the enemies of his country by soft words and lenient measures. The testimony of notorious and unquestionable facts has shown the country, that, in so far as General Banks has adopted the policy of his predecessor, his administration of the Department of the Gulf has been successful, and that, in so far as he has essentially departed from that policy, his administration has been a failure. I had collected a great deal of evidence on this point, but as every witness tells the same story, and the facts are familiar to most of us, I will not increase the magnitude of this too portly volume by detailing it. The Iron Hand, and that alone, till slavery is everywhere abolished, will keep down the insolent and remorseless faction who have brought such woful and wide-spread ruin upon the southern states. Slavery dead, the bitterness of that faction is as harmless as a cooing dove. Jefferson Davis, representing free Mississippi, would be innoxious in the senate itself. To kill slavery is to extract the poison from the fangs of all those deadly foes of their country and their kind. Till that is done, there is no safety but in the iron rule.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

AT HOME.

AND why was he recalled from the Department of the Gulf? It was natural that the general himself should feel some curiosity upon this subject. His curiosity has not been gratified.

Upon reaching New York, he found a letter from the president, requesting his presence at Washington. He was received by all the members of the government with the cordiality and consideration due to his eminent services. He asked the president the reason of his recall, and the president referred him to the secretary of state and the secretary of war, who, he said, had recommended the measure. The general then turned to Mr. Stanton. Mr. Stanton replied, that the reason was one which did not imply, on the part

of the government, any want of confidence in his honor as a man, or in his ability as a commander.

Well," said the general, "you have now told me what I was not recalled for. I now ask you to tell me what I was recalled for." "You and I," answered Mr. Stanton, laughing, "are both lawyers, and it is of no use you're filing a bill of discovery upon me, for I sha'n't tell you."

And that is all the explanation which the government has vouchsafed to him. We are justified, however, in concluding, that he was recalled for the purpose of conciliating the French government, which had expressed disapproval of his course toward the "foreign neutrals" of Louisiana.

The question then occurs: Has the French government been conciliated? Has the policy of conciliation been successful? Has it done any good to deprive the country of the services of one of its ablest administrators? The recent scenes in the harbor of Brest appear to answer the question.

General Butler's claim to be the senior major-general chanced to become a subject of conversation at the White House on this occasion. Without having bestowed much thought upon the matter, he had innocently taken it for granted that a major-general, who had won his rank and received his commission several weeks before any other major-general had been appointed, must necessarily be the senior major-general. "The president," as he afterward remarked in the formal statement of his clain, requested by the seeretary of war, "has power to do many things; but it has been said that even 'an act of parliament could not make one's uncle his aunt.” How then can the president make a junior officer a senior officer in the same grade? I grant that the president can put the junior in command of the senior, but it took an act of congress to enable the president to do that. But there is no act of congress which has or can settle seniority of rank otherwise than as the almanac, taking note of the lapse of time, has settled it."

The president said that he knew nothing about the dates of the several commissions.

"I only know," said he, "that I gave you your commission the first of anybody."

The board of officers, to whom the question was referred, decided that the president was not bound by the almanac in dating com

missions, and could make a junior senior if he pleased. Consequently, General McClellan, General Fremont, General Dix, and General Banks, all of whom were appointed many weeks after General Butler, take rank before him. This is a small matter, hardly worth mentioning. It is merely one instance more of the systematic snubbing with which one of the very few men of first-rate executive ability in the public service has been rewarded.

In conversing with the president upon the negro question, the general said that if it was considered necessary to abolitionize the whole army, it was only necessary to give each corps a turn of service in the extreme south, where, as General Phelps remarked, the institution exists "in all its pride and gloom."

It is worthy of note, that the only members of the diplomatic corps at Washington, who called upon the general, were the Russian minister and the representative of the free city of Bremen. The friends and the foes of the United States, also the "neutral" powers, appear to have an instinctive perception of the fact, that General Butler is the Union Cause incarnate.

The people, I need not say, gave the returning general a reception that left no doubt in his mind that his labors in the southwest were understood and appreciated by his fellow-citizens. Baltimore, Washington, New York, Boston, Lowell, Philadelphia, Harrisburgh, and Portland, have each received him with every circumstance which could enhance the dignity or the éclat of an honorable wel

come.

Or, to use the language of the Richmond Examiner:

"After inflicting innumerable tortures upon an innocent and unarmed people; after outraging the sensibilities of civilized humanity by his brutal treatment of women and children; after placing bayonets in the hands of slaves; after peculation the most prodigious, and lies the most infamous, he returns, reeking with crime, to his own people, and they receive him with acclamations of joy in a manner that befits him and becomes themselves. Nothing is out of keeping; his whole career and its rewards are strictly artistic in conception and in execution. He was a thief. A sword that he had stolen from a woman-the niece of the brave Twiggs-was presented to him as a reward of valor. He had violated the laws of God and man. The law-makers of the United States voted him thanks, and the preachers of the Yankee gospel of blood came to

him and worshiped him. He had broken into the safes and strong boxes of merchants. The New York Chamber of Commerce gave him a dinner. He had insulted women. Things in female attire lavished harlot smiles upon him. He was a murderer, and a nation of assassins have deified him. He is at this time the representative man of a people lost to all shame, to all humanity, all honor, all virtue, all manhood. Cowards by nature, thieves upon principle, and assassins at heart, it would be marvelous, indeed, if the people of the North refused to render homage to Benjamin Butler-the beastliest, bloodiest poltroon and pickpocket the world ever saw." Or, to borrow the words of the New York World:

"The warm applause with which he was greeted by a great public assembly in this Christian city, is a phenomenon as shocking to a cultivated moral sense as the mode of propagating religion in ages when the rack and the stake were approved means of grace. This discreditable applause is a new testimony to the barbarizing effects of civil war. It exemplifies the rude logic of violent passions, which, assuming a sacred end for its premises, infers that any means are justifiable for its attainment."

Or we might quote the comments of the London Times, since there is the most perfect accord on this subject between rebels, peace democrats and foreign neutrals.

Perhaps, however, the reader may incline to the opinion of the hundred merchants of New York, as expressed in their letter inviting the general to a public dinner :

"They share with you the conviction that there is no middle or neutral ground between loyalty and treason; that traitors against the government forfeit all rights of protection and of property; that those who persist in armed rebellion, or aid it less openly but not less effectively, must be put down and kept down by the strong hand of power and by the use of all rightful means, and that so far as may be, the sufferings of the poor and misguided, caused by the rebellion, should be visited upon the authors of their calamities. We have seen, with approbation, that in applying these principles, amidst the peculiar difficulties and embarrassments incident to your administration in your recent command, you have had the sagacity to devise, the will to execute, and the courage to enforce the measures which they demanded, and we rejoice at the success which has vindicated the wisdom and the justice of your offi

cial course. In thus congratulating you upon these results, we believe that we express the feeling of all those who most earnestly desire the speedy restoration of the Union in its full integrity and power."

The public dinner was declined. "I too well know," replied the general, "the revulsion of feeling with which the soldier in the field, occupying the trenches, pacing the sentinel's weary path in the blazing heat, or watching from his cold bivouac the stars shut out by the drenching cloud, hears of feasting and merry-making at home by those who ought to bear his hardships with him, and the bitterness with which he speaks of those who, thus engaged, are wearing his uniform. Upon the scorching sand, and under the brain-trying sun of the gulf coast, I have too much shared that feeling to add one pang, however slight, to the discomfort which my fellow-soldiers suffer, doing the duties of the camp and field, by my own act, while separated momentarily from them by the exigencies of the public service."

Not the less did the city of New York respond to the sentiments of the merchants' letter. The scene at the Academy of Music, on the evening of the 2d of April, 1863, when General Butler advanced to the front of the stage, will never be forgotten by the youngest person who witnessed it. The house was crowded to the remotest standing-place of the amphitheater. The immense stage was filled with the citizens of whom New York is proudest. When the gencral appeared, the audience sprang to their feet, and gave, not three cheers, nor three times three and one cheer more, but a unanimous, long-sustained roar of cheers, with a universal waving of hats and handkerchiefs. Several minutes elapsed before silence was restored. General Butler spoke for two hours, interrupted at every other sentence with enthusiastic applause. At Boston, in old Faneuil Hall, he could not escape from the crowd till he had shaken three thousand hands.

Since the return of General Butler to the North, he has, on all occasions, public and private, given to the administration a most hearty and unwavering support. A man less magnanimous, or less patriotic, would have been tempted to, at least, a silent resentment at the censure of his conduct implied in his sudden and unexplained recall, and the repeated refusal of the government to comply with the desire expressed on so many occasions for his employment in