ly present in the mind of General Butler in those years; but it doubtless had its influence. A ruling motive with him was a keen sense of the sacredness of compacts. Add to this a strong, hereditary party spirit, and some willful pleasure in acting with a minority. In his speeches on the slavery question there is candor, force and truth; and their argument is unanswerable, if it be granted that slavery can have any rights whatever not expressly granted by the letter of the constitution. There is nothing in them of base subserviency, nothing of insincerity, nothing uncertain, no vote-catching vagueness.

When the wretched Brooks had committed the assault upon Charles Sumner in the senate chamber, there were men of Massachusetts who, surpassing the craven baseness of Brooks himself gave him a supper, and stooped even to sit at the table and help him to eat it. General Butler, blazing with divine wrath, publicly denounced the act in Washington in such terms as became a man, and called upon Mr. Sumner to express his horror and his sympathy. He saw with his own eyes, and felt with his own hands, that the wounds could only have been given while the senator was bending low over his desk, absorbed and helpless.

When John Brown, the sublime madman, or else the one sane man in a nation mad, had done the deed for which unborn pilgrims will come from afar, to look upon the sod that covers his bones, General Butler spoke at a meeting held in Lowell, to reassure the alarmed people of the South. This speech very fairly represents his habit of thought upon the vexed subject before the war. He spoke in strong reprobation of northern abolitionists, and southern fire-eaters, as men equally guilty of inflaming and misleading their fellow-citizens; so that, at length, it had come to pass, that neither section understood the other. "The mistake," said he, "is mutual. We look at the South through the medium of the abolitionist orators—a very distorted picture. The South see us only as rampant abolitionists, ready to make a foray upon their rights and property."

"It is," he continued, "the province of such meetings as this, which are now being holden throughout the North, to correct on our part this picture of ourselves to our southern brethern, to convince them of the truth, as we believe and know it-that by far the largest portion of the North are true in heart and spirit in their devotion to the Union, and in their determination

to carry out the only principles by which its full benefit can be enjoyed in the fair, just and honest fulfillment of every constitutional requirement, both in spirit and in letter, with each state, and to the whole country.

"And let us not be taunted with 'truckling to the South,' or seeking to curry favor by so doing. It is not so; and it is neither correct nor manly so to state it. Let us fairly appreciate the difference of our position. These questions, which to us locally are of so little practical consequence as hardly to call our attention, are to them the very foundations of society-ominous of rapine, murder, and all the horrors of a servile war, in their practical application.

"And because the discussions of the question about negro emancipation do not disquiet us here, we should be blind indeed not to see the wide difference of such discussions to them, if the results are reduced to practice. Then may we not, ought we not, who are so little, as to ourselves, practically interested in this matter, take the first step, if need be, toward allaying their excitement on this subject?

"We claim to be in proportion of fifteen millions of freemen to six millions. Can it fairly be said to be truckling,' to hold out to them the hand of amity upon a cause of real or supposed grievances? It would not be so thought amongst belligerent foreign countries. We are the stronger, as we consider ourselves. To make overtures of peace to the weaker ought to be considered our part among friendly states.

"Therefore, I began by saying: 'It is well for us to be gathered here.' Let us proclaim to all men, that the Union, first and foremost of all the good gifts of God, must and shall be preserved. That it is a duty we recognize and will fulfill, to grant to every part of the country its rights as guaranteed by the constitution, and due by the compact. That we will, and every part of the country shall, respect those institutions of every other part of the country, with which they and we have nothing to do, save to let them alone, whether they are palatable to us or not.

"We have the right to form our own domestic institutions as we please, to our own liking, and not to any other community's liking, and will exercise that right, and under the constitution, must be protected in that right. Every other state has the same right to please herself in her own institutions, and is not obliged to please us in her selection of them; and as in duty, and of right bound to do, we will protect her in that right, whether we like them or not.

"Thus doing our duty, and claiming our rights, and granting those of others, as every man will do, who is a just man, and not a thief-must not the union be perpetual? Let no man mistake upon the matter. This Union, this republic, the great experiment of equal rights, this power of self-government by the people, this great instrument of civilization, the banding together of the intellectual and political power of those races

which are to civilize the world by their energy of action, is not to fail, and human progress be set back a thousand years, because of the difference of opinion as to the supposed rights and interests of a few negroes.

"As well might the peasant expect the Almighty to stay the thunder storm, which, by its beneficent action, clears the atmosphere of a nation from pestilence, lest the lightning bolt should in its flash kill his cow. This Union is strong enough to take care of itself, to protect each and every part from foreign aggression or internal dissension, to keep everybody in it that is desirable to have in it, to take in everybody that ought to be in it, and to keep out everybody that is not wanted in it.

"It is not like a family, because its members must never separate and divide the homestead. It is not like a partnership, because it contains no elements or period of dissolution. It is not like a confederation, because it contains no clause or means by which one or more of its members can withdraw. It is either organization or chaos. It is possible that it may crumble into atoms. It cannot be split in fragments. A despotism may be erected upon its ruins, but little, snarling, imbecile republics can never be made from its pieces.

"It is well, then, to be gathered here.' To pledge each other and the South, that we are true to each other and to them. To assure them that we and we alone speak the true voice of the North. That threats of disunion will never terrify us into being just to her and ourselves. That the North shall and will be just to her, because she respects herself as well as the South. To assure her that we appreciate her difficulties, and sympathize with our southern brethren, because we understand the great questions which agitate them. To us here they so little enter into our affairs as to hardly call the attention of any of us who have anything to do, save to annoy our neighbors. Yet to them they are questions of order or anarchy, life or death.

"It is well, then, to be gathered here.' Again to pledge ourselves to each other, that whenever occasion demands, we will march as one man to protect our beloved country from all dismemberment, and to bury the traitor who shall by overt act attempt it, whether he be a member of the Hartford convention, aggrieved because of a commercial question, or a South Caroinian, aggrieved because of a tariff question, or an abolition incendiary who seeks civil war and bloodshed at Harper's Ferry.

"That to us no star in our glorious banner differeth from another star in glory,' but all must and shall shine on together in one constellation, to bless the world with its benign radiance for ever."

Such were the sentiments of General Butler, in February of the year for ever memorable to Americans-1860.

CHAPTER II.

IN THE CHARLESTON CONVENTION.

GENERAL BUTLER was elected a delegate to the democratic convention, held at Charleston, in April, 1860.

He went to Charleston with two strong convictions on his mind. One was, that concessions to the South had gone as far as the northern democracy could ever be induced to sustain. The other was, that the fair nomination of Mr. Douglas, by a national democratic convention was impossible.

When the convention had been organized, by the election of Mr. Cushing, of Massachusetts, to the chair, a committee was appointed of one member from each state, for the purpose of constructing that most perplexing piece of political joinery, a Platform. In this committee, General Butler represented the state of Massachu

setts.

The committee met. May we not say, that in the room which it occupied began the contention which now desolates large portions of the southern country. What transpired in the committee room has been related, with exactness and brevity, by General Butler himself.

*

“As a member of the committee," he says, "I felt that I had but one course to pursue, and I held that with unwavering tenacity of purpose. It was to obtain the affirmation of these democratic principles, laid down at Cincinnati, with which we had outrode the storm of sectionalism in 1856. ****

“With these views, I proposed, in committee, the following resolution:

"Resolved, That we, the democracy of the Union, in convention assembled, hereby declare our affirmance of the democratic resolutions unanimously adopted and declared as a platform of principles at Cincinnati, in the year 1856, without addition or alteration; be

* Speech at Lowell, May 15, 1860.

lieving that democratic principles are unchangeable in their nature, when applied to the same subject-matter.'

"After a long and animated discussion, this was rejected by a vote of seventeen states to sixteen; young Oregon giving the casting vote against the Cincinnati platform, to which and the democracy she owed her existence as a sovereign state.

"There was but one additional resolution which, it was proposed, should be added, and that is as follows:

“Resolved, That it is the duty of the United States to extend its protection alike over all its citizens, whether native or naturalized.'

"This was to meet the case of the contradictory interpretations of the rights of foreign-born citizens, when abroad, made by the State Department. To this I had pledged myself, when the case arose. It is but just to add, that to this resolution, no opposition was made. The propositions of a majority of the committee were then brought forward, and by the same majority of one, were passed through the committee. They provided, in substance, for a slave code for the territories, and upon the high seas.

"Upon these two propositions, the committee divided; sixteen free states one way, and fifteen slave states, with Oregon and California, the other; and the difference was apparently irreconcilable. Without impugning the motives, or too closely criticising the course of any member of the committee, I saw, or thought I saw, that this disagreement was rather about men than principles. It seemed to me, that gentlemen of the extreme South were making demands which they did not consider it vital to be passed, lest a man should be nominated distasteful to them, and men from the North were willing to make concessions not desired by the South, and which would not be justified, either by democratic principles or their northern constituencies, in order to the success of their favorite candidate.

"Subsequent events showed the correctness of this opinion, because, after the minority and majority of the committee had separated, sixteen to seventeen, and each had retired to make up its report, and when the sixteen northern states had nothing to do save to report the Cincinnati platform, pure and simple, then it was that three gentlemen came into the room where the minority of the committee were in consultation, and announced themselves as a sub