel engine of torture for certain select
victims. It was indeed exquisitely adapted to that end, and
was used with exquisite effect in my case. The device was
worthy alike of your cunning and your "justice," the counsels
of a bad heart and a busy brain being written all over it. If
any thing but a guilty conscience can cause a man " on the
torture of the mind to lie in restless ecstasy," then such, I
think, must have been my condition during the two days
spent under this part of your discipline. Very few can im
agine what I underwent, and I shall not attempt to describe
it. For some time after, as long indeed as I was held within
the reach of your claws, I was subject to frequent turns of
acute distress, which I called " Butler on the brain." Yet I
had been under fire. Sir, and had found myself able to face the
dangers of battle with tolerable composure, these being to me
mere child's play compared to the choice hell-craft with which
you thus made merry at my expense. To have had me ironed,
and set to work in your Dutch Gap Canal, though, to be sure,
it would have looked much worse, and could scarce have fail
ed to draw upon you an immediate storm of reprobation,
would have distressed me nothing so much as this quiet little
arrangement of yours for " punishing " me. Doubtless you
perfectly understood all that.
But I must do you the justice to say, that you soon repudi
ated, apparently, this child of your invention. The magazine
tent, after I had occupied it two days, was taken down, and
the ammunition removed entirely out of the inclosure.
Whether Captain Watson told me what he knew to be false,
2

18 A chaplain's campaign
or whether he was himself deceived, I could not tell ; but,
from the way the men tossed and banged the shell about in
the process of removal, it appeared that the Greek fire, if there
was any in them, had gone too fast asleep to be waked up by
any o^rdinary disturbance. Whether the open boxes of pow
der and other explosive ammunition were also bogus prepara
tions for working out your schemes of torture, I had no means
of ascertaining. I was, and I am, very glad. Sir, that you did
not keep me any longer in that tent. Yet I am far from sus
pecting you of any humanity or kindness of heart, in ordering
the change. You probably learned that this chosen engine of
"justice" was using me up faster than suited your purpose.
To have kept me strained up much longer to such a pitch of
what may be called nervous ecstasy, would have marked you
out too plainly as a deliberate homicide.
When I remonstrated with Captain Watson against being
confined in such a place of torment, he replied that such was
your order ; that is, you ordered him to put me in a tent by
myself, and that was the only tent where he could so put me.
An average nose will readily smell out the meaning of this.
For, of course, such astute tormentors and inquisitors as you,
do not commonly perpetrate their crimes and inhumanities
without providing beforehand some plausible shifts for eluding
the responsibility of their deeds. And so, I make no doubt,
you will say, if you have not already said, that you did not
order me to be put in that tent, nor even know I was put
there. No 1 you only knew that such an engine of torture
stood ready in your prison-pen, and that there was no other
unoccupied tent on the ground. This was enough ; your or
der would send me there, as a matter of course ; yet not so
but that you could ignore the main point, and slip out, if chal
lenged. For such, I have been well assured, is your habitual
craft in managing to throw off upon your " agents and base
second means " the scandal and blame of your practices.
Now, the officer who, under you, had the ordering of my
condition was none other than the lieutenant that had been
present during our interview. He was your confidential min
ister, was inward with you, knew your secret mind, under
stood just what you wanted him to do with me, and was per-

WITH GENERAL BUTLEE. 19
fectly sure that you would uphold him in what he did, how
ever you might make as though you did not mean it. Like
Macbeth in suborning the murder of Banquo, you " required
a clearness ;" and to let you stand clear was an understood part
of his bargain with you ; your very point being, to get certain
things done which you might openly reprove, and secretly
reward. With such creatures at your beck, nothing was easier
than for you to be left in blissful ignorance of whatever you
did not choose to know ; they pleading your orders, and you
disclaiming their particular modes of executing them.
That such was your game in my case, appeared in that, as I
afterwards learned, until my coming the magazine tent had
been most carefully guarded, no prisoner being allowed to
look into it, or even to go up to it ; thus showing that it had
been set apart for a special use. Well, after all, this kind of
moral legerdemain is but an old trick of knaves, to skulk from
danger, or to play at hide-and-seek with their fears. If the
wit of the thing were as great as the meanness, it might en
title you to a place with Titus Oates. You take a deal of
pains, Sir, to cover up your tracks, not observing, meanwhile,
that you are seen covering them. I must add, that in cases
like mine, your orders are not issued through your adjutant-
general's office, but go direct from you to those that are to ex
ecute them, so that no public record is made of the proceed
ings. This method of course arms you, in effect, with full
inquisitorial powers, and precludes any check or hindrance to
the most tyrannical abuse of power. It scarce need be said,
that in the running of this " infernal machine " you do not
scruple to realize all the terrible oppressions of which the
machine is capable.
To resume my narrative : It was nearly dark when Captain
Watson got me housed in the prison. The weather was more
than cool ; the ground in the tent was so wet as to be almost
muddy ; and there I was left without a rag of a blanket to
put under me, or over me, and with nothing to lie on but
some barrel-staves, spread out on the ground. I had told the
Captain that I was somewhat out of health, and rather old for
such hardships, and had asked him to procure me a blanket or
two, offering to pay for them. He said he would try to do so ;

20 A chaplain's campaign
I waited, but no blanket came. At last, a corporal of the
guard, a very civil, kind-hearted man, named Jones, managed
to borrow me a single blanket, which I wrapped round my
shoulders, and spent most of the night in walking to and fro
over the square of ground in front of my tent, not being allowed
to walk beyond it. Even at that I shivered through hour after
hour till near morning, when the same gentle corporal took
me out to the cook-house, and let me sit by the stove and
warm myself. The corporal seemed fearful lest these deeds of
charity shordd come to the knowledge of his officers.
My trunk, containing all my baggage, I had been obliged
to leave at the landing-place, some three fourths of a mile
from your headquarters. Before going into the prison,- 1 had
found means of writing a note to one Lieutenant Davenport,
your Assistant Provost-Marshal, and the doer of your dirty
work referred to above, describing my trunk, telling him where
it was, and requesting him to let me have it, as I greatly need
ed some of the articles in it. He sent me word the trunk
should be brought to me ; I expected it, and was disappointed.
Had I anticipated any such proceedings, I should have gone
first among my old comrades, and engaged some of them to
help me through. But I then-supposed you to be very differ
ent from what you are.
In the njorning, a piece of boiled salt fish, a piece of bread
rather stale, and a cup of coffee without sugar, were given
me. The fish I could not eat, the coffee I could not drink,
and so made my breakfast on bread and water ; which would
have done very well, but that, through cold and want of sleep,
and distress of mind, my stomach was so weak and disordered
that I could not keep the food down. At that time, I was
not allowed to speak with any but officers of the guard ;
and these were all afraid to do any thing for me, or to let any
thing be done ; inferring, as they well might, from the usage
put upon me, either that I was some desperate criminal, or
else that you had strong " personal feelings " against me.
Otherwise, I could easily have found ways to supply my
self with food. Meanwhile, as I have since learned, you and
your creatures were doing what you could to defame and
blacken me, hinting that I was a political offender, that I had

WITH GENERAL BUTLER. 21
been caught gi"^ng aid and comfort to the enemy, and I know
not what other charges, all calculated to set the hearts of men
against me, and to shut up the instincts of kindness in those
about me.
The second day I applied to Captain Watson again for some
blankets, but was told there were none to be had. I also
made another appeal to Lieutenant Davenport for my trunk,
urging my needs still more earnestly, and he promised again
that I should have it. Night came again ; my trunk was still
kept from me; the corporal had been obliged to return the
borrowed blanket ; so that I was left without any thing. Ba
ther late in the evening, I managed to get an interview with
the Captain, told him my condition, and then addressed him
thus : " Captain Watson, I have been under the command of
Generals Hunter, Mitchel, and Gillmore, successively, in the
Department of the South ; while there, I served for a consid
erable time, voluntarily, as chaplain of the provost-guard quar
ters ; and I remonstrated more than once with the command
ing general in behalf of rebel prisoners, who were treated
much better than I am here. And I now pledge you my
word, sir, that if our present relations should ever be revers
ed, I will not treat you as you are treating me." He replied :
" But for your doth, sir, I should hold myself bound to chal
lenge you for that speech." I got no relief from him, his or
ders probably not allowing him to give me any ; but a fellow-
prisoner, Captain Simpson, of a Pennsylvania battery, lent
me a blanket and two narrow boards for the night, partly de
priving himself. I am grieved to learn that this humane and
generous captain has since died. He was a brave and capable
man, had done good service, and carried proofs of it in the
disease that was undermining his life while I knew him. Why
he was thus shut up in your bull-pen I never learned ; his ex
periences there, no doubt, had much to do in causing his
death. On the third day, as I despaired of getting my trunk from
Lieutenant Davenport, I addressed a note directly to you, tell
ing you how it was -with me, and begging you to let me have
my baggage, or at least some part of it, mentioning several arti
cles of which I was in great and pressing need. I was told

22 A chaplain's campaign-
soon after that you had given, or would give orders to have
my trunk brought me. A few hours later, instead of the
trunk, came information that the trunk had disappeared, had
probably been reshipped down the river, and should be sent
for back by the first opportunity. All this appeared to me
rather significant. Was I uncharitable in concluding there ,
had been no serious purpose of getting my baggage to me ? I
know not whether that thing of yours. Lieutenant Davenport,
is still near you. If he be, please make my compliments to
him : tell him, from me, that if he did not respect me nor my
needs, he ought at least to have respected his own word ; and
that the man who does not respect his own word must excuse
me from respecting it. You may add, that in what I saw of
his conduct to other prisoners, he seemed a trifle too fero
cious for one so young. Should he keep on at that rate, he
will crave some thicker beverage than blood by the time he is
as old as you and I are. He knows the whole catechism of
profanity by heart, I should think ; and in his recitations he
stings it home with a spitefulness worthy of your cherishing.
As he has evidently taken you for his great man and his mod
el, it is hardly fair of him to hegin just like you, only more so.
Such is, in brief, the history of my flrst three days with
you. I can truly say that I would not have treated a dog of
yours so ; no, not even if the dog had bit me. Meanwhile,
my condition became known to some members of my own regi
ment, who were quartered near by. They went to work at
once for my relief I saw Captain Eaton, one of our very
best officers, told him of my trunk ; he promised to look after
it, and his promise was kept. He furnished me also with a
bunk, a bench, and some blankets, and had me supplied with
wholesome and palatable food from his own mess, till I could
make arrangements for feeding myself. My mattress and pil
low too, which I had put under our Captain Southard when
he was brought into the camp mortally wounded, and had left
under him when I went North, with instructions that he
should have them as long as he might need them, — these were
found and returned to me. And in due time two of Captain
Eaton's men came, bringing my trunk, and saying they had
found it right where I left it, and no signs of its having been

WITH GENERAL BUTLER. 23
disturbed. My belief then was, and still is, that but for these
friends I should not have seen my trunk again very soon.
You, Sir, did not mean I should have it, so long as any excuse
or pretext could be found or made for keeping it from me.
Captain Watson too, either from shame, or for some other
cause, had another tent put up for me on dry ground. So that
I was now pretty well supplied with what was needful for
bodily comfort. It is well worth remarking, further, that most
of the officers and men of the guard laid aside much of their
roughness toward me, on learning, as they soon did, that I
was not the wild beast which your treatment inferred me to
be. I owe it to them to say, that they became as civil and
kindly to me as they dared to be. Nor must I omit that Chap
lain Jarvis, of the First Connecticut Heavy Artillery, hearing
of the plight I was in, sought me out, and did me many kind
nesses, often visiting me while I was " sick and in prison," and
bringing not only material supplies, but the far dearer com
forts of fraternal counsel and support. In the latter part of
my confinement. Chaplain De Forest also, of the Eleventh
Connecticut, was very attentive to me, and, though not nomi
nally of the same house with me, was just as good as if he
had been ; a true friend and brother indeed.
As for the seasonable relief that came from my old com
rades, perhaps I owe you something, Sir, for permitting it. If
so, I thank you, yes, heartily. For it is not at all extravagant
to say, that I should unquestionably have died in a very short
time, at the rate you were going on with me. And the con
viction was certainly very strong in me at the time, nor has it
worn out of me yet, that you meant to kill me, provided you
could do so without seeming to mean it.
If such was your scheme, it was made impracticable by
that timely intervention ; at least it could not then be put
through -with the secrecy which such schemes commonly re
quire. And whenever I remonstrated with your subordinates
for their harshness to me, they still pleaded that they were but
executing your orders, and that by doing otherwise they would
only get themselves into trouble, without helping me. More
over, you took good care to let them know that you were my
personal enemy ; and so they understood, of course, that in

24 A chaplain's campaign
persecuting me they were sure of recommending themselves
to you, however you might pretend to disown their acts.
The event proved that your purpose respecting me was not
substantially changed. I was held under the closest guard,
not even being allowed to answer the calls of nature without
an armed soldier standing over me ; whether to shield me from
invasion, or to keep me from running away, I could not tell.
I was also debarred free correspondence with family and
friends, my letters being required to undergo revisal by your
self or your deputies. This was indeed a mean and cruel de
privation, and I felt it as such, having never before heard of
its being done in case of an officer in arrest. I was told that
any letters I might send in unsealed would either be forward
ed to their address or returned to me ; but I now know that
faith was not kept with me in that. And I was shut up in
the same narrow inclosure, known as your " bull-pen," along
with rebel prisoners, negroes, and the offscourings of your
army,— a most lousy, lewd, profane, and ribald set, whose
speech was constantly teeming with stuff too bad for any civ
ilized hearing. Their dialect, steeped as it was in filth and
crime, might have been pleasing to you. Sir, for it was some
thing like yours ; but it was not pleasing to me. Therewithal,
I was in continual dread of catching from them the loathsome
vermin ; in fact, it was not possible to avoid doing so. The
thought of having my lean body thus made a pasture for
Southern live-stock was indeed none of the pleasantest, but I
digested it as I best could. And "the familiar beast to man"
did not pick my old bones quite bare ; I still have a little
flesh and some heart left, notwithstanding your mean and
miserable oppressions.
For it hardly need be said that this whole thing was new
and strange to me. I had seen many officers of the army in
arrest, but I had never before known of any being subjected
to such hardships and indignities as these. At the close of our
interview, I asked you to let me go in arrest among my own
regiment, and there be confined to my quarters ; as in all my
experience with the army had been the uniform custom in
such cases. You refused. I made the same request again in
my written statement to you. Still you refused. One would

WITH GENERAL BUTLEE. 25
think my official character and infirm health might have won
me that indulgence, even if it had not been customary. With
out asserting any peculiar -claims to consideration, I may just
ly ask why you thus excepted me from the honourable usages
of the service ? Did you find any special motives to rough
ness in my gray hairs, my recent affliction, and my sacred of
fice ? What hindered you from granting my reasonable re
quest ? Nothing, evidently nothing, but the mean pleasure
you felt in tormenting me, and in putting gratuitous and sin
gular indignities upon me. You had been certified of my age,
my ill-health, my studious habits, and the late death in my
family. What possessed you thus to trample on my infirmi
ties and my sorrows ?
You, my General, were punishing me as a condemned man,
yet I had not been tried. For, to officers, the provost-guard
prison, even in its best form, is emphatically a place of pun
ishment, and is never regarded as any thing else. You had,
and you knew it, a strong personal animosity, a sort of idiom
atic vfrulence, against me;. you said you meant to be just,
though you scorned to be thought kind-hearted ; yet you did
not scruple to speak as my accuser, to act as my judge in
the very matter whereof you accused, and then to punish me
on your own judgment. Where was your respect for even the
commonest decencies of justice in that ? On putting me in
arrest, you told me I was to be tried by my peers. To this I
neither spoke nor felt any objections ; such a course would
have been fair ; and I should have had no right to complain of
it. For some time I hoped that so it would be. But I knew
the law made it your duty to see that, within eight days after
my arrest, a copy of the charges, whereon I was to be tried,
should be served upon me. Many long, weary weeks passed,
still no written charges appeared against me. Meanwhile,
you kept me a close prisoner ; you victimized me with peculiar
severities and dishonours ; you held me in a state of debase
ment unknown to the service : in short, as if anticipating a
verdict of acquittal in case I should be tried, and as if deter
mined to make sure of your revenge at all events, you spent
all that time in executing upon me the penalties which your
own virulence had prompted. Such was your practical com-

26 A chaplain's campaign
mentary on the lawless threat uttered during our interview :
" I have you in my power now, sir, and I am going to punish
you." Yet you " mean to be just I" You are indeed an ori
ginal man. May your imitators be few ! Up to the time of
our interview, I had sharply resented the Southern doctrine
respecting you. Will any one blame me if I accept it now ?
To relieve the monotony of this review, I will here inter
pose a brief passage from another hand., On the 24th of
September, I applied to you, in writing, for leave to hold re
ligious services in the prison the next day ; Sunday, the 25th,
being the day on which the President had requested to have
special thanksgi-\dngs offered in the churches for the recent
successes of the national arms. In the course of the day, the
application came back to me with the following indorsement :
" Eespectfullt Betuened. — By military usage, an officer
under arrest on charges cannot exercise any of the duties of
his office. Such permission would be a virtual release from
arrest. That your functions are of a high and sacred nature,
should have made you more careful in getting under arrest for
absence without leave ; the penalty of which is Eeduction to
the Banks. (Signed) " Benj. F. Butlee,
" Major-General Commanding."
I was aware, my General, of the usage which you here en
forced, as I also was of other usages which you so flagrantly
disregarded in my case ; and I made the request, not in the
character of a chaplain, but in that of a Christian minister.
This was obvious on the face of it. I was not so green as to
suppose myself the chaplain of your bull-pen. I was sorry
afterwards that I did not hold the services without asking
your leave, and then let you punish me if you would. Anx
iety not to offend you was what caused me to do as I did. I
confess your refusal grieved me ; I did not expect it.
However, the thing had the effect of drawing some part of
your fire. I now, for the first time, had authentic notice that
I was " under arrest on charges for absence without leave."
But I tooh notice of somewhat more than this : it was now
plain that you da/red not allege any other reason for the un
lawful course you were taking with me. And I was perfectly

with general BUTLEE. 27
sure you knew my absence without leave to be attended 'with
such strong mitigations, that no fair-minded court-martial
would convict me of a punishable offence in that matter.
What, then, was it that you here came to me with in your
right hand ? I knew that the cause thus alleged was not the
real cause of your proceedings, and that you would have al
leged the real one, if you had dared to do so. Indeed, my
General, you overshot yourself in that " pious effusion."
From that time forward I understood the meaning of all you
said about having me tried.
I was now notified, further, that the penalty in my case
was " reduction to the ranks ;" and I understood you as
threatening me with that penalty. In this, it strikes me that
you prevaricated the law somewhat ; that is, you Butlerized
it, or, which is the same thing, looked upon it asquint. The
fourth Article of War reads thus : " Every chaplain commission
ed in the army or armies of the United States, who shall ab
sent himself from the duties assigned him, (except in cases of
sickness or leave of absence,) shall, on conviction thereof 'be
fore a court-martial, be fined not exceeding one month's pay,
besides the loss of his pay during his absence; or be dis
charged, as the said court-martial shall judge proper." I am
not ignorant. Sir, of the later Act of Congress, which pro
vides that courts-martial shall have power to sentence officers
to reduction to the ranks for absence without leave. But
neither this Act nor any other presoribes that penalty for that
offence. It is true, then, that reduction to the ranks may ie,
but not true that it is, the penalty in cases like mine. But
perhaps you meant that I was obnoxious to the penalty in
question, not by the law, but by the exercise of arbitrary
power in breaking the law. If so, you are welcome to all the
truth there was in your unprincipled menace. I had no fear,
though, of your executing that threat upon me. I saw it was
a mere piece of make-believe, and therefore did not believe it.
Be assured. Sir, that the obliquity and indirection fetched from
your late haunts of pot-house litigation and politics will not
stand the fire of military life. Your old " tricks of the trade,"
however they might pass with the " boys" who were wont to
crowd your theatre for the fun of seeing you roast witnesses

28 A chaplain's campaign
in smutty cases, are out of place in the army. He that would
deceive must have at least some spice of honesty in him.
Notwithstanding your long practice as a moral Harlequin,
your playing of the part is too raw and clumsy for any place
but the ring ; let alone, that you have something to learn,
and much to unlearn, before you will be fit for any but ring-
men to know.
I had been in your bull-pen four or five days, when Colonel
Serrell came to me, and said he had been having a long talk
with you about me. That you disclaimed all hard feelings
towards me ; had no -wish to injm-e me ; desired to save me
from a court-martial. That you thought I had better write
out for you a statement of my case, covering the main points
which had come up in our interview ; as this might open the
way for a settlement without a trial. That if a trial were
had, it would be mainly with a view to bring out what I knew
about General Gillmore ; and you advised me, in that case, to
plead guilty to all the charges and specifications, as I would
fare better by doing so than by attempting any defence.
That, as for my absence without leave, you did not consider
this, in the circumstances, any great offence ; while the fact
of my having been all along a kno^wn and allowed correspond
ent of the Press left you little cause against me on that score.
I was nothing at a loss, my General, as to the meaning of all
this. It was merely the old game of the accuser turning
tempter. I saw the trap, however, too plainly to be greedy
of the bait.
On the other hand, the Colonel instructed me that you had
a perfect right, without a trial, to reduce me to the ranks for
absence without leave ; and that, in fact, there was no law to
restrain you from doing with me any thing you might choose.
And he appeared stuck fast in the belief — perhaps you can
tell who stuck him there — that, to use his own phrase, you
"had got the whip-hand of every body;" insomuch that
neither the Lieutenant-General, nor the Secretary of War,
nor even the President, dared to thwart or oppose you in any
thing. Such was the upshot of his counsel on that head. I
well remember how, in answer to something that was said
touching the President and you, he spoke of " some men being

WITH GENERAL BUTLEE. 29
made to see things through other men's eyes." Did not you
plant some such wisdom in him. Sir ? or was it the harvest of
his own sagacity ? Howbeit, the plain inference from all this
was, that I stood entirely at your mercy ; that no man would
dare to help me against you ; and that my only refuge from
whatever punishments you might please to inflict, was by
satisfying you, and so making you my friend. The thing, I
grant you, was not much, coming, as it did, from a star-hunt
ing coxcomb ; it was only a vapid, unsinewed attempt at sub
ornation of false testimony !
The Colonel therefore advised — whether from you or from
himself I cannot say — that my best way was " to come out"
in my Statement, " and make a clean breast of it" — those were
his words — in regard to General Gillmore. This was indeed
a rather pregnant hint that you were imputing to me some
mysterious knowledge about General Gillmore, which must
needs foul my breast with guilt ; and that here was a capital
chance to cleanse my breast by emptying its foulness into your
ears. I had only to make you my father-confessor, and whis
per myself out of your clutches by whispering another man
in. Wasn't it lovely ?
I think, then, I was not far wrong in understanding the
Colonel as conveying from you to me both an invitation and a
threat : an invitation to damn my soul in order to gratify
your malice against General Gillmore, which would engage
you to stand my good friend ; a threat that, if I failed to do
this, you would take measures for roasting that imputed know
ledge out of me. I assured the Colonel that you were im
puting to me some knowledge about General Gillmore which
I really did not possess ; that I knew nothing whatever which
would answer the purpose of criminating that gentleman ;
and that I did not see how I could possibly make any state
ment that would satisfy you, as you evidently wanted some
thing from me which I had not to give. " Do you mean,
Colonel," said I, " that General Butler wants me to lie against
Gillmore ?" " O ! no," was his reply ; " he only wants you
to tell the truth." " But, Colonel, what you say looks very
much as though his plan were to wring out of me such truth
as he chooses to impute to me. And so, in old times, when

30 A chaplain's campaign
the engines of torture were used, it was claimed to be done in
order to make the victims tell the truth." This touched his
satirical vein, and he replied : " That, I think. Chaplain, was
always done by zealous members of the true Church." " It
may be so," said I ; "but then, you know, General Butler is
a remarkably pious man."
On the whole, it was manifest enough that you, my Gen
eral, had soaked the little Colonel all up. Well, he had been
soaked up in like sort divers times before, the process of un-
soaking and resoaking him not being a difficult one. For
men like him are to men in your place very much what water
is to a sponge : it is but to squeeze the sponge, and out comes
the water, perhaps bringing away a little of the absorbent's
dirt, perhaps leaving a little of its own dirt behind. If you
catch the ship sinking, and him staying in it, then you may
know he is not a rat.
In all this business. Colonel Serrell was acting — whether
consciously or blindly, I am not clear — as your decoy ; the
programme being, to scare or wheedle, to bully or bribe, to
oppress or corrupt me into " bearing false witness against my
neighbour." And you were pretending to believe that I had
some great secrets locked up in my breast, which, if I could
be induced to give them up, would bring General Gillmore
fairly under your teeth. I say, you were pretending • for, as
touching the matter you were in quest of, I had, in our inter
view, told you the truth, and you knew it ; my own word,
General Gillmore's word, and all the likelihoods of the case
converging to the same point. I strongly suspected your
game at the time ; and what' afterwards took place made it
clear, that this was indeed the true hinge of your proceed
ings, — namely, to punish me unlawfully for absence without
leave, unless I would, by lying and false accusing, enable you
to reach and punish another. In the light of such a purpose,
your actual treatment of me stood explained ; otherwise, it
seemed inexplicable. And, as I really had no secrets of the
kind to give up, I had little hope of my Statement's working
any thing for my relief For, if General Gillmore had been
using me against you, I was not aware of it ; and I was quite
sure that, if he had meant thus to use me, lie would not have

WITH GENERAL BUTLER. 81
been so shallow as to tell me of it. And as I had not know
ingly been used by him against you, so I was resolved that,
God helping me, I would not knowingly be used by you
against him, otherwise than as integrity to God and to my
own conscience would allow.
Nevertheless, I set about writing the Statement, taking care
to make it as conciliating to you as I could without sinning
against the truth. I sent it to you, my General, with much
misgi-ving. For, to satisfy you was out of the question, —
God shield me. Sir, from being base enough to catch at such a
bait as you threw out to me ! — and there remained the alter
native of being held in torture by you indeiinitely, in the
hope of extorting something further from me. I knew — for
indeed you made no secret of it — that you had two revenges,
a greater and a less : I suspected that I was to be the victim
of the one or' the other; that if I could not be made an in
strument of the greater, I was to be used as aliment of the
less ; so that, in either case, my flesh, "if it would feed noth
ing else, would feed your revenge." As for General Gillmore,
I now had it in full assurance, that, " if you could catch him
once upon the hip, you would feed fat the ancient grudge you
bore him," for declining to father your military blunders, or
to let you shift off upon him the blame and disgrace of them.
And so, in this snug arrangement of yours, any one with half
an eye might see that Gillmore was to be your real game, I
your candle for hunting it ; and that, whether the game were
caught or not, the candle was sure to be burned.
In the mean time, my absence without leave was to be
worked by you merely as a pretence to cover the deeper
scheme in question. Was it not so, my General ? You know
it was. Sir, and you need not attempt to deny it. In our in
terview, you told me once that I lied : perhaps you thought
so. Did you suppose that if I had lied to offend you, I would
much more lie to propitiate you ? Nay, Sir ; if I ever hire
myself to that branch of the devil's service, it will be under
a better tactician than you. You quack it for Satan too clum
sily, you mechanize falsehood and prevarication much too
coarsely, for my taste. Your style of knavery is too untem-
pered, too exultant, too immodest, to please the judicious :

32 A chaplain's campaign
the knave that '-wins me to strike hands -with him in the busi
ness must exercise his art with more of the modesty of an
artist. If you take this as my reason for preferring General
Gillmore to you, I care not ; and, my word for it, he will care
as little as I. This by the way. You knew of my shattered
health, the severe illness of my wife, and my late domestic
bereavement. Did you construe all this as a pledge and as
surance of an easier and quicker process in subduing me to
your purpose ? So it would seem from the course you took
-with me. Because time and disease and sorrow had rendered
my blood too thin to yield you much nourishment, therefore,
apparently, you craved to suck the more of it. As for any
legal adjudication of my case, I now gave up all hope of it.
The plain truth was, and is, that you dared not trust your
cause to the judgment of a court-martial; and all your talk
about having me tried was a mere pretext for keeping me in
your bull-pen, and so " punishing" me without a trial. For it
soon became e-vident, that military law and usage were noth
ing to you, save as you could make them tell against others.
The case, I own, seemed to me rather hard ; but I knew that
' so it is apt to be in this world, " when evil men are strong."
Before sending my Statement to you, I made a true and
perfect copy of it, which I put into the hands of a tried and
faithful friend, together with a note expressing my apprehen
sions as to the result. I also directed that, in certain contin
gencies, both the copy and the note should be sent to a par
ticular address in New- York, to be used by my friends there
as they might judge best for my defence and protection. In
due time, they were so sent and so used, though not used with
any decisive effect, till after much bitter proof had come to
me, that in taking such precautions I had acted well. The-
last I heard of the said copy, it had been left in the hands of
the Secretary of War. As to the bearing of my Statement in
respect of General GUlmore, are you aware what it was. Sir ?
You tried to roast out of me a crimination of that officer. I
gave you — what do you think. Sir ? — I gave you a vindication
of him. Bless you, my General ! I did not mean it ; I never
once thought of such a thing : I only meant to tell the simple

WITH GENEEAL BUTLEE. 83
truth ; and such, as I have cause to know, was the effect ot
the simple truth in that case.
My apprehensions proved but too well grounded. Week
after week passed away, still no charges were made against
me, and I was held there to die, inch by inch, in your bull
pen ; as, but for the intervention of friends in New- York and
elsewhere, I doubtless should have been held till this time,
provided I had lived so long. Meanwhile, Colonel Serrell
wrote me several notes, showing a lively interest in my be
half, inquiring whether any progress had been made in my
case, and saying you had promised to take it up and dispose
of it. I know not whether you were sincere in those prom
ises ; but I know that they were not kept, and that the only
effect of them was, to press home upon me that experience of
hope deferred which maketh the heart sick. And I think it
hardly worth the while to speak of sincerity when any act of
yours is in question ; for, as you have shown yourself to me,
there is no truth in you. Sir, nor any thing to build a trust
upon. Probably I did not at the time rightly divine the pur
pose of those friendly notes. I am now of the opinion that
they were meant as feelers, in order to ascertain whether I
was yet ready to give up those -svicked secrets which you im
puted to me.
At this time, I remained in your old bull-pen, where the
number of prisoners had been gradually reduced to a few,
and those pretty decent men. But an order now came for re
moving us up to your new bull-pen, some six miles distant.
In the act of removal, I was obliged, lame and feeble and
faint as I was, to foot it all the way ; the officer in command
utterly refusing to let me ride, though there was room in the
wagon for half-a-dozen men, and alleging that his orders
would not allow it.
Your old bull-pen was, in all conscience, bad enough, but
the new one proved, as I anticipated, far worse : the inclosure
being much smaller, and crowded with men of the worst de
scription ; the ground, too, being so level, that it was impossi
ble to keep my quarters from being flooded whenever there
was any considerable fall of rain. Therewithal, it was an un-
cleaned stable, the beasts having lately been taken out, to
3

34 A chaplain's CAMPAIGN
make room for us men ; such a place, in fact, as, at that sea
son, no good farmer would think of keeping his cattle in;
True, it was within a stone's throw of your own quarters ;
and so is a man's pig-pen commonly within a stone's throw of
his house. It was inhuman in you. Sir, to keep any thing
wearing the human form in that nasty hole. Vile and stupid
as many of them were, I pitied, with all my heart I pitied
the poor creatures there huddled together, wading and wal
lowing in the mud and filth from which they could not escape.
Physicall}', most of them were in a worse plight than myself,
though probably none of them felt it as I did, there being no
personal malice or vindictiveness, and therefore no sense of
it, in their case. Besides, tjie others were, for the most part,
confined only for a short time, few of them staying more than
a week ; whereas I was kept from week to week, and even
from month to month. I remember but two or three who
were held through the whole period of my confinement ; and
these were young men, healthy, vigorous, and more or less
inured to similar hardships and exposures ; all which was not
true in my case, and you. Sir, knew it was not. At lengtii, on
the 6th of November, you being then in New- York, all the
prisoners but myself were taken out of that loathsome inclos
ure, and removed to Bermuda Hundred. It was an act of
great kindness in Colonel Smith, your Assistant Adjutant-
General, to except me from that removal ; as the others were
now placed in a condition still worse, some fifty being, as I
afterwards learned, cooped up in a room not more than eight
een feet square. Of coursg, had you been at hand, either I
should have gone with them, or they would have stayed
with me.
Such, my General, is the honest story of your dealings with
me. And, however you may "with unbashful forehead"
braze it out, I found no small satisfaction in the assurance
which was not wanting, that your treatment of me, so far as
it was known in the army, was regarded as " an outrage."
For every step of your proceedings in my case was in direct
and palpable violation of the law. The 77th Article of War
prescribes that, " Whenever any officer shall be charged with
a crime, he shall be arrested, and confined in his barracks

WITH GENERAL BUTLEE. 85
qiiarters, or tent." You confined me in your provost-guard
prison, a place such as I have described it to be. The 79th
Article of War declares, " No officer or soldier, who shall be
put in arrest, shall continue in confinement more than eight
days, or until such time as a court-martial can be assembled."
You kept me in close prison fifty-three days.
Thus it soon appeared that you cared nothing for the law
as contained in the Articles of War ; or rather, that your
malice against me was to you a higher law than those Articles,
which, be it observed, we all have to subscribe on entering the
service. And yet one of the first paragraphs in the Army
Begulations declares, " Punishments shall be strictly conform
able to military law." Nevertheless, I still hoped for some
time, (" the miserable have no other food but hope,") that you
would respect the recent Act of Congress, which was passed
with a special view to cases like mine, and which made it un
lawful for you to keep me in arrest more than forty-eight days.
The forty-eight days were passed, still I heard of no release.
¦So, it was clear, that even the solemn enactments of the high
est law-making power in the land had no strength or virtue to
rescue me from your strange unbenevolence.
You, Sir, had no right to put me in the provost-guard prison
at all ; no right to keep me in close confinement anywhere
more than eight days ; no right to hold me in any sort of
arrest more than forty-eight days ; the settled usage of the
army interprets the time to forty days : that is, you had just
as much right to shoot, or hang, or starve me to death, as to
do what you did. Every provision of law bearing on my case
was broken by you. And as week after week passed away,
it became more and more evident that I had nothing to hope
for in the shape of legal protection. For I was right well as
sured, that any appeal to the law, any word of remonstrance,
any movement for legal remedy or redress, would only be con
strued by you as a fresh offence, and visited with a further
severity. Such was your scheme of "justice." You, Sir,
were simply rioting in the abuse of military power, spurning
alike at the restraints of law, and the usages of humanity. I
¦never imagined before what it is for an honest man to find
himself stripped of all legal protection, and held in the condi-

36 A chaplain's CAMPAIGN
tion of an outlaw. Indeed, Sir, no language of mine can fairly
express how much I suffered during those long, dreary, dis
mal weeks spent in your bull-pen ; though far less, to be sure,
in the way of physical discomfort, than of mental distress.
May God defend you and yours. Sir, from ever suffering what
I suffered there, under your hard-hearted and unlawful inflic
tions ! I seemed to be left alone and helpless in the hands of
a most unfeeling and vindictive man ; that man had discover
ed himself my personal enemy ; he was armed with military
power ; he was capable of any outrage ; there was no sense of
honour, no grace of manhood in him ; to be mean was his pride,
to be brutal his pleasure ; he was revelling in the license of
assumed impunity ; he allowed no law, nor any thing else, to
stand between me and his malice. But, much as I suffered
from you, and bitter as is the remembrance of your inflictions,
I shall not regret them, nay, I shall take comfort of them,
provided your brutal savageness, as exercised on me, should
work something towards inducing the country to scour you
out of her honourable ser-^ce.
It may be well to cite, here, an instance or two as showing
what a "just man " you are, to make one law for yourself, and
another for those in your power. In the course of our inter
view, you demanded to see General Gillmore's order sending
me to New- York on special duty. On my handing it to you,
yo^u said it was an illegal order, and I had no right to obey it.
I assured you that I was ignorant of that, and had never so
much as suspected it ; whereupon you gave me to understand
that such ignorance would have no force to save me from pun
ishment. This, no doubt, was what you and a certain strut
ting pronoun of yours meant by the charge of being " absent
without proper authority." Some time after my release, I
asked Captain Watson whether he was aware that he had been
executing illegal orders on me. O yes ! he knew it perfectly,
he said. I then told him that I had your authority for say
ing he had no right to obey those orders, and quoted what
you had said in reference to General Gillmore's order to me.
He replied that he could not help himself, and he would like to
see the officer under you that should dare to question the legal
ity of your orders. " But," said I, " you might at least protest

with GENEEAL BUTLER. 37
against executing orders which you know to be illegal." Yes, he
could do that, he said, but it would only get him into the bull
pen. " Well, suppose it should ; would you not rather go in
there and be a man, than stay out and be something else ?"
" Oh ! I don't want to be in there ; any thing but that 1" was
his reply. I have since learned from the worthy Captain, that
he never had any written order in my case, and that he acted
all the while under the verbal orders of your immediate sub
altern, Davenport. So ! here was another of the Articles of
War violated every day that I was kept in prison. But what
boots it to speak of those Articles in connection with you ? as
if your lawless spirit would condescend to know them, save as
you might find your pleasure or your pride in breaking them.
For it is notorious throughout the army, that your action re
spects the law as little as your speech does the truth ; which
reminds me of what I have heard as coming from one of our
distinguished generals, who knows you well : " No man who
respects himself will think it worth his while to contradict any
thing that General Butler may say." But I trust, nay, I am
sure, it is not in the heart or the head of our Government to
sanction or even to tolerate such demoralizing practices in the
high places of the military service. You will have to learn
more of obedience. Sir, before you can command an army to
any purpose but that of undisciplining it.
Again : After I had been in the buU-pen about two weeks,
a man was brought there, dressed as a citizen, his leg heavily
jewelled with a ball and chain. His name was said to be
Cazauran ; very likely you may remember him. He was by
birth a Frenchman ; intelligent, well-spoken, well-mannered,
and of some literary acquirement. Withal, he showed con
siderable expertness as a short-hand writer ; and I learned that
at one time he was employed at your headquarters as a sort of
clerk and a reporter for the military courts. That for some
cause or other, or on some pretext or other, you had snapped
him up, and, without any form of trial, had sentenced him to
wear the ball and chain, and to serve sixty days in the outermost
rifle-pits of your line. That there you had kept him all that
time, right in " the forefront of the hottest battle," the ball
and chain still on him. That, soon after he was put there,

38 A chaplain's campaign
your newspaper spout at Norfolk published an editorial, en
deavouring to blast him with I know not what evil reports, and
expressing a hope that " some honest rebel " would shoot him
to death. That he had managed to hold up his jewel so as to
be seen by the rebels, after which they religiously abstained
from firing anywhere near him ; while the soldiers about him
had so much pity on him that they would make a sort of hur
dle with their muskets, and carry him to and fro between his
rifle-pit and his quarters. He told me that he had a family
living in St. Louis, and that ever since the date of your sen
tence he had not been allowed to write or receive any letter
whatever. When I first saw him, he had just returned from
serving out his sixty days ; he was then kept in the bull-pen
some two weeks longer, still wearing the ball and chain ; and
was at last sent over the lines into the enemy's territory.
What your charges against him were, I had no means of ascer
taining : his principal crime was said to be, that he knew too
much, or was suspected of knowing too much, about the large
contraband trade which certain patriots of yours were carrying
on across your lines down in North-Carolina.
Now, my General, taking all the parts together, I really
think this was one of the most inhuman things that I ever
heard of. I did not meddle with the poor man's antecedents ;
he may have been all that you and your creatures gave him
out ; I know not, I care not what he had been or what he had
done ; nothing could justify the inexpressible cruelty of your
proceedings : the veriest fiend that ever made sport of human
sufferings, it seems to me, must have relented at the thought
of inflicting such protracted tortures. You could not possibly
make out so bad a case against him, as I believe he had against
you. I know of no justice here, that can whip your crime as
it deserves.During your absence in New- York, General Terry, as the
ranking officer under you, was left in command. Not know
ing how far his authority might reach, but knowing him to be
as unlike you in humanity as in soldiership, I -wrote to his
headquarters as follows :

with GENEEAL BUTLEE. 39
" Peovost-Guaed Prison, Headquaetees )
Depaetment Va. and N. C, Nov. 8, 1864. f
" To Captain Adrian Terry, A. A. General, cfec. :
" Captain : I have now been under arrest, and kept a close
prisoner in the provost-guard prison, fifty days. My imprison
ment has been attended with very extraordinary circumstances
of hardship and indignity. I am old and out of health, and
ought not to be treated in this way. Soon after my arrest, I
learned from General Butler that I was 'under arrest on
charges for absence without leave;' still no charges have in
legal form been brought against me.
" The law is very clear and positive, that in case of any
officer thus under arrest, the arrest shall cease at the end ot
forty-eight days. As an officer of the army, I believe I have
the right to know, and I hereby respectfully ask to be inform
ed, for what reasons, and by what authority, the law is thus
violated in my case.
" Whatever be the answer to this question, I claim the pro
tection of the law, and solemnly protest against this infraction
of it. Eespectfully yours, &c.,
"H. N. Hudson,
" Chaplain First N. Y. Vol. Engineers."
After waiting two days, and getting no reply to this, I
wrote to the same headquarters again :
" GuAED-HousE, Geneeal Butlee's )
Headquaetees in the Field, Nov. 10, 1864. j
" To Lieutenant W. P. Shreeve, A. A. A. General, <&c. :
" Lieutenant : On the 19th of September, I was put in ar
rest by General Butler, and handed over to the custody of his
headquarters-guard. From that time till the 8th inst., I was
kept shut up in his ' bull-pen ' along with rebel prisoners,
negroes, and the lowest criminals of our army, their bodies
infested with lice, their tongues with the most disgusting lewd
ness and profanity, such as, without very strong reason, no
Christian man ought to be forced to hear. During the latter
part of the time, the ' bull-pen ' aforesaid was too bad a place
for any human beings to be shut up in, having lately been used
as a stable, and the ground being covered with the refuse of

40
its former occupants. I have been subjected to the horrors
and sufferings of this dreadful place, without a trial or a hear
ing. I am old, and sick, and afflicted, ha-ving lately been
touched with a great sorrow, such as none but a parent can
understand. My health is suffering seriously from the hard
ships and exposures thus forced upon me.
" On the 8th inst., I was taken out of the ' biill-pen,' and
put into the guard-house, where I am still kept along with a
parcel of soldiers who spend a good deal of the time in gam
bling, and nearly all of it in frightful cursing and swearing. I
have no privacy at all ; and such is the noise about me that I
can hardly get any sleep ; the terrible shocks and strains which
I have lately undergone, having rendered me so weak and
nervous, that I need quietness for that indispensable process of
nature. " Now, I protest, solemnly, and in the name of God, against
this cruel and wanton infliction of punishment upon me, who,
I suppose, have the right, in common with other men, to be
presumed innocent, until legally pronounced otherwise.
" I have now been held a close prisoner, and in the endur
ance of this cruel punishment, fifty-two days ; whereas the Act
of Congress approved July 17th, 1862, clearly and expressly
provides, that in case of any officer thus put under arrest, the
arrest shall terminate and cease at the end of forty-eight days.
" I believe it is my right, therefore, to demand, and I here
by respectfully do demand, to be released from arrest ; and I
solemnly warn the military authorities in command to beware
how they persist in thus punishing me, against the law, with
out a trial or a hearing, and to my great and manifest injury.
I am willing and ready, as I have been ever since my arrest,
to give my parole of honour to obey strictly all lawful orders,
and to answer to any charges that are or may be made against
me in due form and process of law.
" I herewith enclose a document which wiU give you all the
information that I have, as to the cause of my arrest and pun
ishment. You will see that the document should be carefully
preserved and restored to me.
" Eespectfully yours, &c., H. N. Hudson,
" Chaplain First N. Y. Vol. Engineers."

with GENEEAL BUTLEE. 41
The " document " here referred to was your reply, already
quoted, to my application for leave to hold religious services.
in the prison. Late in the evening of the same day, I re
ceived the folio-wing :
" Headquaetees Aemt op the James, )
Befoee Richmond, Va., Nov. 10, 1864. j
" Pev. H. N. Hudson, N. Y. Vol. Engineers :
" SiE : The Brevet Major-General commanding desires me
to acknowledge the reception of your letter relative to your
release from arrest, and to inform you in reply that he has no
power to act in the premises. He is not in command of the
Department, nor even of the whole military force within it; he
is simply in temporary command of the troops in the field.
General Butler is still in command of the Department, al
though temporarily absent from it, and is still General Terry's
commanding officer. Your arrest -was made by the order of
General Butler as commanding officer of the Department ;
and it would be manifestly improper for General Terry, or
any one not acting as Department commander, to give any
orders in relation to it.
" I am directed also to say, that as soon as Major-General
Butler returns your communication shall be laid before him.
" I have the honour to be, sir, very respectfully, your obedi
ent servant, (Signed) " Adeian Teeet,
" Captain and A. A. General, &c."
I found no fault with the course taken by General Terry ;
indeed it was plain enough that he could not do more than he
did. But I had gained this advantage, that some parts of my
case were now brought to his knowledge ; and, as I had known
him pretty well during nearly my whole term of service, I
could have no doubt of his good disposition towards me.
And I had never heard of his doing or saying any thing that
looked like setting his " personal feelings " above the law.
Meanwhile, my General, certain forces were brought to bear
upon you in New- York, which proved stronger with you than
the law. I need not tell you what those forces were. Per
haps you found cause to suspect that the prostitution of your

42 A chaplain's campaign
public authority to the work of personal vengeance was not
^xactly what the Government wanted of you. Be that as it
may, you wrote instructions to General Terry as follows :
" Will General Terry, commanding Army of the James,
give the following special order ?
" Headquaetees Aemt of the James, )
November 8, 1864. J
" Special Oedee No. ¦ — .
" Chaplain Henry N. Hudson, having remained under ar
rest for some time, because of the impossibility of convening
a court-martial to try him, because of movements in the field,
is released from close arrest, and will report to his regiment
for duty ; but will upon no pretence leave it."
What sort of an honest man were you. Sir, when you wrote
that ? You alleged " the impossibility of convening a court-
martial to try " me, as your reason for having held me in ar
rest nearly two months. You had held me all that time, not
only in arrest, but in close prison ; for which, as you well
knew, the reason alleged was, in law, just no reason at all.
But let that pass. Notwithstanding your " impossibility,"
you had, during a large part of that very time, a court-mar
tial in session at your headquarters in the field; and, as I
happen to know, case after case was tried by it, of persons
whose arrest was subsequent to mine. That is, you here al
leged what you could not but know to be false ; but then you
alleged it for the present satisfaction of those who, as you
also knew, could not contradict it. Verily, trickery must have
become a passion with you, else you would not be caught
botching and bungling it with tricks so flimsy and inexpert as
these I Again : On the twenty-fourth of September you could
not let me hold religious services in the prison, because leave
to do any official act would be " a virtual release from arrest."
Now, you ordered me on official duty^ and still kept me in
arrest, though not in " close arrest."
You sent a copy of the forecited instructions to a friend
of mine in New-York, appending thereto a curious note, which
I must reproduce':

with general BUTLEE. 43
" November 8, 1864.
" Stephen P. Nash, Esq. :
" Deae Sie : Above you will find copy of order to be issued
in the case of Chaplain Hudson. I believe that I am treating
him differently from what I should do to another officer, be
cause I fear lest personal feelings should warp my judgment.
(Signed) " Yours, Benj. F. Butlee."
I was right glad, my General, to learn that you were sensi-
sible you had " personal feelings." I had been sensible of it
a good while, I can tell you. Some thought this little effu
sion rather dark. To me it seemed clear enough. You
meant, of course, that if you had been my personal friend,
you would have treated me still worse ; that is, you acknow
ledged malice, and then alleged that very malice as your mo
tive to special leniency. Is it possible you could suppose that
so shallow and shameless a pretext would serve ? " This is
most fallible, the worm's an odd worm."
General Terry's order, issued in pursuance of your instruc
tions, reached me on the eleventh of November. Though
still, apparently, under some sort of arrest, nobody could tell
what, I was now free to go among the dear good fellows of
my own regiment, with whom I had spent nearly three years
in the service of my country ; free, also, to write as I pleased
to family and friends. I remained a sort of prisoner in our
camp till the fourteenth of December, when I received an or
der to report in person at the headquarters of the Lieutenant-
General ; and, on doing so, I found that the Lieutenant-General
had just been informed of my case by some friends of his in
Washington. The day of my full deliverance had come at
last. You were then off on your Fort Fisher expedition : what
you would have done, had you been at your headquarters in
the fleld, I cannot tell. Nor did I greatly concern myself as
to what you might do on your return ; for I was now under
the protection of a Soldier and a Gentleman, who was also
your official superior, and who, as I well knew, had before
rescued officers from your tyrannical and lawless proceedings.
On the seventh of November, you promised my friends in
New- York that you would " have me tried very soon." You

44 A chaplain's campaign
had no such purpose, Sir. And, as you manifestly had little
cause against me, you encouraged them in the belief " that
your object was, to make the testimony, which you hoped to
elicit in my trial, bear against General Gillmore." Pshaw,
Sir 1 you knew well enough that such a process would be far
more apt to bring out matter against yourself than against
him. But your promise was thoroughly falsified in that seven
weeks more passed, still I heard of no charges against me,
nor any thing done in preparation for my trial. Where had
you been such a spendthrift of truth. Sir, as to become thus
bankrupt of that treasure 1 Whfen Colonel Serrell came to
exercise upon me as your decoy, he told me that you dared
not trust yourself to appoint the court and revise the sentence
in my case, because you were conscious of certain infirmities
that might sway you from the line of strict impartiality ;
and therefore you proposed referring that matter to the Pres
ident or the Lieutenant-General. Of course this was said in
order to make me believe that, from a peculiar sensitiveness of
virtue, you would voluntarily waive your legal right in the
premises, and invoke the action of your military superior ;
whereas, in fact, you, as the prosecutor in my case, were ex
pressly restrained by law from acting in the matter, and tied
to the very course which you so piously proposed to take.
More than three months have passed since my arrest, and
still, so far from invoking the action of your military superior,
you have not even broached the subject to him. The simple
truth is, you knew I was anxious to leave the service, and you
had not punished me enough yet for dispraising your general
ship : my release from the bull-pen went quite against the
grain -with you ; to keep me still in your power, where I could
not help myself, nor feel secure against further outbreaks of
your vindictiveness, though not all the "justice" which you
craved to inffict, was better than nothing ; and so your scheme
-was, to hold me there on the pretext that I was to be tried,
and at the same time to devise pretexts for putting off the trial,
that so you might stiU hold me.
Before quitting this part of the subject, I must relate a little
incident as illustrating rarely well the spirit which animated
you and your sequels, throughout this business. The second

WITH GENEEAL BUTLEE. 45
day of my confinement, while I was yet in the magazine-tent,
I wrote a brief note in pencil to General Terry, telling him I
was there " sick and in prison," with no one to help me or
counsel me, and begging the favour of a few moments' inter
view. I sent the note, open, to the officer in charge, under
the promise that any thing so' sent should either go to the ad
dress, or be returned. The note did not come back, nor did I
hear from the General. A few days later, when Colonel Ser.
rell came to practise his peculiar style of Christianity upon
me, I spoke of this note, and asked if he knew whether it had
gone as directed. He told me General Terry had received it ;
that he had himself talked with the General about it, who said
he could do nothing for me, and had no time to see me. I
thought this was not like General Terry ; and it seemed right
hard that, in my distress, he should thus give me the cold
shoulder ; for I had but requested an act of charity, and this,
too, in a form which no Christian gentleman, such as I held
him to be, could well resist. His answer, as reported, hurt
me much ; however, I swallowed my grief as well as I could ;
for, notwithstanding my long experience of the Colonel, I
dared not think him capable of playing me false in such
matter as that. Some weeks after you let me out of the bull
pen, I saw General Terry, and inquired about that note. The
thing was now explained ; he never saw the note, and knew
nothing of it. He did, indeed, see the Colonel, who told him
I was in arrest, but left him to suppose me in arrest merely
according to law and the settled usage of the army in such cases ;
and he had no knowledge of my real condition till after you
went to New- York. Was Colonel Serrell acting as your chief
engineer. Sir, in that business ? Howbeit, you and he may ar
range between you for the honour of that precious little feat of
manhood. Well, my General, the sum of the whole matter warrants, I
think, a pretty grave charge against you. As I have already
said, you were my accuser and my personal enemy ; I under
stand you as having admitted the personal enmity in your
forecited note to my friend Mr. Nash. As a lawyer, you
could scarcely be ignorant of the great legal maxim, that " No
man is a good judge in his own case." Yet you presumed to

46 A chaplain's campaign
act as my judge ; and then, on your own judgment, without
a trial or a hearing, you dared to punish me with very great
severity for nearly two months ; singling me out and excepting
me from the protection of the law, and from the honourable
usages of the service ; subjecting me to the most degrading
conditions and associations ; utterly ignoring my military rank,
my sacred office, my good name, my faithful service, my years,
my ill-health, and my recent affliction ; treating me, in fact,
as an outlaw, and as having no rights which you were bound
to respect. All this, I affirm, was done by you mainly with
the intent to distress and wring me into " bearing false witness
against my neighbour." Moreover, to enforce this wrong upon
me, you took a mean advantage of the military power with
which the Government had clothed you, thus perverting a
solemn public trust to the ends of private malice. Such, Sir,
is my charge. You will meet it as you can.
But I have not done with you yet. The foregoing "matter
contains several allusions which, as they stand, are a little ob
scure ; so that I must add something further, to clear them up.
Moreover, one of your motives for wishing to keep me in your
clutches was, you knew right well that I had full and authen
tic knowledge of certain facts, which facts you desired by all
means to suppress. Indeed, the hope of disabling my testi
mony in that matter was perhaps the main-spring of your ef
forts to get from me a lying accusation of General Gillmore.
As I now have you on trial, the occasion must be used for
bringing out those facts.
At our interview, you tried to make me say that General
Gillmore gave me the matter of my letter to Mr. Godwin.
This I could not say, because it was not true. I told you that
General Gillmore did not give me any of that matter ; that he
knew nothing of the letter, and I had no speech with him on
the subject of it, till after it was written and mailed. I told
you the same again in my written Statement. I now affirm it
to you gnce more. And the same, in effect, as I now know,
had been told you twice by the General himself, in the official
correspondence that passed between you soon after the letter
was published. On your demanding who then did give me

WITH GENERAL BUTLES. 47
the matter, I told you it was given me by Colonel Serrell and
other officers of our regiment. I did this with reluctance, but
you were pushing me hard, and browbeating me savagely. I
now tell you, further, that the whole of that matter — every
word, every particle, except my own reflections — was given me
by the Colonel himself; though some parts of what he told
me were more or less confirmed by other of our officers.
The truth of the affair, as far as I can now recollect it, is
just this :
Oil Tuesday, the seventeenth of May, Colonel Serrell (for
you must know. Sir, he had not then got de-sponged from Gen
eral Gillmore) gave me a long account of what had taken
place up at the front during the three or four days preceding.
He did this voluntarily, and, as I thought, in the expectation
or hope that I would use the matter in my newspaper corre
spondence ; for he had often given me matter to be used in that
way. Several of our officers then in camp were personally
knowing to the fact of the Colonel's giving me the matter in
question ; and they also understood just as I did his purpose
in doing so. On the strength of what he thus told me, I -vsTote
the letter to Mr. Godwin, which, I think, was dated the eight
eenth, though, possibly, a day or two later. In the morning
of Saturday, the twenty-flrst, after the letter had gone, I went
to the Corps Headquarters to call on the rebel General Walker,
who had been wounded and captured the day before. That
done, as General Gillmore was in his tent, I then called on
him, and said : " General, I want to ask you one question ; if
it is an improper one, you will know it to be so, and will treat
it accordingly." He said he would hear the question. I then
asked him, " Did you, after capturing the enemy's line of
works up near Drury's Bluff, send Colonel Serrell to General
Butler, with a proposal to fortify our position there ?" " Yes,
I did," said he : " the works needed a little engineering, so as
to face the other way." I replied, " That is all. General ; I
ask no more ; for I do not think it fair that I should be pump
ing matter out of you." This, to the best of my recollection,
was the flrst speech I had with General Gillmore after he
left Hilton Head, and the only speech I had with him till
after the letter to Godwin was published.

43 A chaplain's campaign
While General Mitchel was in the Department of the South,
on consultation with him I wrote a private letter to Mr.
Horace Greeley, with whom I had been slightly acquainted
several years. Mr. Greeley politely responded, requesting to
hear from me occasionally. I therefore now wrote him a let
ter also, the same in substance as that to Mr. Godwin. I
think this was written after the forecited talk with General
Gillmore ; and, if so, I may have stated that the main p'oint of
it had been substantially confirmed to me by him.
This, my General, is the whole and simple truth of that pro
ceeding, as far as I now remember it. As Colonel Serrell was
my informant, I trust you will allow that the contents of my
letter to Mr. Godwin were "derived from an authentic source."
For your further delectation, I will next offer you a brief serv
ice of retrospect, hoping that you will be able to " read, mark,
learn, and inwardly digest " it.
After capturing the enemy's line of works near Drury's Bluff,
which, I think, was done on Saturday, the 14th of May, Gen
eral Gillmore sent Colonel Serrell to you, with verbal instruc
tions to lay before you a plan for shortening the line and facing
it towards Bichmond ; because the works, having been con
structed for defences against us, obviously needed certain
changes in order to make them available as defences against
the enemy. The General also sent you at the same time, and
by the same hand, a written message to this effect : That, in
case the enemy should seriously threaten his left, he had not
force enough there to occupy the whole of the captured line ;
and that, if the extreme left were not occupied, it would be
necessary to withdraw beyond range of that position. On re
ceiving the message, you gave this answer : " Say to General
Gillmore, we are on the offensive, not defensive ; he need have
no apprehension about his left ;" an answer so absurd and infat
uate, that I am at a loss how to account for it, but upon the sup-
posal of your ha-dng been specially inspired to utter it. How
beit, the Colonel thereupon returned and reported your wis
dom to General Gillmore in the hearing of several officers.
I think you will hardly venture to deny that this is a fair and
truthful statement of the matter in hand. I leave it to you
to settle with the country and with yourself for the strange

WITH GENERAL BUTLEE. 49
and dreadful infatuation of your answer to General Gillmore's
timely and judicious proposal. Woul4 to God you had met
that proposal as wisely as it was made !
Early in the morning of the following Monday — do you
not remember it. Sir ? — ^you found the case somewhat altered ;
you were suddenly put on the defensive ; and I suspect it
then became apparent even to you, though not till too late,
how potent and how prolific was the unwisdom of your fore-
cited answer. "Short, sharp, and decisive," as your own
saucy smartness, was the discomfiture which then swept over
you. For your own sake, I would fain hope that the events
of that morning may have chastised some of the airish,
braggart self-importance out of you, and reduced your insane
conceit nearer to the level of your capacity.
While the fight was in progress, you sent, in rapid succes
sion, first, two verbal orders, and then at least three written
ones, to General Gillmore, to leave his position within the ene
my's line, and fall back. The first verbal order was carried by
General Martindale ; the second, by an officer of your staff,
whom I forbear to name. On receiving the first, General
Gillmore went forthwith to making preparations for doing as
you ordered. This necessarily occupied some time, for the
enemy was pressing him in considerable force, so that he could
not move at once without incurring serious loss. Your last
written order was very peremptory, commanding him to with
draw immediately. By that time his dispositions were com
pleted, and he withdrew in good order, bringing off nearly all
his wounded, and also most of his material.
After falling back some half or three-fourths of a mile, Gen
eral Gillmore took up a good position, and there paused, to
cover your retreat. There you came upon him, and called
him to account for what he had done. He produced your
written orders. These of course you could not deny. But
you alleged that he had begun his arrangements for falling
back before he received either of those orders. He admitted
this, but cited your verbal orders as his reason for doing so;
You thereupon denied those verbal orders, and proceeded to
censure him as having acted without authority, in that he had
anticipated your first written order, and begun his preparations
4

50 A chaplain's campaign
for moving before it reached him. What ailed you. Sir, that
you undertood to play the soldier in such a garb as that ?
Were you frightened out of your wits ? or did your quickness
of wit beguile you into an act which honest men cannot ap
preciate ?
It is not always easy to catch the aims or divine the mo
tives of so intricate and eccentric a moralist as you. Here
you had achieved a second blunder in ordering General Gill
more to fall back ; he being of the opinion, as others also
were, that, apart from your order, there was no necessity for
him to budge an inch. And your written orders were avow
edly based on information which soon after proved to be false.
Those reported successes of the enemy — very important, if
true — against General Ames and Colonel Howell in your
rear, were, as you presently learned, bogus. It was then ap
parent to you, no doubt, that with a fair measure of pluck and
steadfastness the position, which you had now lost, might have
been held ; in which case the enemy would soon have been
forced to relinquish the advantage he had gained in another
part of the field. Your noble courage, which had oozed off
so charmingly while the enemy was hot upon you, returned
in full blast the moment you had none but your subordinates
to deal with. Let me congratulate you, Sir, on having that
great heart of yours charged with a bravery so prompt and so
wise to temper itself in inverse proportion to the danger.
" Why, Hal, thou knowest I am as valiant as Hercules ; but
beware instinct." Surely it must be fitting and right that
such a hero as you should put on his bravest looks, when dan
ger stands at a respectful distance, as fearing to meet him.
For the courage that rises in the face of peril, and modestly
retires when the peril is past, — what does such a courage argue
but a plentiful lack of wit ? And so your aim in this case ap
pears to have been to outface General Gillmore, -with your re
dundant valour, into assuming, or at least sharing, the blame
of having lost his position within the enemy's line ; as though
your ordering him to withdraw had been but an after-thought
suggested l)y what you found him already preparing to do.
Be that as it may. General Martindale, at the last accounts,
was still alive, and was still man enough and soldier enough

WITH- GENERAL BUTLEE. 51
to bear witness to the truth in this matter ; thus fixing upon
you the entire responsibility of the movement in question.
Perhaps I ought to add that the line of works which Gene
ral Gillmore held that morning connected with the system of
defences on Drury's Bluff, and extended westward across the
Richmond and Petersburgh Railroad. Ten hours well spent
in fortifying would have secured your foothold in that most
important position. As it was, the evening of that day saw
the whole army back within your line of intrenchments. The
enemy soon gathered across your front, shut you in, and there
held you, so that you could not get out. Within eight-
and-forty hours, trains of cars were running over the road
which you had so lately controlled, and have been running
ever since. It was indeed a bad day for you, my General ;
bad in more senses than one. For seven long months two
armies have been labouring with all their might to retrieve
the loss of that memorable day, and have not retrieved it yet.
And here it may not be amiss to spend a thought or two
upon your admirable gift of alternate inflation and collapse.
For you were evidently blown big with presumption when you
refused to fortify, as General Gillmore proposed ; and this sig
nal act of rashness was followed, as such acts are apt to be,
by a no less signal act of timidity ; you being, in the hour of
trial, scared into an abandonment of the position which, in
the flush of success, you had rashly scorned to strengthen. So
" kingdom'd Achilles in commotion rages, and batters down
himself." I suppose you find it both convenient and pleasant
thus to have your " valiant parts " now distended with arro
gance, now crushed together with impotence, inversely to the
occasion. But I hope you will forgive us ordinary mortals,
warm questrists of amusement as we are, if we indulge now
and then in a quiet laugh at this your preposterous style of
manhood. Of course your style is right. Sir — at least for you ;
but this does not hinder it from being a little odd ; I have
sometimes sinned so far as to think it almost comical. I com
mend you to the study of Monsieur ParoUes. And, as a relish
to the contemplation of that noted hero, I will here insert an
apt soliloquy of one Captain Bessus,* merely premising that
* A famous character in Beaumont and Fletcher's King and No King.

52 A chaplain's campaign
the Captain has just been cowed into surrendering his sword,
but is allowed to retain his knife ; whereupon he solaces him
self with these audible thoughts : " I will make better use of
this than of my sword. A base spirit has this 'vantage of a
brave one ; it keeps always at a stay ; nothing brings it down,
not beating. I remember I promised the king, in a great au
dience, that I would make my backbiters eat my sword to a
knife. How to get another sword I know not ; nor know any
means left for me to maintain my credit, but impudence :
therefore I will outswear him, and all his followers, that this
is all that's left uneaten of my sword."
As to the false information on which you claimed to be act
ing during the fight of the 16th of May, I know not who gave
it, nor what business you had to be thus imposed upon by
treacherous or incompetent messengers. I have heard, indeed,
that you then had certain Southerners professedly serving you
as spies and informers ; and it was thought by some that they
stuffed you with those forged alarms for the very purpose of
fooling you into doing just what you did. This was told
me by a good and true man, who was at that time on duty
at your headquarters ; but I cannot vouch for it. I would
not wonder if it were true, though ; for, be assured. Sir,
none are more easily gulled than they who have got intox
icate with a conceit of shrewdness and sagacity. As you
specially plumed yourself on knowing your man, so you might
well be a fit subject for the enemy's spies and informers to
practise upon. The voracious vanity of Ajax makes him an
easy prey to the flatteries of Ulysses : behold him eagerly
sucking in the poison that has been cra,ftily qualified to his
taste ! You, my General, love the voice of sycophants ;
they are your chosen guides ; to beguile you of your trust,
they have but to cram you with pleasing falsehoods ; you will
taste no treachery in any thing that is sugared over with that
disguise ; and so you are well paid for spurning at the reproofs
of honest men.
Thus much for your two main blunders in that famous ad
venture on Proctor's Creek ; which blunders, as described to
me soon after by Colonel Serrell, were the whole staple of my
letter to Mr. Godwin ; though the matter has since been fur"

with GENEEAL BUTLER. 53
ther explained and certified to me by better vouchers. I need
not stay to comment on the Colonel's exorbitant virtue in urg
ing me, as he afterwards did, to " come out and make a clean
breast of it," by Butlerizing upon another man the very tale
which he knew to have been spun into my ears from his own
exuberant lips. Doubtless I should have cause to be ashamed,
or alarmed, at his daring to do so, but that brass is known to
be a rather dull metal. As it is, I console myself with the
reflection, that he would not have had the effrontery thus to
tamper with me, if he had had the sense to understand me.
True, he did it to please you. Sir ; but that only argues him
fit to be your pimp. What if he should say some time hence,
that he would not have tried such arts on me, but that he
knew I was proof against them ?
Now, you also knew that Colonel Serrell gave me the mat
ter of my letter to Mr. Godwin ; for I told you so, plainly, in
our interview, and you believed what I said : I read convic
tion in the lines of your face, as you heard my words. More
over, General Gillmore, as I have already shown, had told
you twice in writing that he did not give me the matter of
that letter. So that your proceedings in this case were not for
the purpose of getting from me what you believed to be true,
but of making me utter what you knew to be false. But I
think your " high-erected spirit " must have had rare sport in
thus employing Colonel Serrell as your undertaker in the busi
ness of inducing me to father his own gift on General Gill
more. A clever stroke of art, my General ! if it showed a
good deal of knavery, it also showed some wit. Of course
you did not tell him what I had told you, nor did I tell him ;
for, to be frank, I rather enjoyed, as I presume you did, his
maiden essays in the Butler craft. But let me assure you that
such a gust of sharp practice is not very wise. They who
have become fanatics in trickery seldom deceive any but
themselves. From the foregoing account it appears that your deplorable
military blundering in the affair under review was not the
worst of it. Great as were your mistakes, considerate and
kind-hearted men might have overlooked them, had you own
ed them frankly like a man, and bravely stood up to the re-

54 A chaplain's campaign
sponsibility of them. I grieve to say that the swift reverse
which fell upon you, though it. may have taught you some
thing in the art of war, failed to elicit any sparks of honour
and manhood. Nay, more ; whatever virtue there may have
been in the lessons of that time to bring forth such fruits " in
an honest and good heart," seems in your case to have fructi
fied in quite another sort. To be sure, the blunders could not
be undone, nor the loss and damage consequent thereon fore
closed. But here was at least a good chance for you to ac
quire the honour of nobly acknowledging the fault, though you
could not retrieve it. And I think all right-minded men will
agree that the frank acknowledgment of such a fault is some
thing better as regards the honour of a man, than not to have
committed it. It is thus that truly noble spirits turn adversi
ties into felicities, losses into glorious gains, the very darkness
of fortune serving to augment and illustrate their virtue. But
it appears that you, instead of earning any such praise, were
kindled just the reyerse : either because you were so unmanned
by the events of the day as not to know what you did, or else
from an innate something which I refrain from wording as it
is, you endeavoured to fasten upon him who had counselled
you well the very consequences proceeding from your own
fatal rejection of his counsel. O, my General, what a fall
was that ! And you have ever since been seeking to revenge
your blunders on those whose only crime was that of knowing
and lamenting them. From your manner of dealing with me,
one would suppose your huge miscarriage had never happened,
if I had not gone and told of it. Did you imagine that by
punishing me for grieving aloud over your fault you could
really make me guilty, and yourself free ?
As you seemed to be taken with " a strong delusion " about
General Gillmore — such a delusion as often leads men to " be
lieve a lie," — I am minded to add a few words more touching
the matter between him and you.
I repeat, that if General Gillmore had been forging any
plots, or working any arts against you, I knew nothing of them
whatsoever. You accused me of being iu a conspiracy with him.
I submit that if he have the mind of a conspirator, he knows
better than to take a man like me into an enterprise of that

with general butler. 55
sort. And I owe it to him to say, that I had never beard him
speak an unkind or disrespectful word of you. But then, if
he had had any such to speak, I was probably one of the last
persons in the world that he would have been likely to speak
them to. For the little intercourse I had held with him,
though amicable enough, had nothing of the confidential in it.
And I suspect that gentleman is not much used to " unpack
ing his heart with words " in denunciation of his official breth
ren. Be that as it may, I had all along believed you both
to be good men and true ; and my deepest wish had been,
that the best talents and best services of you both might be
forthcoming in the great cause of the Nation. But I had
lived in the world long enough to know, that good men
sometimes misunderstand one another, and so fall at odds.
And if it was so with you, that was not my business, nor had
I made it my business. I was willing, in my place, to fight
with or for either or both of you against the rebels ; but I was
not willing to fight with or for either of you against the other.
You had both, as I thought, done good service in the cause,
and I honoured you both for it. And what right bad you, my
General, to be making war on him, even though you knew
ever so well that he had been warring against you ? If
you could not both walk the same road of duty together,
then why not agree to walk apart, and let each other alone ?
Or, if he would not do this, why not do it yourself neverthe
less, and so take the chance of outdoing him in the public
service ? It really seemed to me that you were both bound,
by every just consideration, to spend all your force in the com
mon work, postponing your private quarrels, if you had any,
till the rebellion should be thrashed back to  to where
it came from. And I must say, my General, that in my poor
judgment the little time and thought you have spent in perse
cuting me had far better been spent in prosecuting the great
war of the Union. Depend upon it, such an use of your pow
ers would have fructified more to your credit.
As for yourself, it is true I did not believe you to be a great
general, nor even capable of becoming one. Neither do I be
lieve it now, your campaigning against Richmond and your
bull-penning of me having alike failed to convince me of it.

56
But what of that ? there were other and even higher paths of
honour open to you, in the just exercise of those administra
tive talents which you were supposed to possess. On the score
of these, I had myself wished all honour to you. My thought
and my speech had been : " General Butler is a strong man, a
very strong man, and a glorious good fellow, in the right place.
He has greatness enough of his own, if he would only be con
tented with it ; but, in aspiring to another sort of greatness,
he will hazard the disappointing of that which is properly his,
and at the same time fail of that to which he aspires."
Such, I say, had been my thought and speech;, not very
wise indeed, but honest and frank. And if my mind has since
changed somewhat respecting you, it is but such a change as
experience often superinduces upon minds far stronger and
firmer than I can suppose mine to be. I, in common with
many others, had accorded to you high administrative abili
ties. A nearer view of you, aided by the disenchantment
which your peculiar manners and your singular perfections as
a gentleman are so well adapted to effect, has convinced me
that I was mistaken in this ; and that your genius, instead of
being properly administrative, is merely of the detective and
machinative order. To be a chief of police, or a sort of mu
nicipal rat-catcher and wolf-tamer, is, I take it, about the true
pitch and scope of your capacity ; unless you may be thought
to have a special gift for harrying and buffeting witnesses and
chaplains. Not to put too fine a point upon it, you are
strangely wanting in the right temper of the administrative
faculty : you have nothing of the magnanimity that belongs
to that type of mental organization, and you abound in the
meanness and petty vindictiveness that do not belong to it'.
The generous thought, the high principle, the large discourse,
the understanding soul, — there is not a gleam of these about
you. And I think a man can hardly do well in any office of
public administration, unless he have some conscience, — enough,
at least, to enable him to recognize the workings of conscience
in other men, and to appreciate those workings as an operative
element in the problems with which he has to deal. Observe,
I do not here question but men may be great fools in aU
this : I merely urge the fact that conscience is an actual

WITH GENERAL BUTLER. 57
force in human affairs ; and that some account should be
made of this force, if one would go smooth with the exist
ing order and compact of things. Nor must I omit, that
you are e-vidently nothing if not circumventive, and that na
ture does not like to be circumvented on so large a scale ; she
may indeed, for a while, humour the lust of stratagem and ar
tifice, but it is only for the sport of seeing " the engineer hoist
with his own petar." For we shall see, in the long run, that
truth and law are too much for you ; they will grind you up ;
so that the not caring to do right will lose you the power of
doing any thing. I grant you to be a man of quick, sharp,
and ready parts ; you have a very considerable gift of practical
adroitness, which you seem to mistake for wisdom ; your brain
is as fertile as an old barn-yard, though its up-growth is neither
wholesome nor sweet ; even in your best preparations we still
find you dabbling in the dirt of vulgar smartness and clap
trap ; and of your whole style and expression it may be justly
said, " Of courage we see little there,
But, in its stead, a medley air
Of cunning and of impudence."
I believe you manage to get more official brain-sprouts be
fore the public, than all the rest of our generals put together ;
and nearly every one of them has some jerk or snap of Butler
ism which is neither wise nor in good taste. These fond and
fluent spurts appear to be the orts or old-ends of your long
practice at blackguarding and abusing witnesses. They may
answer as ear- ticklers for the groundlings and pitmen, before
whom you have been used to perform ; but they are much too
theatrical for a well-ordered stage, and none but third-rate or
fourth-rate actors ever affect them. At all events, such issues
are not the right style of a solid and symmetrical manhood :
an Englishman would be apt to say they smell of the Old
Bailey ; a sensible American might regard them as doing well
enough for a Tombs lawyer, but not just the thing for a gen
eral in the field : a Jeffries, a Scroggs, or even an Alsatian
Duke Hildebrog, could beat you at them : I suspect we have
several generals who could at least equal you in them, if they
would let themselves down so low. Besides, you have been

^8 A chaplain's campaign
performing in that kind long enough : what was at fisst a
rather entertaining exhibition, has got " played out " into an
uncomely exposure : the wit, if there be any in it, is of the
cheapest sort, and can no longer raise a laugh, save at your
own expense : in brief, the thing has grown stale ; you had
better leave it off.
Such, my General, is the best figure I can make of you. I
hope you will recognize the likeness, though of course you can
not be expected to see yourself precisely as others see you.
Taking you for all in all, you are now, I should think, the fitting
sequel and continuation of what you were when I used to hear
a good deal about you as "the hard case of the Lowell Bar;"
your changes of character being only such as would naturally
grow from having more room to spread yourself in, and less
restraint upon your native aptitudes. Men who have con
versed much with you in your present full-blown efflorescence,
may indeed fear you, may fawn upon you, may wonder at
you ; but they cannot, they cannot respect you.
And now a word more as to the cause of your resentment
against me.
Last May, soon after landing with your army at Bermuda
Hundred, you got possession of the railroad between Richmond
and Petersburgh, and held it, I think, something over a week.
During that time, you might have taken up a position com
manding the road, fortified, and made sure of it beyond all
reasonable peradventure. This was the wise thing for you to
do ; but you preferred, apparently, to be doing something
more noisy and brilliant. For a while, your movement was
successful ; success, I take it, elevated you somewhat ; and in
your elevation you saw some things that were not, and failed
to see some things that were. Witness, your unlucky dispatch
to the Lieutenant-General, assuring him that you had effectu
ally cut off Beauregard from reinforcing Lee. For you must
know. Sir, that giddiness is no good strengthener of the vision
for the seeing of facts as they are ; and that to see facts as
they are is of all things the most needful in a commanding
general. Now, I understood at the time, or thought I understood, the
importance of holding that railroad. As I have already stat-

WITH GENEEAL BUTLEE. 59
ed, on the 16th of May you lost control of the road, lost it
beyond recovery ; and this, too, by what I could not choose
but regard as one of the greatest and most inexcusable blun
ders of the whole war. Indeed, my General, it was a dread
ful miscarriage, and the nation has paid dearly for it since,
both in blood and treasure ; five hundred millions of dollars
and fifty thousand lives being, probably, but a moderate esti
mate of the cost thus entailed through the wrong-headed, vain
glorious conceit and egotism of a general who was no soldier,
overbearing the counsels of a sober and judicious soldiership.
I was certainly led to believe at the time, and did believe, as
indeed I still do, that if the advice of Generals Smith and
Gillmore had been followed, the result would have been very
different. I deplored the miscarriage much : I thought we
had had enough of civilian commanders in the field : I longed,
more than I know how to express, to have our military work
go on in the conduct of educated soldiers, instead of sworded
lawyers. Still I knew right well that in all human affairs,
but especially in war, the best men are liable to make mis
takes ; that such mistakes may draw on very serious conse
quences ; and that wise men, instead of brooding past mis
takes, rather make it a point to remember them only that they
may learn how to go on and do better.
With these thoughts pressing upon me, I wrote the letter to.
Mr. Godwin, setting forth the fact and the circumstances of
the miscarriage, as I understood them. The letter, against
my expectations, was published. I was, and I still am, well
assured, that the letter, though erroneous in some of the de
tails, was in its main points substantially true. But you, I
suppose, were ambitious to be distinguished as a great general,
perhaps as the greatest of all our generals. To have achieved
the capture of Richmond, would have gone far towards mak
ing that distinction yours. I impute not such ambition to you
as a fault ; on the contrary, I should regard it as a high vir
tue in you, provided you used none but just and honourable
means to compass your object. But it was obvious enough
that the recent miscarriage would operate as a material draw
back on your ambition of military renown, in case it should
become generally known to the public. And, through the

60 A chaplain's campaign
letter aforesaid, I became, undesignedly, a means of making it
thus known.
This, my General, and nothing but this, was the true mo
tive, the real secret, of your unbenevolent proceedings against
me ; you knew it was, and you knew, moreover, that I knew
it was. Indeed you evidently wished me to understand that
such was the case, and to suppose that my only chance of es
caping your clutches was by arming you with something
wherewith to twist General Gillmore. So that I feel amply
warranted to say, that your treatment of me was not for any
purpose of military order and discipline, but to the end either
of taking vengeance directly on me, or else of inducing me to
serve as your instrument of vengeance on another. Whether
you acted, also, with the further view of making an example
of me as a newspaper correspondent, to the end of reducing
other newspaper correspondents to a course of entire subservi
ency to yourself, that so you might have them to officiate, un
reservedly, as your advocates and puffers in the public ear, I
pretend not to say. But this I know full well, that correspond
ents who did what they could to discredit major-generals un
der you were not put in your bull-pen. And perhaps it was
but natural for you to presume, in respect of me, that " your
defeat did by your own insinuation grow." Nevertheless, I
protest that the fact of others having served as your spouts
against General Gillmore, does not necessarily infer me to
have been serving as his spout against you.
What, then, my General, had you in all this business to
bottom any decent plea of right or even expediency upon ? I
had but given, in the form of a private letter, a fair and honest
statement of what I had fairly and honestly learned touching
the matter in question. But suppose I had done this avow
edly for publication, with my usual signature, still it was at
the worst but a military offence ; there was no breach of es
sential morality in it ; nothing to call for any extra-judicial
infliction ; and therefore it ought not on any account to have
been visited beyond the strict requirements of military law :
whereas you did nothing but violate the law in my case, and
this for the purpose of a severity far greater than the law
would award. Do you think, by such ignoble and unmanly

WITH GENERAL BUTLEE. 61
abuse of military power, to stifle the honest convictions of men
respecting you, or to purchase exemption from the just respon
sibility of your acts ? Who, what, I pray, are you. Sir, that
you should take upon you, against the law, and without a
trial, to punish men for a candid and liberal expression of
judgment about you ? This is mere tyranny. Sir, and tyranny
of a very bad kind ; such as, if unchecked, can hardly fail to
quench the life of all true soldiership under you. Nor is mine
by any means a solitary case : your military career has notori
ously been replete with like instances of arbitrary and unlaw
ful punishment. And what think you has been the effect ? to
make the men respect you ? No, Sir ; not a bit of it : it has
merely set them to execrating you, or to making fun of you,
and venting broad jokes about you. And, as you have been
going on, no officer worthy of his title could think his reputa
tion safe with you : all must feel themselves put to the alter
native of being at odds with you, or else of becoming your
creatures; no way left but to be nothing at all, or be just
what you please to have them, mere putty-heads and dough
faces to you ; either of which is fatal to the spirit and efficien
cy of an army. Therefore — I speak advisedly — therefore some
of the very best officers in your command have withdrawn
from the service, or have asked to be relieved, on the ground
that they could not possibly serve under you either with benefit
to the cause, or with credit to themselves. And what could we
expect, under such a rule as yours, but that the angel of respect
and confidence should give place to the demon of hatred and
distrust ? men meeting each other with chilled looks and stag
gering eyes ; drawing the cloak of suspiciousness tight about
them, and moving as though they dared not say their souls
were their own ; hardly speaking together but in whispers,
and constantly on the alert lest some of your prowlers and in
formers might be eyeing them. Such, my General, is the
style of military order and discipline which your genius creates
about you. And, instead of that which should accompany
your place, " as honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,"
you have — are you aware of it. Sir ? —
" Curses, not loud, hut deep, mouth-honour, hreath,
Which the poor heart would fain deny, but dare not."

62 A chaplain's campaign
Indeed, Sir, you greatly overween in thinking, as you seem
to have done, that this war was gotten up, under Providence,
mainly to the end of furnishing you with a world to bu,stle,
and play the autocrat, and promulgate yourself, and air your
smartness in. The people of this nation, and even we men of
the army, have, or think we have, a higher concern, a more
sacred duty, than to push and crouch and wrangle for the
privilege of walking about meanly conspicuous betwixt your
legs. And some of us, at least, have other work to do besides
smoking your blunders and failures out oi the public eye.
Nor do we reckon it the dearest of honours to be trampled
upon even by men much greater than you are. We have no
military laurels to spare but for those who earn them by real
and solid service to the cause ; nor do we hold the cause to be
served, when they whose office it is to enforce the laws grow
so big in their own esteem, as to take pride in breaking them.
But you " had got the whip-hand of every body ?" Ah ! Sir,
that was a mistake ; you never had any such thing. Well,
my Genera], you, in the pride and insolence of unaccustomed
power — robes which upstarts seldom know how to wear — -
have been strutting through your brief term of adventitious
greatness, apparently not remembering those old maxims, that
" a haughty spirit goeth before a fall," and that " the pros
perity of fools shall destroy them." Did you, when your sun
was high, dream, like the bold bad woman in the play, that
there was no need of fear, " since none could call your power
to account ?" Alas ! Sir, that was the very time of aU others
when you should have given earnest heed to the precept,
" Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall."
I have said that I had not believed you capable of becom
ing a great general. But I never had the least objection to
your becoming such. On the contrary, if you had soldiered
your way to honour and distinction, I should have been right
glad of it ; most assuredly I should. No one rejoiced at your
success more heartily than I did ; no one prayed more earnest
ly that you might still succeed. The capture of Richmond
by you would have made me fairly leap for joy. But I ques
tion whether your " gentle exercise and proof of arms" on me
has greatly furthered your reputation for soldiership. When

with general butler. 63
a man is hunting tigers, he should not turn aside, no, not for
an instant, to catch and tease a mouse. Your great campaign
on the James in May was not successful. I confess you suc
ceeded better in your little campaign of September on the
Hudson ; this exploit being, apparently, just the height of
your military genius.
But, my General, permit me to assure you that in this latter
enterprise your proceedings, though perhaps not wanting in
smartness, were something ill-judged. For, in the first place,
the fact of your grand miscarriage could not possibly be smoth
ered up from the world ; the public would have known and
appreciated it just the same, though I had never written a
word about it. In the second place, it was very evident that
the legitimate effect of your course with me would be, to con
vince the public of the truth of what I had written about
you, however they may have doubted it before. It was there
fore supremely unwise in you to think of refuting my state
ments, or of reversing the public judgment, by letting loose
your vindictiveness on me. Allow me to remind you. Sir,
that " when valour preys on reason, it eats the sword it fights
with." That a man of your hardness should do wrong to an
other, is not so strange. But I marvel that a man of your
shrewdness should commit so great a blunder in so small a
matter. For I am hugely mistaken, if your treatment of me
do not prove more damaging to you, than any thing I had
written or could write about you. Just think of it : You
had made a fool of yourself in certain military doings ; I had
told of your folly ; to be revenged on me for this, you then
went and made a fool of yourself a second time. I know not
what was the trouble with you : my theory is, that the lawyer
prevented the soldier in you, and the straining to be a soldier
subverted the lawyer ; so that your mind became as thwart
and ill-conditioned as your manners. What you should have
resented was your own blundering, not my exposure of it :
whatsoever my act or my motive may have been, that was the
wise and manly thing for you to do. To " kill your physician,
and the fee bestow upon the foul disease," is not the best way,
not absolutely the best. Suppose you had crushed my body
into the dust ; or, worse, suppose you had crushed my spirit

64 A chaplain's campaign
into uttering that about General Gillmore which I knew to be
false ; what could this have done toward retrieving your mis
carriages, or undoing your blunders ? or even toward altering
the public verdict respecting them ? Believe me, there were
other and better ways of approving your generalship, than by
insulting and browbeating a defenceless chaplain. Let me tell
you, Sir, that if you would be distinguished as a general, you
will have to do something besides oppressing and tormenting
so impotent and so insignificant a being as myself. Shame,
shame on you. General Butler ! For decency's sake, "assume
a virtue, if you have it not."
Sincerely yours, &c.,
H. N. Hudson.

with general BUTLEE. 65
POSTSCRIPT.
In the foregoing letter I have expressed the con-viction, that
all the while you held me in your claws it was not your pur
pose to have me tried ; and that your talk about doing so was
a mere pretext for keeping me in your bull-pen, and so pun
ishing me without a trial. This conviction has been rather
strengthened than impaired by what has since occurred. On
being removed from your late command, as my case waa
rather prominent among those brought against you, you then
turned and made charges against me. I have not yet seen
those charges, and know not what they are, though I have
looked diligently, and as far as I could, to find a copy of them.
It was your business to see that a copy was served on me.
That you have not done so, is proof enough, both in law and
in reason, that you -still did not mean to give me the benefit
of a trial.
At the time the charges were made, I was at home on leave
of absence by the Lieutenant-General. When my leave was
out, which was on the 26th of January, I returned to my
regiment, and there have remained till this day, waiting to
hear from you. My term of service has now expired. You
have had ample time. Sir, for carrying out any honest purpose
of a trial ; and I am under no sort of obligation, either in
duty or honour, to wait any longer for you. I learn, on good
authority, that, though the charges were not made till after
vour removal, yet you dated them back several days before
that event. Of course, this was done to hide the- glaring an
achronism of your proceedings, — another bald and blear-eyed
trick of vours. And it is the opinion of those most compe
tent to judge in the matter, that on being called to account
for your criminal treatment of me, you thought it necessary
to patch up something, in order to break or parry the force
of what was charged upon you. But the thing had then
reached a point where such stale and disreputable shifts would
not go. It was vain to tinker at your broken cause in that
way, but I suppose you must still be false. The power with
which you had so long oppressed and insulted me was not
incorporate with you ; the meanness was.

66 A chaplain's campaign.
In addition to your other heroisms, you are now the hero
of Fort Fisher, — a very fitting consummation of your mili
tary career. I believe a good deal in the sagacity and
wisdom of President Lincoln ; and when you were ordered
to report at Lowell, I presume it was because he judged that
you could serve the country better there than anywhere else.
I have read your Lowell speech. Of course I did not fail
to observe the freedom -with which you there criticised and
censured the military doings of the Lieutenant-General.
Your virtue is certainly of a very eccentric habit. In that
speech, you made no scruple of doing, in the most aggra
vated and most offensive form, the very thing which , you
tried to kill me for having done in the most excusable form.
I am far from imputing to you any conscience of injustice
in this ; for, as seen through your eyes, it is, I doubt not,
perfectly right and just that vou should thus punish to
death an ounce of fault in another, and still expect impu
nity for a ton of the same fault in yourself. But, with such
an illustrious example before me, I shall hope to be par
doned for remembering the saying of a very -wise man,
that " faction is but tyranny out of office." — But you are
now a fallen man, and so I forbear ; indeed, I would not
have said so much, but that your mean-spirited vindictive
ness towards me has manifestly survived your fall.
H. N. H.
Camp First New-York "Voldnteer Engineers, )
Army of the James, Feb. 13, 1866. )

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Makers
Syracuse, N. Y.
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