L E T T T E R
LETTER
OF
GENERAL BENJ. F, BUTLER,
TO
HON. E. R. HOAR.
GIVES HIS OFFICIAL AND POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY, WITH A
REPLY TO THE JUDGE'S IMPUTATIONS UPON
THE GENERAL.
PUBLISHED   BY  REQUEST.
1876.








LETTER.
LOWELL, October, 1876.
JUDGE EBENEZER ROCKWOOD HOAR:DEAR SIR, - I have read with attention and careful consideration
the remarks reported to have been made by you at a meeting of
persons who assembled at Young's Hotel to defeat the nomination
of the Republican convention of the Seventh District, in order to
re-elect the Democratic incumbent, and also your letter accepting
its nomination with that intention; and take leave to reply to
some of your suggestions.
That such was the purpose of the meeting, I rely upon your own
reported words: "If by using my name the result shall be that
Gen. Butler shall be defeated, and if, knowing the sentiments of
the people of the district, it is the opinion of gentlemen that it can
be done, I should see no objection to it."
If there had been any purpose or hope expressed in that meeting of the election of even as uncertain and unreliable a Republican as Judge Hoar shew himself to be by his election of Mr. Tarbox
to the present Congress, I should have felt it my duty in this crisis
of public affairs, - of peril so imminent to good government and
the peace of the country, -at least to have endeavored to do
something, to make any concession, by which the honest, patriotic
Republicans of this district could have found representation, and
a Republican majority been secured in the House of Representatives.
But, quoting your words again, you say: "If you, gentlemen,
consider that the best thing to do, and that you can carry on the
fight, of which there is some reasonable prospect of success," then
you are willing to allow your name to be used.  This is conclusive
that the movement is a mere personal "fight" upon me, and not in
aid of the Republican party. Therefore I must accept the gage
as it is thrown down, and meet a personal" fight" personally.
You say that " it [the fight] simply involves my submitting for
the next thirty days, if I choose, to the abuse of Gen. Butler's




4
speeches and   The Traveller,' and such little organs as he owns
and can buy, to an unlimited quantity of personal abuse."
Surely, Judge, I never have said any harsher things of the newspapers than that. You thus aver that newspapers can be bought
for " unlimited personal abuse." I have believed and felt that for
a long time of some newspapers, and I am glad to have the high
authority of one intimately connected with, and so persistently
puffed and boosted by the newspapers, for my belief. Don't be
alarmed, Judge; from me you will receive no personal abuse, and
I do not own a dollar in any newspaper, nor shall I buy one,
even if otherwise inclined, now.  Newspapers only make or
mar little timid and shuffling men. You have disarmed me, for
you say you will take no active part in the canvass. I cannot, therefore, meet you face to face before our neighbors;
and after I subscribe my name to this communication, during
the present canvass I promise you that I shall hardly make
a personal allusion to you, except upon some new provocation.
I never have made an unprovoked personal assault upon any one
in a political canvass; or during my eight years' service in the
House made such personal attack, as I think all my colleagues
will bear me witness: and I may be permitted to say at the same
time, that, when once attacked, the attack has been repelled in
such manner that nobody has ever repeated the experiment.
If you had contented yourself with accepting a nomination,
against the will of the Republican organization of the district,
making no personal onslaught upon me, no word of unkind allusion to you, or other, except to bring your better qualities before
your wished-for constituents, would have passed my lips, as has
been the case in all my public utterances heretofore. The personal
relations on which we have stood, as members of the bar, of the
same party, and neighbors in the same county, constrained me to
this, although I have been painfully aware of your political opposition to me ever since you so unceremoniously left the cabinet of
President Grant.
You say, in your carefully prepared letter, written at Concord, in
the peace and quiet of your home, where kindly thoughts, even of
one's enemies, usually visit the most jaundiced mind, that you
write it " with no personal hostility to Gen. Butler." If you can
use such harsh language, make such unfounded accusations and




5
such degrading imputations in regard to a man against whom you
have no personal hostility, I may be permitted to think the reader
of your letter curious to know what you would have said if you had
happened to have a little personal spite toward the unfortunate
object of your invective.  If the readers of your letter credit
your statements in this regard, I fear, after reading it, they will
deem your good-will hate; your kindly feeling toward all men,
chronic bitterness; and the best throbbings of your heart, malignity.
I am afraid you do not quite understand your own nature. You
will pardon me, therefore, if I hold the mirror up before you for a
little while, and let you see yourself as others see you, and thereby
convince you how little you have realized the grand old Greek
apothegm, " Know thyself."
As one, but not the most remarkable of the examples of your
entire ignorance of yourself and the motives which govern your
life, I take the astonishing assertion among the closing sentences
of your letter: " I have never held public office by my own desire,
and certainly wish for none now."
I believe I can show you that you appreciate as little the yearning desire of your heart for office as you do the chronic feeling in
your inmost soul of hate and malignity toward me. Let me simply
recall certain facts.
You never held a public office by your own desire!!! Why,
Judge! you were appointed Judge of the Court of Common Pleas
more than a quarter of a century ago, -August 2, 1849,  a very
young man for such an office in those times.
You remained on the bench of the Common Pleas until you
thought you had got reputation enough from its prestige to enable
you to compete with Farley, Wentworth, Abbot, Nelson, and your
other associates of the Middlesex bar, so successfully as to earn by
your profession larger emoluments than the very moderate salary of
an inferior judge, of $2,000 a year; then you resigned the office and
tried to earn a living by your profession. Failing in that experiment evidently, because after a short trial at the bar in competing
with your peers, when the first opportunity offered, and at your
own solicitation, — was it not so, Judge? - you were appointed
upon the bench of the Supreme Court, where you served all through
the war, sitting on its soft cushions until March 10, 1869, while
other men about your own age left their business, quite as lucrative




6
as your salary, and went to the front to do what they could do, to
save the country from dismemberment in its hour of peril.
I am bound by candor to say that I never heard any criticism
upon your conduct as a judge, save that the infirmity of your temper, the peculiarity of your mind, and the state of your stomach
were so unfortunate, that it was said of you by a very distinguished
member of the bar, that you were in a continual condition of illmanners on the bench, both towards your associates, the members
of the bar, and the suitors before the court; because you could not
gratify the bitterness of your heart, by giving judgment against
both parties, in every case.
Indeed with all these infirmities, I am free to say that you made
a very passable judge to try small cases, wherein there were no
circumstances to excite the Ebenezer of your nature. I am impelled to this observation to demonstrate that I have " no personal
hostility" toward Judge Hoar, which might be suspected from the
severity of the facts I reluctantly narrate.
Upon the retirement of Chief Justice Bigelow, were you not an
applicant for the Chief-Justiceship of that court? and were you not
so enraged that Judge Thomas was nominated for that position by
Governor Bullock, that you put your resignation of your seat on
the bench into the hands of your councillor, Mr. Talbot, to be
presented to the council in case Judge Thomas should be confirmed,
to show, that should the council confirm Thomas, the State would
lose Judge Hoar from the bench; an argument, however, which was
a very dangerous one? I am informed, as both your associates of
the bench and your brethren at the bar were anxious to be relieved
from the burden of bearing your ill-temper and worse manners as a
judge, that to get rid of you and get Thomas, both at once, came
very near overcoming the political prejudices of the council against
confirming him, and I guess would have done it if I had been at
the time in full practice before the Supreme Court.
Did not your friends, acting with your knowledge, bring every
influence to bear on the council to prevent that confirmation, in
which they succeeded? Did not your friends approach by telegraph
and otherwise the humble writer of this letter, to advise one of
his personal friends, who was a member of the council, to vote
against Judge Thomas, and did I not so advise? - not because I
doubted his ability as a lawyer, uprightness as a judge, or integrity
of life, but because I felt that he was not quite sound on the con



7
stitutionality of the legal-tender act, one of the great measures of
the war, against which he argued in the case of Parker and Davis,
in which I was of counsel. And did not my friend, yielding to
such advice as he received from others more capable, as well as
myself, vote against Judge Thomas in your favor, giving the determining majority of one on that question? Were you not urged by
your friends, with your knowledge and connivance, upon Governor
Bullock, for the place of Chief Justice? Now, my dear Judge, as
a man accustomed for many years to weigh evidence, does not all this
imply on your part, some slight desire for public office?  You see
that any desire for office, however slight, will convict you of not
knowing yourself. 
And when fortified by the representations of some of your
associates upon the bench, that you were not qualified for the
place of Chief Justice, because the infirmities of heart and
body of which I have spoken make you liable to take unjust prejudices against one party or the other, in cases where undoubtedly
you think yourself unbiased, did not Governor Bullock peremptorily refuse to appoint you, and appoint the late lamented Chief
Justice Chapman? As soon as you lost the Chief-Justiceship, were
you not, through the recommendation of your representative in
Congress, Governor Boutwell, nominated as Attorney-General,
another and more lucrative office, upon the first formation of the
cabinet of President Grant?
And now, Judge, as to your appointment to the office of Attorney-General of the United States. Is there nothing suggestive of
a desire to hold office in that chapter of your political history?
Let me recall the facts.
Not being known to President Grant, you were nominated as
a member of his first cabinet on a suggestion made by Mr.
Boutwell, when the latter gentleman, having declined the position of Secretary  of the Interior, tendered to him  by the
President, was asked to name a suitable person from  Massachusetts for the office of Attorney-General? Being thus nominated, you were confirmed by the Senate at an early day, not
without surprise on the part of the friends of the administration
that you had been selected by the President as one of his constitutional advisers. At the same time Mr. Stewart of New York was
nominated Secretary of the Treasury,- a nomination which, failing
to be confirmed, was thereafter withdrawn; leaving that office free to




8
be tendered to Mr. Boutwell, for whom the President had originally
intended it, in conformity with the general wish and approval of
the Republican party. Now, Judge, what was your conduct
toward the President and his administration at that important
emergency? Were you not notified authoritatively from the President by a telegram from his most confidential friend, the Hon.
Elihu B. Washburn, then Secretary of State, that if you would decline the office of Attorney-General, you would release the administration from embarrassment? You will not deny, Judge, that you
received a communication to that effect. And now, in what manner did you respond to the suggestion of the President, thus at the
opening of the administration placed in a dilemma for which he
was not responsible, having two cabinet officers from the same
Eastern State?  Did you decline the appointment as you were
requested to do?  By no means.  Hastening to Washington
without delay, you took the oath of office, thus consummating your
official tenure, giving the friends of the administration to understand that you had no thought of retiring, but that you intended
to stick," or perhaps to bring yourself within the terms of the
tenure-of-office act. And when it was suggested to you from more
than one quarter that you ought to retire from the cabinet in Mr.
Boutwell's favor, whom the President desired for his Secretary of
the Treasury, especially as you owed your appointment to him, did
you not answer in substance, " Let Boutwell go; why should I
be asked to?" adding personal ingratitude to the weightier offence
of indecorous intrusion into the administration?
Now, Judge, you say that you never held a public office "by
your own desire." As, under the circumstances, nobody else desired
that you should be Attorney-General at that time, by whose desire
were you there?  Were not these facts well known and the subject
of discussion at the capital?
One who does an ungraceful and ungrateful act to a friend, in
order to get in office, ought to desire office very much, in order to
excuse his conduct.
You were in office as head of the Department of Justice but
eight months when, as the head of that department, it became
your duty to recommend the appointment of a judge to fill the
vacancy that occurred in the Supreme Court. Upon the first occasion, whom did the department send to the President for that
place?  EBENEZER ROCKWOOD HOAR! If the Department




9
of Justice recommended anybody to the President for that office,
Mr. I-oar must have named himself. Mr. Stanton, the great War
Secretary, was afterwards nominated, so that you must have preferred yourself as judge to him. But you were rejected by the
Senate - but of that more in its proper place.
Do you really think, Judge, upon the whole, that I am uncharitable when I believe that appointment of judge did not rain
down on you without some scintilla of a desire to hold public
office, or without any procurement, wish expressed, or knowledge
on the part of Gen. Grant of that wish, that he should appoint you
to a public office for life, out of which you could not be got except
you committed an impeachable offence, and bad manners have
never been held to be such an one even by myself, who advocated
a somewhat broad doctrine as to impeachment? If you insist, however, that I shall believe that the President did appoint you against
your desire and will, then I am driven to the other horn of the
dilemma,  that he made that appointment without your desire, as
an easy and graceful mode of getting you out of his cabinet, which,
after your rejection by the Senate, he did do in such a manner that
you sent him a very short and curt note of resignation, which did
no credit to your good temper or taste.
You may answer, in your own choice language, borrowed from
the servant-girls, that he " gave you a character."  True,-kindhearted, good-natured man that he is! -but so he did other
cabinet officers, with whose names you would hardly like to have
yours coupled.
In a short time, at the next first possible opportunity, we find
you holding the office of one of the Commissioners of the United
States to settle the treaty as to the "Alabama claims."  Did this
office also rain down on you without any shadow of desire on your
part to hold it? You certainly accepted it with the same alacrity
with which you accepted your present bolting nomination for office,
at Young's Hotel, being in waiting, as the newspapers tell us, in
that building until the committee called you'into a meeting which
I have reason to know you yourself took part in causing to be
organized, to receive your acceptance of a nomination, the letter
of which had been before written in Concord, and was in your
pocket.
How recklessly you gave up the great fishing interests of Massachusetts, which you were expected to defend and protect, by




10
agreeing to the articles in that treaty which bring all the British
Provinces in competition with our own fishermen, and left the
United States subject to a reclamation of many millions of dollars
by Great Britain on account of those very fisheries, I, in mercy,
spare you the recital; besides, I fear a bare statement of the facts
about that treaty, in the most courteous language, might, by some
uncharitable persons, be construed into " personal abuse."
You are next found holding the office of Presidential Elector, an
office with very little to do, indeed, it is true; but then the smallest
offices are, by some persons who do not "desire public office,"
thankfully received.
Once more an office-holder, we find you Representative of the
Seventh District.  Do you say that you did not want this office?
Your son was a delegate to the convention which nominated you,
~and there are members of that convention who will say, I have
been informed, that he actually canvassed in your behalf. Is he:so undutiful as to force office on his father against his desire? A
bright boy, did he not detect some infinitesimal yearning for office
on the part of his parent, and strive to please him by getting it
for him?
Next we learn that you made a small run in the Legislature for
the office of U. S. Senator from Massachusetts, and were defeated,
although the Republican party was largely in the majority. Of
course we are to believe that you allowed yourself to be a candidate, and suffer defeat in the candidature for the office, without any
desire for the place, precisely as you insist you are running now
for an office which you told your friends in the Russell convention,
held in the same room at Young's Hotel, that you would not take,
if you could get every vote in the district. Now, my dear Judge,
don't deny that, because I have it from the gentleman who asked
you to be their candidate instead of Russell. Or was your motive
in then running for the Senate, as it is now, not to be elected, but
simply to defeat the Republican candidate in order to elect a Democrat?
You have your choice of motives.
Either you desired the office and wanted to be elected, or else
the same malignity, envy and jealousy which some well-disposed
persons believe prompt the present candidature, actuated you then.
But much as I have cause to impute bad motives to you, Judge, I
prefer to believe it was a desire for the office of Senator which led




you to run, because I prefer not to believe that you are actuated by
"malice toward all mankind and charity to none;" for, upon the
very next vacancy in the Senate, I find you running again for that
high office; and I must either believe -the second time certainly
- that you desired the office, or believe you hate every Republican
and wish to defeat everybody except Democratic candidates.
Another thing, Judge, which is evidence to my mind that you
" desired" the office of Senator, is that although the dying Sumner
had confided his Civil Rights Bill to your care, when you sat by his
death-bedside, - a fact which was telegraphed all over the country
by your procurement evidently, as he could not have done it, -yet
when you were running for the Senate, J. B. Smith, his life-long
friend, then a member of the Legislature, desirous of voting for
you, tried in every proper way to get an authorized expression from
you in favor of Sumner's bill, which was to be the safeguard of the
colored race. He could obtain no expression, and why? A bold
stand in favor of the bill would have repelled the Democrats,
whom you hoped would come over to you and elect you over your
Republican competitors. I should desire public office very much
indeed, Judge, before I would seal my lips as to my position on any
great measure; but then, you know, Judge, I am only a common
erring mortal, and not a "pure-minded," cold-blooded, unselfish
statesman, who has spent half his life in office not " by his own
desire."
I wish to do you justice. I admit that you might have been
elected to the present Congress instead of Mr. Tarbox or Dr. Ayer,
and refused the office when you might have had it. I am bound to
say thus much, because it is the first office I ever knew you to refuse.
Still, you will remember, my dear Judge, you told me the reason
was that you could not afford to take it; that a man could only live
in Washington respectably on the salary; and yet, my dear Judge,
one of your objections to me in your letter is what you are pleased
to call a' salary grab," which means, I suppose, that I voted for
an increase of that inadequate salary which has deprived the present Congress of your great talents.
When you say " salary grab," you certainly could not refer to the
fact that I tookwhat is called " back pay," —that is, pay received for
services for a time previous to its being voted - service rendered
under a contract, as it is claimed- to work for a smaller salary,
because when you were Judge of the Supreme Court in 1866 your




12
pay was raised from three thousand to four thousand dollars a
year, and you took the " back pay" which the Legislature voted
you, with the same alacrity that you have always run for and taken
office without any " desire " for it. True, you may say that your
back pay was not a large amount; but then, if it is a " salary
grab " to take " back pay," you fell with much slighter temptation
than I did, for the amount which came to me was considerably
larger. Now don't misunderstand me, Judge.  I do not think it
was wrong for you to take that "' back pay;" but, having taken it,
it does not seem good taste to make railing accusations against me
for doing the same thing, because yours was " such a little one."
Such a -procedure does not seem the emanation of a judicial mind.
The last public office - for I think it is a high and honorable
one - which you held was that of Delegate to the Cincinnati Convention for the selection of a presidential candidate for the Republican party. True, you might not have desired that office, although
you accepted, because there was no pay attached to it except what
seems to me the highest compensation for public service, - an
opportunity to do good to the country.
To use a mode of statement copied from your letter, " as the
newspapers inform  us," —by which one can make an injurious
imputation without making himself responsible for it, an ingenious device, which does credit to yoar cunning but not to your
courage, - not wanting the office, you got elected to it by representing yourself, or being represented, as an advocate of the candidature of Mr. Blaine; and, " as the newspapers inform us,"
when you got to Cincinnati you turned up something very different
entirely; not a friend of Governor Hayes, for whom you now
express admiration, because you so managed yourself and your
colleagues that you not only contrived to cover yourself and the
State with merited ridicule, but also never cast its vote for Governor Hayes; for, with a perversity of political senselessness which
I always, in you, attribute to bad health, or bad temper, or both,
you kept the vote of the Massachusetts delegation on other candidates, so that owing to your management Massachusetts in the
convention never cast her vote for HIayes at all. He was nominated without her aid, and you now seem to be managing the
Republican party of Massachusetts in the best manner, if it were
possible so to do, to have Hayes elected without her vote. I hope




13
and believe you may not so divide and distract the party as to be
successful in what seems to be your aim, - its destruction only.
Now, my dear Judge, let us count up. You have been appointed
to four different offices, and elected to three. Your services in
them, covering by far the largest part of your business life, were in
the appointive offices, being of the class of the largest emolument,
and the three elective offices having but little or no emolument, for
I do not think a representative in Congress has any. You have
been appointed to, candidate for, and voted for, and failed to get
six of the highest offices in the gift of the appointing power or of
the Commonwealth, which if you had got would have occupied the
whole of the rest of your lifetime, and are now running for another,
with about the same show of success that you had of being Chief
Justice of the Commonwealth, or a Justice of the Supreme Court
of the United States.
In view of these facts, which I have been compelled to set out
with a tediousness in length, -for which I owe you, who have to
read this letter, an apology, which is, if you had not held so many
offices, and been candidate for so many more, I could have made
it shorter,- do you, my dear Judge, really think I add the suspiciousness of unbelief to my other short-comings which you have
enumerated, when I say I cannot believe you when you say " I
never held public office by my own desire"? To others the inveteracy of your office-holding seems only equalled by the continuity of
your office-seeking: both are chronic and have been the business,
not the episodes, of your life.
Let us tabulate your want of " desire " for public office: —
TABLE OF OFFICES HELD, APPLIED FOR, RTJN FOR AND LOST BY HON.
E. R. HOAR, WITHOUT ANY DESIRE FOR ANY OF THEM.
Appointed.            Elected.         Candidate for and lost.
Judge of Common Pleas. Member of Congress.   Chief Justice  Supreme
Judge of Supreme Court. Presidential Elector.  Court, Mass.
Attorney General.    Delegate to Convention. Judge of Supreme Court
Commissioner on Ala-                         of United States.
bama Claims.                             Senator in place of Sumner.
Senator in place of Wilson.
Member  of  Congress
(bolted to get it).
Total..       4     Total..    3         Total...      5
Grand total...       12




14
I have no doubt that you believed yourself when you wrote that
" you had never held public office by your own desire; " but then,
as I told you to begin with, you don't know yourself or see yourself as others see you.
I doubt not you as firmly believe that you " have no personal
hostility to me" as you do that you " never held public office by
your own desire."  The trouble seems to be that you have got the
cardinal virtues and the deadly sins so mixed up in your mind that
you mistake greed for office for public virtue, covetousness for
generosity, hate for love, malice for good will, prejudices for convictions, dyspepsia for a conscience, and cultivate malignity as a
parlor plant, believing it to be one of the Christian graces. Indeed,
your state of feeling toward me seems formulated by Tennyson's
lines, wherein he describes the kind of love his heroine bore to her
lover who had betrayed her sister:"I hated him with the hate of hell,
But I loved his beauty passing well."
Not to compare small things with great, let me, in a word, give
you my own record as a public officer. I have never held office
or received a dollar of public money for pay as an officer, save as
a soldier in the service, or as a legislator. But I held both these
positions by" my own desire," and sought them to gratify an
honorable ambition, and to be of service to my country. I leave
it to the just judgment of all men which has been the " office-jobber."
Having exhibited to you as well as I may the condition of your
mental and moral organism  at the moment you wrote your
letter, " to supply the ripe wants of a friend," I break a custom
and reply to some of its statements. As long as they are simply
the emanations of newspaper slang-whangers, I make it the rule
of my life to live down slanders, not to reply to them. But coming from so respectable a source, it is due to yourself to set you
right about many things in regard to myself, where you are clearly
wrong, as your statements, distorted by the medium of a perverse
imagination, clouded by a deep-seated feeling of revenge for fancied wrongs, make evident.
You say that " at the last State convention at which he [myself] sought the nomination for Governor, and led his own forces,
it was only after they had been detected in a large amount of




15
double voting, that he yielded to the will of the honest majority.
It was on that occasion that he asked, with a humor of his own,
why it was always insisted on taking extraordinary precautions to
secure an honest vote whenever he happened to be a candidate."
You will pardon me, Judge, for saying that I never used that
expression, and no reported proceedings of the convention made at
the time will so show. You say " they were never needed in a
Republican State convention in Massachusetts before."  You are
mistaken, Judge. The record of the ballot taken for LieutenantGovernor, when I was not a candidate, showed a vote largely in
excess of the true one. Ask Gov. Talbot how he was treated.
At this very convention of which you speak, I am prepared to show
that I was cheated out of the nomination. Up to this hour I have
steadily declined to make the charge or produce the evidence. I
have covered it as did the sons of Noah the disgrace of their
father, when they walked backwards and threw over him their
cloaks to conceal the sin of the old man. In the first place, at
nearly twelve o'clock at night, more votes were thrown after hundreds of the delegates had gone home, than the entire number
which could properly be members of the convention if all were
present. And no unprejudiced man can believe that such a vote
could possibly be thrown at that hour of the night. The opposition, led by a political priest, a kind of man that all history
shows is the most unscrupulous and dangerous of all men in
political affairs, was organized on the cry "ANYTHING TO BEAT
BUTLER."
Who were the unauthorized voters who carried that convention at
Worcester against me at midnight? I have the evidence, and can exhibit it in the shape of sworn testimony when called for by the party
organization. If the Republican party desire that I shall go farther into the investigation, and produce the evidence to its disgrace,
unwilling as I am to blot the record of the party, I will do it. But I
state the fact to be, sustained by sworn evidence, that, at midnight,
after many members of the convention had given up their tickets
and left to take the cars for their homes, as they declared, in reply
to the inquiry of the door-keeper if they wished to return to the
convention, the Chairman of the Committee on Tickets, under
whose instruction the door-keeper was acting, came to him and
took a package of tickets from him, and went downstairs with
them; that immediately thereupon a large number of new delke




16
gates appeared, passing in on the strength of those tickets. This
Chairman of the Committee was an anti-Butler man, by genus,
and of the Hoar species, and of course acting against me. I know
him and his name, and whenever he chooses to deny the fact he
will be very efficiently answered. Whether correctly or not, I
firmly believed at that time that I was disgracefully jockeyed out
of that nomination by you and your associates; but I refused to
bolt the nomination, lest that bolt should affect the integrity of the
party, and for no other reason whatever. In other words, I did
what I doubt you, from your mental constitution, are capable of
doing, - I sacrificed my personal feelings for the good of the party
and the country.
A word in your ear privately, Judge: the less you say about
that convention the better.
Again: You say that' when he boasted to two of his colleagues
in Washington in 1874, that he got their telegrams before they
did; that he had a man who read them off the wires by the click."
I deny that I made any such boast. Let any two of my colleagues come forward and say that I used those words to them. I
knew of but one man who was telegraphing from Washington to
Boston upon the occasion you speak of, and therefore I could not
have said it. Second: I never said " I had a man" who read the
telegrams from the wires by the click.
When a foolish contest was raised over the confirmation of the
Collector of the Port of Boston, the whole country became interested in the fight, and information poured in to me from all
quarters. Do you mean to say that you would not have received
such information? The very next sentence of your letter convicts
you. You say, " And if, as the newspapers inform us, he employed
such an agent as John D. Sanborn to dog the steps of Mr. Peirce
in New York, and find out his business there, General Butler
showed that he regarded as legitimate weapons of political warfare, means which in private or professional life he would undoubtedly think base and dishonorable."
" And if, as the newspapers inform us," where did you and the
newspapers get that information?  From a telegraphic dispatch of
mine, filched from a committee-room by a dishonest subordinate,
for I won't believe that even a committee of a Confederate Congress
would permit the publication of private dispatches of private individuals. And you make use of that information derived from




17
that telegram, so stolen and published, to make a charge against
me. You say the use of information derived from the telegram of
another, in your own choice language, is " on a level with listening
at key-holes or picking pockets;" yet in this very letter you have
done that very thing, and shelter yourself under, " And if, as the
newspapers inform us."  Speak up like a man now, Judge, and say
whether you did not know that the information you use was from
one of my own private telegrams, and no other source whatever.
I have no cause to be ashamed or disturbed at the publication of
that telegram, or in stating exactly what I did.  The Simmons
fight was over.  I had been informed that Mr. Henry L. Peirce
had gone to New York to get a New York man to apply for the
position of minister at Venezuela, as against the present minister, a distinguished citizen of Massachusetts, whom  I favored;
Peirce hoping, as the Secretary of State was from New York,
he might break my recommendation with the State department
by producing a New Yorker as a candidate for the place. Wishing to ascertain if the information I had received was true, I sent
to a constituent of mine, Mr. John D. Sanborn, whom I knew
to be in Naw York, to ascertain the facts, and who Peirce's
candidate was to be, if he had one, so that I might' put the Secretary of State on his guard.  Is there anything illegitimate or improper in so doing? Yet you indulge in a spiteful fling at a man
in these words: " He employed such an agent as John D. Sanborn." NTow, Judge, Mr. Sanborn is your equal in everything that
makes an honest man, and your superior in many things which
make up a good member of society, and I kfiow you both very well.
Through your machinations, and those of another member of the
delegation whose name I will not now mention, - for I am waiting
for him to take a hand in this fight, as it is my custom not to be the
aggressor, - an investigation for weeks was had of Mr. Sanborn,
particularly because it was supposed that through that investigation you could get at me. The Committee of Ways and Means
found that Mr. Sanborn had done nothing that the law did not
direct and authorize him to do; and if there was any fault in what
he had done, it was a fault of the law.  A majority of the Republican members of that committee recommended the Commissioners
of Internal Revenue to again employ him in the collection of delinquent taxes; and he has been employed from that day to this more
or less in that work, under Mr. Bristow, for whom you voted as




18
candidate for President, as against Governor Hayes, and that, too,
without any recommendation or interference on my part.
Your malice toward me seems to make you unjust to everybody
else, for you say, " Collectors detail subordinates to attend to his
errands and run his campaign."  Now, if you did not know that
to be true, Judge, then you told what you did not know to be
true, as if it were true; and that you will recognize yourself as
being the most vicious kind of falsification. No collector, past
or present, has ever detailed any man to attend to my errands or
run any of my campaigns. Men do kindly things for me from
motives which you cannot possibly appreciate and can hardly
understand, because you never did a service to any man without
pay down that I ever heard of; therefore, you never knew what it
was to have men grateful enough to you, and kindly enough disposed towards you to, of their own free will and friendliness, do
everything they can do for you. I would advise you to try to act
kindly towards somebody once, and get somebody to feel in that
way towards yourself once. It would be a new sensation, and
would please you with its novelty, if it did not touch your heart.
In your kindly manner, you speak of me as one " whom the
voters of the Sixth District could tolerate no longer," meaning, I
suppose, that I was defeated in the Sixth District in my last candidature. Would you not think it personal abuse if I should say
of you that you were not fit to run for Congress, because in your
last two Senatorial candidatures you were ignominiously beaten,
and that, therefore, the people of the Commonwealth never would
" tolerate " you at all?  Or would you think I was dealing kindly
with your brother, George F. Hoar, if I taunted him with the
words, " The people of Worcester will not' tolerate' you, because
in the same campaign of 1874 in which I was defeated he lost a
greater number of votes than I did of his former Republican
majority in the heart of the Commonwealth, and was only elected
by 462 votes, when he had a plurality the election before of
7,684 votes? this great loss, in my judgment, being in part caused
by the unjust acts of yourself and your associates towards myself
in the gubernatorial convention. He yielded, however, to what
he seems to have regarded as the popular verdict, and has not
dared since to try the result of an election by the people in any
district.
Your next objection is expressed in these words:   Gen. Butler




was in favor of paying the national debt in greenbacks, - a measure which the Republican party has thought inconsistent with the
national honor, —and has recently avowed his belief that the
policy of providing for a speedy return to specie payments is unsound, oppressive and mischievous."
One would have supposed that a man who has been accustomed
to charge juries upon facts would state an opponent's position with
more accuracy.  I never was in favor of paying the " national
debt" in greenbacks. The larger part of it could not be so paid.
I said, what you do not dare to deny as a lawyer, that the contract,
under which the five-twenty bonds were issued in 1862, was that
they should be paid in greenbacks; and no respectable member of
the bar, who has ever examined the question, has come to a different opinion, - but they were but a small part of the national debt.
Again: I never have " avowed my belief that the policy of providing for a speedy return to specie payments is unsound."  My
proposition has always been, and you will find it in my letter of
acceptance, that what I have objected to is the policy of attempting
by law to return to specie payments without providing the means by
which our currency might be raised to specie values, and thus make
specie payments possible. In case of some men I should be charitable enough to suppose that they did not see the difference between
the two statements; but you, Judge, I know to have a too discriminating mind in dealing with propositions not to understand the
exact difference; and your looseness of statement of my position
shows that you dare not go to the people with an accurate statement of it. Having, many times over, and in my letter of acceptance
of the candidature, said that my difficulty was that I thought it
impossible to return to specie payments by legal enactment alone;
that such a course would be oppressive to the debtor; and that I
thought it far better that the country should so grow in credit so that
provision might be made for a return to specie values, but that,
as the party had resolved to the contrary, and.the Democratic
party had apparently come on the same platform, the experiment
would have to be tried, - I am quite willing you should make all
out of that objection to me you can; but please don't delude anybody by a garbled statement of my position.
Again: You are pleased to say that the convention which nominated me, although composed of delegates elected by the Republicans in the several towns at meetings called for that purpose, and




20
at one of which you yourself presided, according to the exact
usage of the Republican party, if it does not nominate to suit you,
" becomes a bolting convention."  Be it so. Then why not have
the State Committee or the District Committee call another?
Where did you get your credentials to call one at Young's Hotel?
If you will call another convention, Judge, in the Seventh District,
of the voters, through the regular party organization, and promise not to bolt if you lose, I will resubmit my nomination to that
convention, and you yourself may run as a candidate. I promise
to abide by the result.
You say that the convention which nominated me " was not the
entertainment to which you were invited;" but this is an entertainment to which you are invited. I will even contest Concord
with you, for a delegation, provided you won't hold the hat at the
caucus in which the votes are deposited, as you did at the last
one.
If you are right that the late convention in the Seventh District
was a bolting convention only, there would seem to be a necessity
for the call of another, because that convention nominated an
elector for President and Vice-President of the United States, for
the Republican votes of the district, and there certainly ought to
be a regular nomination by the Republican party for Elector for
President, and there is none now if that convention was a " bolting
convention."
Again: At the State convention the delegates from my district
put me in nomination before that convention as a member of the
State Central Committee. That would have been a good opportunity for you to have contested my status in the Republican party.
The State convention would surely have a right to reject the nomination of any man on the State Central Committee who was not a
Republican; but you thought it, doubtless, easier to get a vote
on my republicanism in a convention of your thirty-five friends
at Young's Hotel, than in the State convention, composed of
Republican delegates. I will try that question with you, Judge,
in any State convention where you will agree that the chairman of
the Committee on Tickets won't take packages of tickets, deposited
with the door-keeper by delegates that have gone home, out and
distribute them among your friends to come in and vote as delegates
of the convention.  Without precaution against such " methods"




21
as that, I am willing to admit I should again be beaten; because
those are not the " methods " that I employ.
Your next objection is, that I am " a scoffer of civil-service reform."  No, Judge, you mistake; I am only a scoffer at hypocrisy.
If I understand civil-service reform, it means, members of Congress
shall not interfere with the executive departments in the selection
of their subordinates, by which those departments are to be carried
on. Am I right in that as a part of the scheme of civil-service
reform?  Very well: let me state a fact, Judge, which illustrates
the difference between preaching and practice.
When the Secretary of the Treasury directed the cutting down of
the expenses of the Boston Custom House some $40,000, by the
dismissal, among other things, of useless officers, I never interfered
or advised in the selection of the officers that were to be dismissed,
nor did I ask to have any friend or supporter of mine retained.  I
assumed that the Collector would know what was for the benefit of
the public service in that regard, and I did not know. Now, Judge,
let me ask you two or three questions.
In the process of that reduction did not the Collector relieve
from duty two officers from the Seventh District, appointed with
your recommendation as its representative in Congress, discharged
as a part of the necessary reduction of his force?
Was he not called to  Washington thereupon by  Secretary
Bristow, and did he not meet you, then a member of Congress, before the Secretary? Did you not then insist to the Secretary that
the Collector should restore  those  men, and  argue at length
that your men should be retained in office, although the Collector
had certified to the Secretary that their services were no longer
needed, nor the services of anybody else in their places?  Did not
the Collector in your presence state to you that these men's services
were not required, and did you not still insist that they should be
kept because they were your appointees?
When, in the course of your speech to the Secretary, you referred
to my district, did not the Collector call your attention to the fact
that I had not interfered with his action in behalf of any of the
Custom  House employes in my district, but had left him to do
according to the dictates of his own judgment, and that yourself
and brother, who, I think, was present, were the only two members
of Congress who had ever interfered with  him  as to which
of his subordinates he should discharge?  Yielding to your




22
importun.ties, pressed with great vehemence, did not the Secretary
finally order these men - good men, I doubt not, but not needed
- to be retained, and did not the Collector obey that order? And
were not two men thus fastened upon the Treasury by you, a
member of Congress, that were not needed, in opposition to the
judgment of the officer charged with the carrying on of that branch
of the public service?
That, Judge, is the kind of civil-service reform I scoff at; and
nothing but my personal respect for you, and the entire absence
of " personal hostility" toward me on your part, prevents my
scoffing at the reformer!
Now, Judge, how, after that, could you go to Cincinnati and
vote for civil-service reform? or were you, in that regard, as well
as in regard to the candidature of Mr. Blaine, one thing in Massachusetts and another in Cincinnati?  " Thou hypocrite, first cast
out the beam out of thine own eye, and then thou shalt see clearly
to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."
The difference between us, Judge, is this, as I understand it: I
do full as well as I preach; you preach a great deal better than
you do.
Your next objection I find to be that 6 the nomination of General
Butler in this district by a Republican convention, and the placing
him on the State Republican Committee by the delegates of Lowell,
is doing our party incalculable harm throughout the country."
Where do you find the evidence of that, Judge? I have had invitations to speak during the campaign from twenty odd political
organizations in the States in the North, and four in the South. In
this campaign I have been obliged to refuse in every instance but one.
Called by public business to the State of Ohio, I spoke there at
the most earnest request of the Republican organization of the
county. After that I received the most urgent appeals from the
Republican organization of the State of Indiana to go there; but I
learned while in Ohio of the initiation of your Young's Hotel cabal
against the integrity of the Republican party in Massachusetts,
and I refused to go to Indiana, as I had before refused, and published my refusal. And while I don't claim that I could have done
much good by taking part in the canvass, yet I will state a fact or
two.
Your letter dates your objections to me as a Republican as far
back as 1867; and what I have done has not been done in a corner.




23
You will hardly claim that I am any different now, either for
better or worse, than in 1872, when, at the request of the National and State Committees, I canvassed almost the entire States
of Maine and Indiana, and a large portion of New York, a portion of Illinois and Ohio, for the Republican nominees for President, and Vice-President, travelling some 3,000 miles and making
sixty speeches. Indiana was then carried by an overwhelming
majority; and from the earnest appeals of its Republican organization, and of Senator Morton and others to me, to come there again
this year, I infer that they thought my "methods " of canvass had
done, and would do, good. Mischievous interference with the
politics of the Seventh District has kept me out of Indiana this
year, and it has gone Democratic. If you will look at the returns
in the precinct where I spoke in Ohio you will find that it quite
maintained its majority of last year. Now I don't say propter
hoc, but I have a right to say post hoc. I had rather take the
opinion of the true, fighting, earnest Republicans of Indiana and
Ohio who did not vote for nor elect Democratic Congressmen two
years ago, upon the question of the value of my services to the
Republican party, than that of yourself or your associates, who
sent a Democrat to Congress from the Republican State of Massachusetts by your votes.
Whenever the Republican party can say to me, " Gen. Butler,
you have wilfully, by your influence and votes directly used for that
purpose, caused the return of Democratic members of Congress,"
I, in common decency, shall withdraw myself from that party, and
shall certainly not attempt to dictate to its voters their nominees;
nor shall I have the hardihood to present myself for their suffrages
on the ground that I am a better Republican than any one who
for sixteen years has done all in his power for its success.
I have again to complain, Judge, of your attempt in your letter
to so word it as not to make charges for which I can hold you
responsible, but simply to make a statement in such manner as to
leave the charge to be inferred. I quote as follows: —
" What, but the deep-seated and wide-spread dissatisfaction excited at the North at the Sanborn moieties, salary-grabs, the bargains, contracts, office-jobbing and caucus-packing,'which occur to
every man's mind when Gen. Butler's name is mentioned in connection with politics?"
Thus yos mean to leave it to be inferred that I had something




24
to do with the " Sanborn moieties."  You know —and therefore
you ought not to have made such a statement - that, whether the
" Sanborn moieties" were right or wrong, I had nothing to do with
them whatever. I neither advised his employment, recommended
him, or did anything about them, directly or indirectly. Months
of investigation, inspired by you and one of your colleagues,
demonstrated that fact, as it now stands upon record. Whether
the " Sanborn moieties" were right or wrong depended upon the
law which authorized them, which did not emanate from any committee of which I was a member, and with which I had nothing to
do, and with the administration of which law I never interfered or
took part.
Under a law passed by Congress after debate, Mr. Sanborn was
employed to collect taxes from railroads that had cheated the
government out of them and withheld them for more than five
years. The law gave him half for making the collections and discovering the frauds, and for that I had no responsibility; and he
was not employed to do the business until two other parties had
been employed and failed to make the collections. But I will now
say that, in my belief, more than $5,000,000 of withheld taxes
have been lost to the United States because of the raid upon that
law instituted in part by yourself in the hope of striking at me.
"Bargains" did you say, Judge? Why, I never made but one
political bargain of sufficient consequence to be in my memory for
a day, save with you and your free-soil friends, in 1849-50, by
which the Democrats were to give the free-soilers the Senator, in
case of success, and you were to give us the State Government.
That bargain was fairly carried out, was called the " coalition,"
and elected Sumner; and we thought it all right and " pure,"
didn't we, Judge?  But, bless us! Judge B. R. Curtis published
a pamphlet, in which he gave it as his deliberate legal opinion that
our " bargain" or " coalition" was an indictable conspiracy at common law.  How differently different people look upon the acts
even of as " pure" a man as yourself, to be sure! That ought to
teach you, Judge, to have a little charity and leniency in your
judgment of poor me.
In the matter of "contracts," I have never had or made any
contract with the government, nor have had any interest in any
except as a member of a Company which has done work for the




25
government, precisely the same as any other individual in the community.
" Contracts" in relation to government matters, do I hear you
say, Judge? Well, I will tell you what I think would be a contract
about government affairs which would be disgraceful for me to
enter into; and I think you will agree with me. If I should be
employed by the government, or anybody else, to give a legal
opinion upon and manage a law case, and, after I had done so, and
become conversant with all the points on that side, I should take
employment on the other side, and receive large fees for my services, specially because of my knowledge of the case, got when I
was the lawyer for the first party, I should say I had disgraced myself, my profession and my State; and I am certain if I had done so
you would have mentioned it in your letter as a' reason why you
could not support me for Congress.
Well, then, Judge (correct me if I get the facts wrong - and I
shall not need correction), did not the Central Pacific Railroad
have a claim for many millions of land grant and bonds, to be
given by the United States as a subsidy, depending upon certain law points, and also upon the approval of a map of location,
which was so preposterous that even Andrew Johnson would not
approve it, as it would take many millions out of the Treasury
without any equivalent?
Were not these law questions pending before the Department
of Justice, having been reported to it before you became AttorneyGeneral? Did you not hear, or read printed arguments upon them,
while acting for the United States as its Attorney-General?
Did not those arguments fail to convince you that you ought to
advise the President to approve that map, and you did not so advise him? Was not that all so?
You did right, Judge;,nobody had bribed you or offered to bribe
you to give a different opinion that I know of.
Immediately after you resigned your office of Attorney-General,
did you not receive a large retainer (not too large for such a service) on behalf of the Central Pacific Railroad, to argue this very
case of theirs before the Executive or other departments of the
government?  And did you not so argue?
Nay, did you not, under the pressure of your fees, go to the
President and use all possible political, personal and legal influence upon him, as his late law adviser, to prevail upon the Presi



26
dent to approve that map and thereby lay the foundation for filching
out of the people of the United States, in land and bonds, quite as
many millions as you are years old?  Do you yourself believe that
you received your retainers on your supposed merits as a lawyer, or
simply because of the knowledge obtained and influence acquired by
you in the case-because you had been Attorney-General?  Of
course the railroad got you as ex-Attorney-General, not as lawyer.
If the latter had been what they paid for, they would have retained
you before, as you were a better lawyer before you were AttorneyGeneral than after. My dear Judge, getting into high office seems
to have shrivelled you up as a lawyer somehow, as a ripe pear is
sometimes by too much light in the fall; at least I thought so
when we tried the Weld case together, when you let your clients in
for a $400,000 judgment.
I am making this letter too long, Judge, so that I will not say
anything now about the other retainers you took against the government in other railroads and the wool case, where you not
only argued what the law was, but testified what you, as legislator,
enacted it to be, and so the government lost three-quarters of a
million.
My quiver is by no means exhausted. I am keeping a few
arrows for the next fight.
As to office-jobbing, by which, if I understand, you mean selling
offices, I never received, directly or indirectly, one penny for putting any man in or out of office. Nor have I ever known but a
single officer of my recommendation fail in his duty to the governnaent, and as soon as I had knowledge of that failure I recommended
his removal.
The next charge which you leave to be inferred against me is' caucus-packing." I hardly know that I precisely understand what
you mean by that. If you mean that when I have been a candidate for elective office I have wished my friends to attend the
caucus in my behalf, I have done that, and no more; and you, I
am certain, have done the same. First, because at that State Convention where you appeared to oppose me, I am informed that you
were elected a delegate at a caucus in Concord where there were
but seven individuals present, and four of them your relatives by
blood or marriage. I never packed or unpacked a caucus so badly
as that in my life. Again, at the last caucus in Concord to nominate delegates to the Seventh District Convention, the action of




27
which you bolt, when you presided, fearing that there were not
enough of your friends present to carry the caucus, delayed the proceedings until your son and your retainers scoured the streets of
Concord and hauled men into the caucus, and were enabled by so
doing to get twelve majority, out of one hundred and eight voters,
against me, you yourself holding the hat into which the ballots
were deposited; so that I am told some men on whom you had
influence or other claims did not vote as they had previously
declared they would do. But of this I speak of information and
belief, and not of personal knowledge.
I believe now I have examined every charge you bring against
me in your letter. I have opposed to every one that affects my
personal character my denial, and I challenge the proof in a single
instance to invalidate that denial. You yourself have been careful
to so word the charges that I cannot hold you responsible for either
of them in any forum where the questions can be tested by evidence. Make any charge reflecting on my character as an honest
man and a good citizen, directly, and you will have an opportunity
to make good that charge before some tribunal that can take
jurisdiction over it.
Your dislike, to give it no harsher name, toward me will incite you
to destroy a political rival who, you think,-but there you are
wrong, - defeated your nomination before the United States Senate. I want to assure you now, in this public manner,- and any
Senator that knows to the contrary will inform you if I am wrong, -
that in that contest I took no part. I deemed you unfit for a Judge
of the Supreme Court of the United States for reasons of fitness
not affecting your personal integrity, but for reasons of the same
nature as would prevent my putting a balky horse in a team, even
if he were well blooded. I did not interfere, however, with your
confirmation, because everybody in Washington knew that you did
not stand a ghost of a chance of being confirmed. You had been
there just long enough for people to know you, and the Senate of
the United States is too august a body to be affected in their action
by the personal clacque of a mutual-admiration society in Massachusetts. Therefore you were rejected, with but twelve Senators,
as I am informed, of either party, voting in your favor, after most
strenuous efforts in your behalf by the two Senators from Massachusetts, with the added prestige of a nomination by President
Grant, then in the zenith of his power and influence. I don't re



28
member now of a single other instance where the nomination of an
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States has
been rejected when the majority of the Senate was in political accord
with the President. Therefore I infer that there must have been
some radical defect as to your personal fitness which caused the
catastrophe. I doubt if you fully comprehend what the matter was
yourself; because, as I have already told you, you don't see yourself as others see you.
Now, Judge, you and I have lived in the County of Middlesex forty-eight years together; you have known of my incomings
and outgoings; you are a lawyer of ability; you know the power
of evidence. If you know of any act of mine which affects my
personal integrity, or believe you can prove one, state it over your
name specifically, " I know or can prove this or that;" and if you
do prove it, you will destroy me and gratify your spleen.
Having thus disposed of your political charges against me, I
come to what ought, in my judgment, to affect your candidature for
any office in the minds of all just men. " Caucus-packing" may
be very bad, if by it you understand bringing men into a caucus
to carry a political point against fair and honest judgment. Be it
so; but how does that compare in enormity with packing the bench
of the Supreme Court of the United States in order to reverse a
fair and honest judgment upon a great question of constitutional
law and right, and involving the interests of every man in the
country?  Of this political wickedness, Judge, you are guilty, and
I now submit the proof. My allegations, you see, are specific,
direct, positive; and I am responsible for them.
The facts are as follows:As we have seen, you were Attorney-General, at the head of the
Department of Justice of the United States, in 1869. The case of
Hepburn vs. Griswold, involving the constitutionality of the legaltender act, had been and was before the Supreme Court for its
final determination in November of that year. On the 27th day of
which month the Court came to a conclusion, by a majority of five
to three, Chief Justice Chase presiding, that the legal-tender act,
even as a war measure, in its action in time of peace, was beyond
the constitutional power of Congress. Upon the recommendation
of the Department of Justice, of which you were the chief, Con
gress had passed an act (April 10, 1869), to take effect on the first
Monday of December, that there should be appointed an additional




judge. The Court had postponed the announcement of their deci.
sion of November 27, 1869, as to the constitutionality of the legaltender act until the seventh day of February, 1870, in order to give
time to write up their opinions.
It was the duty of the Attorney-General, as head of the Department of Justice, to advise the President as to the appointment of
judges of the Supreme Court. The President was so advised
that you, YOURSELF, the ATTORNEY-GENERAL, were nominated on
the 14th of December, 1869, to that seat so created. You had
already made a decision in favor of the constitutionality of the legaltender act in what was known as the " Essex Company Cases,"
when on the bench of Massachusetts, as well as in the case of
Davis and Parker.
On the day after you were nominated-to wit, the 15th day of
December - Judge Grier resigned his seat on the Supreme Bench,
to take effect on the 1st day of February, 1870. On the 20th day
of December, the President, on the recommendation, it is to be presumed, of the Department of Justice, nominated Secretary Stanton
to the vacancy to be created by the resignation of Mr. Justice
Grier. Secretary Stanton's views on the question of the constitutionality of the legal-tender act were as well known as your own;
but, to the grief of all, he died some four days after his nomination.
Meanwhile the decision of the Supreme Court on the constitutionality of the legal-tender act had become known, and was commented
on in the public press, - the opinion of Mr. Justice Grier having
been directed by the Court to be read on the 29th of January,
before his resignation took effect on the 1st of February. On the
third day of February, your nomination, as I have before stated,
was quite unanimously rejected by the Senate. If Stanton had
lived and you had been confirmed, then you would thus have added
two judges to the bench to make a majority to reverse the
decision against the constitutionality of the legal-tender act.
You know, without my telling you, how much your conduct
in regard to this decision of the  Court affected the judgment of the Judiciary Committee  of the  Senate upon your
case. The opinions of the Court were read on the 7th day
of February. On the 8th day of February, it appears by
the record of the Senate, being cabinet day, you advised the
nomination of two judges who had already formed and given
legal opinions in favor of the constitutionality of the legal



50
tender act. It was not the fault of these gentlemen that they
were thus put upon the Court to make a given decision, because they knew nothing of the purpose; but, by your action,
the majority of the Court was changed so that they would stand
five to four upon that question, as they afterwards, upon a reargument of it, did stand. You had tried to call up the original case for
reargument and reconsideration, but failed. Having thus packed
the Court on your side of the question, you applied to the Court to
bring forward two other cases for argument, which application
was granted, so that the question whether greenbacks were money
was brought before a Court to which you had added two judges
who had formed and expressed an opinion favorable to your side
of the case. What would you say of me, if in one of my cases I
had used official power to put jurors on the panel whom I knew had
formed and expressed an opinion in favor of my client's case? Is
it any better because the Attorney-General does the same thing in
behalf of the government?  The jurors would not be to blame if
they did not know why they were put on the jury, as did not the
judges in this case. I do not speak of the decision, whether right
or wrong.  Of course, the decision was your way.  By your
action, and yours alone, as the head of the Department of Justice,
in advising the President, the Court was packed with a majority of
judges to determine one way a great constitutional question and
reverse a solemn decision already made.
You now claim to be in favor of the immediate resumption of
specie payments. If you had let the first decision of the Court stand,
and not taken this extraordinary means to reverse it, which you did,
the country would have returned to specie payments then and there,
because we should have had no other constitutional money, the greenback having been declared no longer to be money, or legal tender for
debts, and we should have had no money but gold and silver. You
think such a return to specie payments desirable.  To that you alone
were the obstructionist. It is your action alone which prevented a
resumption of specie payments more than six years ago, which you
think now so vital,   affecting the industry, the wages, the property, the prosperity of every member of the community."  I quote
from your letter. Why, then, did you not let the resumption of
specie payments alone when it had come by the action of the
Supreme Court of the United States?
If the resumption of specie payments will do all you claim for it,




what mischief you have done by preventing it, and how? By
packing, with judges whom you knew would decide the question in
your favor, the Supreme Court of the United States, - an act of
political corruption, and fraught with dangers greater than any
other which has ever occurred in the history of the nation.
Following your teaching, what shall prevent the Democratic
party, if they can get in power, from creating additional judgeships,
to which the judges can be appointed by President Tilden, confirmed by the Senate, who will make a majority of the Court, to
decide that every act of the government by which the rebellion
was suppressed, by which the rebel debt was repudiated, and by
which payment for slaves was inhibited, are unconstitutional and
void? You taught the Democratic party that lesson. You set
them the example. You shew them that trick, and I doubt not
they will profit by your teaching and your example.
Judge Hoar, if I ever do anything so terribly mischievous to the
institutions of my country as this, I will hide my head in shame,
and never again let it be seen among men, lest I should be pointed
at as one who has polluted the courts of justice in the highest
Court of his country.
I wish, for your sake, and the sake of Massachusetts, I could
stop here; but justice requires still further illumination of your
record. Having done what you had done, and resorted to the
demoralizing proceeding you had to secure a judgment of the
Supreme Court of the United States in favor of the constitutionality of the legal-tender act, and to have the greenback sustained as the true and constitutional money, and to prevent an
immediate resumption of specie payments,- you were elected as a
representative to Congress from the Seventh District, and there in
your place made a motion that the resumption of specie payments
should take place on the first day of September, 1874, or in less
than five months, which motion, when amended to the fourth day of
July, 1876, hardly obtained twenty votes in a house composed of a
two-thirds majority of your party friends. But, wonderful to relate!
in advocating that motion, you made an argument that greenbacks
were not money, - the very greenback money which you had caused
to be decided to be money and legal tender, even by debauching the
course of justice in the highest court of the land.
I give your words from the Congressional Record:



32
" VOL. 2, PART 3, 43D CONGRESS.
"' April 9, 1874.
have no time or inclination to discuss with any gentleman
the question whether whatever the government chooses to call
money is money; whether by putting a government stamp upon a
piece of paper you can make it money. I believe that you might
just as well say that you make a man an honest or sensible man
by giving him a certificate that he is elected to Congress."
Can political tergiversation, -can corruption in " method of
political procedure," -can tampering with the judiciary of the
country, - can playing, as if with dice, with great interests and
great constitutional questions, - can undermining and sapping the
very foundations of all our liberties and rights by interference with
the course of justice in the Supreme Court- further go?
I grieve that I am obliged to make these disclosures. I would I
were permitted to draw a veil over them and blot them out from
the record forever; but it is impossible. They stand there written
in letters of light for the condemnation of every true, patriotic and
right-thinking man.
I submit this record of yours to the judgment of the people
and of your peers in the profession of the law. I submit it to the
learned judges' your brothers upon the bench in the several courts
of the Union, and ask, with all the solemnity the gravity of the act
demands, what ought to be done to the man who has thus pulled
down the main pillar which supports the fabric of the government,
the trust and credit which all men ought to give to the decisions of
the highest judicial tribunal of the United States?
My sense of right and propriety of conduct may not be too
keen. Of that others must judge. But I thank God I can go to
my pillow, as I am about doing, as I finish this communication to
you, without the stain of such an act upon my conscience.
I have the honor to subscribe myself,
Very respectfully,
Your friend and servant,
BENJ. F. BUTLER.