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America, he invited no man to danger that he was not ready to share. Never forget this: he gave all, lost all, for the land of his birth. He risked all for the land of his adoption, was her true and loyal soldier, and in the end died in her service. For these things, either in Ireland or America, he will not soon be forgotten; and the grateful instinct of two peoples will do him justice and cherish his memory in their heart of hearts."

IX.

THE TWO BENJAMIN F. BUTLERS.

We have had two Benjamin F. Butlers, both of New England parentage, and both called after Benjamin Franklin, the printer. I knew the elder, though not so well as his younger namesake, the present aggressive political leader in Massachusetts. They were very dissimilar men, except that both were hard-shell Democrats-the one up to the period of his death, in 1858, and the other up to his forty-third year, when he volunteered against the Rebellion. I ought to add that they were also alike in their ancestry, since one came from Irish and the other from Scotch-Irish grandparents, and both had a strong admixture of New England blood. They were Yankees in their breeding; but the junior had none of the early advantages of his more fortunate namesake, whose father, after his removal to New York, became very prosperous, and who pushed his son forward at an early age, having first armed him with a first-rate education. The father of the junior, while captain of a schooner in the West India trade, died of yellow fever, leaving Benjamin, an infant of five months, to the care of a brave and devoted mother. In other respects they were opposites. Both eminent and marked men, they were very different in temperament. The elder was born December 14, 1795,

at Kinderhook Landing, New York, about thirteen years after Martin Van Buren, who was born December 5, 1782, and whose fast friend he was to the day of his death; the younger at Deerfield, an agricultural town in New Hampshire, on the 5th of November, 1818. I first saw the New York Butler at Baltimore, when he was speaking against the two-third rule in the Democratic National Convention, on the 27th of May, 1844, and was trying to stem the current that was resistlessly carrying his friend Van Buren into political oblivion. He was then nearly forty-nine, and was the embodiment of intense respectability. About the size of President Franklin Pierce, he was, like him, graceful and well poised. Dignified, yet easy of address and fluent of speech, his gray hair gave him a conservative air; and though he spoke well, he labored against the tide, and seemed to be conscious of his doom at the hands of the impetuous little Senator, Robert J. Walker, of Mississippi, who sat near taking notes for that reply which carried the two-third rule and crushed Martin Van Buren. In 1839, when he was forty-four, a partial friend drew his character as follows: "His way of life has therefore flowed on like an even and unruffled stream, gathering its quiet depth of volume from a thousand springs unseen to the public eye; and though scarcely noticed by the stranger, yet diffusing a daily beneficent utility to the dwellers upon its tranquil borders, and an object of far higher admiration to the more judicious eye that can better appreciate true excellence." And this after he had been Attorney-general of the United States from November, 1833, to September, 1838, under the administrations of Jackson and Van Buren, and before he took part in the succeeding controversies in the Democratic party which culminated in the final defeat of his favorite, the statesman of Kinderhook. He had literally grown up under the influence of Old Hickory and the Albany Regency. He was, so to speak, almost born in the Democratic purple. He was a student of Martin Van Buren, and lived in the fami

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ly of that courteous and skilful leader, and there his mind was improved and his manners formed. The Democrats of New York at that day were led by men of acknowledged force. las Wright, Michael Hoffman, William L. Marcy, Gouverneur Kemble, Daniel S. Dickinson, Preston King, and their contemporaries, were constant visitors at the residence of the New York leader; and in the aristocratic and polite circles in which Martin Van Buren lived and moved, alike at Albany, Kinderhook, and Washington, while he was respectively United States Senator, Governor of New York, United States Secretary of State, Vice-President, and President, Benjamin Franklin Butler was always welcome. These were the happy auspices that introduced him to office and distinction; and though he was abused as a man-worshipper, as the echo of Van Buren, and the parasite of Jackson, it can be truly said that he was faithful to both, doubtless because they had been kind to him.

How different with the other Benjamin Franklin Butler ! His life has been a tempest from early youth. He prefers rough waters. He delights in a conflict. There is little of man-worship in his nature. He was not reared in what is called good society. "He comes of a fighting stock," says Parton. His father's father fought under Wolfe at Quebec, and was a Continental soldier in 1776. His mother is a descendant of the New Hampshire Cilleys; and Jonathan Cilley, Representative in Congress from Maine, who was killed in a duel, February 26, 1838, at Bladensburg, Md., by W. J. Graves, Representative in Congress from Kentucky, "for words spoken in debate," was his cousin. He literally earned his schooling, and at Waterville College worked at chairmaking three hours a day to pay for his education, and left in debt. He was an early rebel against authority. He quarrelled with the Calvinistic clergy on points of doctrine and on measures of discipline. He even carried his doubts to the verge of irreverence, and was accused of infidelity; but his revolt was the natural scepticism

of youth, too often the unconscious preparation for earnest orthodoxy. He was naturally a disturber, and left college more thorough in his books than obedient to his teachers. In poor health and spirits, he was happily taken to sea by an uncle, captain of a fishing schooner bound to the coast of Labrador. Here he made strength and ambition, and at twenty he came back to Lowell and the law, practised in the police-courts, generally as the advocate of the factory girls who brought suits for wages against the mill-owners; taught school for six months to get a good suit of clothes, and worked like a drudge eighteen hours out of the twenty-four.

Up to 1860 little was heard of the Massachusetts Butler save that he was an eccentric, original, daring advocate. His politics kept him in a perpetual minority. He belonged, as I have said, to the school of Jeffersonian Democracy. His father was one of the Isaac Hill men-the stern old radical of the Concord (N. H.) Patriot, who hated the Federalists and believed in Jackson; and so it came that our Massachusetts Benjamin Franklin Butler stood by the South to the last, voted for Jefferson Davis fifty-seven times in the Democratic National Convention at Charleston in April of 1860, and in June following urged Breckinridge as the nominee for President in the adjourned Democratic Baltimore Convention, and supported him with zeal in the campaign which closed with Lincoln's election. True to his character for audacity, he was the Breckinridge candidate for Governor of Massachusetts that year, getting but 6000 out of 170,000 votes.

Everybody relates some incident of Benjamin F. Butler; and many are laid at his door, as with Mr. Lincoln, that do not belong to him. His repartees in the House, his invective on the stump, his skill in the courts, are so many pretexts for making him the vicarious author of a thousand witticisms. These qualities render him a terror to many; and no wonder, when we recollect that he has plenty of money (earned by himself), a

rugged constitution, and a prodigious memory to supplement his brains. But he has a good heart, as I know. Once I was threatened with arrest for a political speech that made some sensation. General Butler heard of it, and telegraphed me, “I am ready to act for you, and will do so with pleasure, because I know you are right." A young friend of mine, who had a newspaper that did not pay, wanted help to keep it going, as many a poor fellow, fired with the fervor of types and the glow of paragraphs, has done before and will do again; and, as a last resort, he asked General Butler to lend him seven thousand dollars. The latter knew the debt would be hard to collectit might never be paid; but, without asking any questions, he gave him a check for the money, and has never since made an allusion to the circumstance. A large bookful of incidents as true as these might be published, including his novel career in Congress and the war. It is not often that one man has done so much in so short a time, and has done it so well. He succeeds by hard work, by intense study, by finding out the weak points of his adversary, by an ever-ready system, and by trying to know a little of everything. I have known many public men in my time, and have heard many men abused, but I never knew one so bitterly assailed as Benjamin F. Butler, of Massachusetts. Till the vials of Southern wrath were opened upon him, I thought we had reached a better period, when men would temper their passions and imbibe a little cool sense or warm milk of kindness; but now Northern anger surpasses Southern hate, and even as the latter moderates, the former glows white in its intensity. The cause is easily found. He is an original man, and he takes the responsibility, like all of his kind. He delights, perhaps too much, in severe retort. He is rarely a sentence-maker, unless when he sentences his victims. His very originality breeds envy, and envy is the mother of animosity. The South never forgot his fifty-seven votes for Jeff Davis, especially when he set the slaves free, hanged Mumford, and

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