"His devices and shifts to obtain an aquittal and release are absolutely endless and innumerable. He is never daunted or baffled until the sentence is passed and put into execution, aud the reprieve, pardon, or commutation is refused. An indictment must be drawn with the greatest nicety, or it will not stand his criticism. A verdict of guilty is nothing to him; it is only the beginning of the case; he has fifty exceptions; a hundred motions in arrest of judgment; and after that the habeas corpus and personal replevin. The opposing counsel never begins to feel safe until the evidence is all in; for he knows not what new dodges Butler may spring upon him. He is more fertile in expedients than any man who practices law among us. His expedients frequently fail, but they are generally plausible enough to bear the test of trial. And faulty and weak as they oftentimes are, Butler always has

But our young friend remained a democrat―agement, and never accepted defeat while one a democrat during the administration of General possibility of triumph remained. One who saw Jackson—a democrat in Lowell, supposed to be him much at the bar in former times, wrote of the creation of that protective tariff which a de- him three years ago: mocratic majority had reduced and was reducing! It was like living at Cape Cod and voting against the fishing bounties, or in Louisiana and opposing the sugar duty. And this particular democrat was a man without secrets and without guile; positive, antagonistic and twenty-two; a friend and disciple of Isaac Hill, and one who had seen that little lame hero of democracy assaulted by the huge Upham in the streets of Exeter, with feelings not unutterable. In such odium were his opinions held in Lowell at that time, that he could not appear at the tavern table in court time without being tabooed or insulted. The first day of his sitting at dinner with the bar, the discussion grew so hot that the main business of the occasion was neglected, and he concluded that if he meant to take sustenance at all he must dine elsewhere. He did so for one day; but feeling that such a course looked like abandoning the field, he returned on the day follow-confidence in them to the last; and when one ing, and faced the music to the end of the session. His audacity and quickness stood him in good stead at this period. One of his first cases being called in court, he said, in the usual way, "Let notice be given !"

"In what paper ?" asked the aged clerk of the court, a strenuous whig.

"In the Lowell Advertiser," was the reply; the Lowell Advertiser being a Jackson paper, never mentioned in a Lowell court; of whose mere existence, few there present would confess a knowledge.

"The Lowell Advertiser?" said the clerk, with disdainful nonchalance, "I don't know such a paper."

'Pray, Mr. Clerk," said the lawyer, "do not interrupt the proceedings of the court; for if you begin to tell us what you don't know, there will be no time for anything else."

He was always prompt with a retort of this kind. So, at a later day, when he was crossquestioning a witness in not the most respectful manner, and the court interposing, reminded him that the witness was a professor in Harvard college, he instantly replied; "I am aware of it, your honor; we hung one of them the other day."

His politics were not, in reality, an obstacle to his success at the bar, though his friends feared they would be. There are two sides to every suit; and as people go to law to win, they are not likely to overlook an advocate who, besides ! the ordinary motives to exertion, has the stimulus of political and social antagonism. He won his way rapidly to a lucrative practice, and with suflicient rapidity, to an important, leading, conspicuous practice. He was a bold, diligent, velement, inexhaustible opponent.

In some important particulars, General Butler surpassed all his contemporaries at the New England bar. His memory was such, that he could retain the whole of the testimony of the very longest trial without taking a note. His power of labor seemed unlimited. In fertility of of expedient, and in the lightning quickness of his devices, to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, his equal has seldom lived. To these gifts, add a perseveranco that knew no discour

fails, he invariably tries another. If it were not that there must be an end to everything, his desperate cases would never be finished, for there would be no end to his expedients to obtain his case."

An old friend and fellow-practitioner of General Butler, Mr. J. Q. A. A. Griffin, of Charlestown, Massachusetts, favors the reader with an anecdote;

"General Butler was a member of our house of representatives one year, when his party was in a hopeless and impotent minority, except on such occasions as he contrived to make it efficient by tactics and stratagems of a technical, parliamentary character. The speaker was a whig, and a thorough partisan. The whigs were well drilled and had a leader on the floor of very great capacity, Mr. Lord of Salem. During one angry debate, General Butler attempted to strangle an obnoxious proposal of the majority by tactics. Accordingly he precipitated upon the chair divers questions of order and regularity of proceeding, one after the other. These were debated by Mr. Lord and himself, and then decided by the speaker uniformly according to the notions advanced by Mr. Lord. The general bore this for some time without special complaint, contenting himself with raising new questions. At length however, he called special attention to the fact that he had been overruled so many times by the chair, within such a space of time, and that, as often not only had the speaker adopted the result of Mr. Lord's suggestions, but generally had accepted the same words in which to announce it; and, said he, 'Mr. Speaker, I cannot complain of these rulings. They doubtless seem to the speaker to be just. I perceive an anxiety on your part to be just to the minority and to mo by whom at this moment they are represented, for, like Saul, on the road to Damascus, your constant anxiety seems to be, LORD, what wilt thou have me to do?"

One example of what a writer styles General Butler's legerdemain. A man in Boston, of respectable connections and some wealth, being afflicted with a mania for stealing, was, at length, brought to trial on four indictments; and a host of lawyers were assembled, engaged in the case,

expecting a long and sharp contest. It was hot summer weather; the judge was old and indolent; the officers of the court were weary of the session and anxious to adjourn. General Butler was counsel for the prisoner. It is a law in Massachusetts, that the repetition of a crime by the same offender, within a certain period, shall entail a severer punishment than the first offense. A third repetition, involves more severity, and a fourth still more. According to this law, the prisoner, if convicted on all four indictments, would be liable to imprisonment in the penitentiary, for the term of sixty years. As the court was assembling, General Butler remonstrated with the counsel for the prosecution, upon the rigor of their proposed proceedings. Surely, one indictment would answer the ends of justice; why condemn the man to imprisonment for life for what was, evidently, more a disease than a crime? They agreed, at length, to quash three of the indictments, on condition that the prisoner should plead guilty to the one which charged the theft of the greatest amount. The prisoner was arraigned.

"Are you guilty, or not guilty ?" "Say guilty, sir," said General Butler, from his place in the bar, in his most commanding

tone.

The man cast a helpless, bewildered look at his counsel, and said nothing.

Say guilty, sir," repeated the General, looking into the prisoner's eyes.

The man, without a will, was compelled to obey, by the very constitution of his infirm mind. Guilty," he faltered, and sunk down into his seat, crushed with a sense of shame.

Now, gentleman," said the counsel for the prisoner, "have I, or have I not, performed my part of the compact?"

"You have."

"Then perform yours."

This was done. A Nol. Pros. was duly entered upon the three indictments. The counsel for the prosecution immediately moved for

sentence.

General Butler then rose, with the other indictment in his hand, and pointed out a flaw in it, manifest and fatal. The error consisted in designating the place where the crime was committed.

"Your honor perceives," said the general, "that this court has no jurisdiction in the matter. I move that the prisoner be discharged from custody."

Ten minutes from that time, the astounded man was walking out of the court-room free.

Many of General Butler's triumphs, however, were won after long and perfectly contested struggles, which fully and legitimately tested his strength as a lawyer. Perhaps, as a set-off to the case just related, I should give one of the other description.

A son of one of the general's most valued friends made a voyage to China as a sailor before the mast, and returned with his constitution ruined through the scurvy, his captain having neglected to supply the ship with the well-known antidotes to that disease, lime juice and fresh vegetables. A suit for damages was instituted on the part of the crew against the captain. General Butler was retained to conduct the cause of the sailors, and Mr. Rufus Choate defended the captain. The trial lasted nineteen working days. General Butler's leading positions were: 1. That the captain was bound to procure fresh vegetables if he could; and, 2. That he could. In establishing these two points, he displayed an amount of learning, ingenuity and tact, seldom equaled at the bar. The whole of sanitary science and the whole of sanitary law, the narratives of all navigators and the usages of all navies, reports of parliamentary commissions and the diaries of philanthropical ivestigators, ancient log-books and new treatises of maritime law; the testimony of mariners and the opinions of physicians, all were made tributary to his cause. He exhibited to the jury a large map of the world, and, taking the log of the ship in his hand, he read its daily entries, and as he did so, marked on the map the ship's course, showing plainly to the eye of the jury, that on four different occasions, while the crew were rotting with the scurvy, the ship passed within a few hours' sail of islands, renowned in all those seas for the abundance, the excellence, and the cheapness of their vegetables. Mr. Choate contested every point with all his skill and eloquence. The end of the daily session was only the beginning of General Butler's day's work; for there were new points to be investigated, other facts to be discovered, more witnesses to be hunted up. He rummaged libraries, he pored over encyclopedias and gazetteers, he ferreted out old sailors, and went into court every morning with a mass of new material, and followed by a train of old doctors or old salts to support a position shaken the day before. In the course of the trial he had on the witness-stand nearly every eminent physician in Boston, and nearly every sea-captain and ship-owner. Justice and General Butler triumphed. The jury gave damages to the amount of three thousand dollars; an award which to-day protects American sailors on overy sea.

The flaw in the indictment, General Butler discovered the moment after the compact was made. If he had gone to the prisoner, and spent Such energy and talent as this, could not fail five minutes in inducing him to consent to the of liberal reward. After ten years of practice arrangement, the sharp opposing counsel, long at Lowell, with frequent employment in Boston accustomed to his tactics, would have suspected courts, General Butler opened an office in Boston, a ruse, and eagerly scanned the indictment. He and thenceforward, in conjunction with a partrelied, therefore, solely on the power which a ner in each city, carried on two distinct estabman, with a will, has over a man who has none, lishments. For many years he was punctual at and so merely commanded the plea of guilty. the depot in Lowell at seven in the morning, The court, it said, not unwilling to escape a summer and winter; at Boston soon after eight; long trial, laughed at the maneuver, and com- in court at Boston from half-past nine till near plimented the successful lawyer upon the ex- five in the afternoon; back to Lowell, and to cellent "discipline" which he maintained among dinner at half past six; at his office in Lowell his clients. from half past seven till midnight, or later. This was a case of legal "legerdemain.". When the war broke out, he had the most

The

lucrative practice in New England-worth at a | from a majority otherwise invincible.
moderate estimate, eighteen thousand dollars a
year. At the moment of his leaving for the scene
of war, the list of cases in which he was re-
tained numbered five hundred. Happily mar-
ried at an early age to a lady, in whom are
united the accomplishments which please, and
the qualities that inspire esteem, blessed with
three affectionate children, he enjoyed at his
beautiful home, on the lofty banks of the tum-
bling Merrimac, a most enviable domestic felicity.
At the age of forty, though he had lived liber-
ally, he was in a condition to retire from business
if he had so chosen.

politics of an American citizen, for many
years past, have been divided into two parts:
1. His position on the questions affected by
slavery. 2. His position on questions_not
affected by slavery. Let us first glance at Gen-
eral Butler's course on the class of subjects last
named.

A writer well remarks that a lawyer in great practice as an advocate has peculiar opportunities of acquiring peculiar knowledge. That famous scurvy case, for example, made him acquainted with the entire range of sanitary science. A great bank case opens all the mysteries of finance; a bridge case the whole art of bridge building; a railroad case the law and usages of all railroads. A few years ago when General Butler served as one of the examiners at West Point, he put a world of questions to the graduating class upon subjects connected with the military art, indicating unexpected specialties of knowledge in the questioner. "But how did you know anything about that?" his companions would ask. "Oh, I once had a case which obliged me to look into it." This answer was made so often that it became the jocular custom of the committee, when any knotty point arose in conversation, to ask General Butler whether he had not a case involving it. The knowingness and direct manner of this Massachusetts lawyer left such an impression upon the mind of one of the class, (the lamented General George G. Strong,) that he sought service under him in the war five years after. This curious specialty of information, particularly his intimate knowledge of ships, banks, railroads, sanitary science, and engineering, was of the utmost value to him and to the country at a later day.

And now a few words upon the political career of General Butler in Massachusetts. Despite his enormous and incessant labors at the bar, he was a busy and eager politician. From his twentieth year he was wont to stump the neighboring towns at election time, and from the year 1844, never failed to attend the national conventions of his party. Upon all the questions, both of state and national politics, which have agitated Massachusetts during the last twenty years, his record is clear and ineffaceable. Right or wrong, there is not the slightest difficulty in knowing where he has stood or stands. He has, in perfection, what the French call "the courage of opinion;" which a man could not fail to have who has passed his whole life m a minority, generally a hopeless minority, but a minority always active, incisive, and inspired with the audacity which comes of having nothing to lose. I need not remind any American reader that during the last twenty-five years the democratic party in Massachusetts has seldom had even a plausible hope of carrying an election. If ever it has enjoyed a partial triumph, it has been through the operation of causes which disturbed the main issue, and enabled the party to combine with factions temporarily severed

In

As a state politician, then, the record of which lies before me in a heap of pamphlets, reports, speeches, and proceedings of deliberative bodies, I find his course to have been soundly democratic, a champion of fair play and equal rights. that great struggle which resulted in the passage of the eleven-hour law, he was a candidate for the legislature, on the "ten-hour ticket," and fought the battle with all the vigor and tact which belonged to him. A few days before the election, as he was seated in his office at Lowell, a deputation of workingmen came to him, excited and alarmed, with the news, that a notice had been posted in the mills, to the effect, that any man who voted the Butler ten-hour ticket, would be discharged.

"

"Get out a hand-bill," said the general. an nouncing that I will address the workingmen to morrow evening."

The hall was so crammed with people that the speaker had to be passed in over the heads of the multitude. He began his speech with umwonted calmness, amid such breathless silence as falls upon an assembly when the question in debate concerns their dearest intereststheir honor, and their livelihood. He began by saying that he was no revolutionist. How could he be in Lowell, where were invested the earnings of his laborious life, and where the value of all property depended upon the peaceful labors of the men before him? Nor would he believe that the notice posted in the mills was authorized. Some underling had doubtless done it to propitiate distant masters, misjudging them, misjudg ing the working-men of Lowell. The owners of the mills were men too wise, too just, or, at least too prudent, to authorize a measure which absolutely extinguished government; which, at once, invited, justified, and necessitated anarchy. For tyranny less monstrous than this, men of Massachusetts had cast off their allegiance to the king of Great Britain, and plunged into the bloody chaos of revolution; and the directors of the Lowell mills must know that the sons stood ready, at any moment, to do as their sires had done before hem. But this he would say: -If it should prove that the notice was authorized; if men should be deprived of the means of earning their bread for having voted as their consciences directed, then, wOE TO LOWELL! place that knows it shall know it no more for ever. To my own house, I, with this hand, will first apply the torch. I ask but this: give me time to get out my wife and children. All I have in the world I consecrate to the flames!"

"The

Those who have heard General Butler speak can form an idea of the tremendous force with which he would utter words like these. He is a man capable of infinite wrath, and, on this occasion he was stirred to the depths of his being. The audience were so powerfully moved, that a cry arose for the burning of the town that very night, and there was even the beginning of a movement towards the doors. But the speaker

instantly relapsed into the tone and line of remark with which he had begun the speech, and concluded with a solemn appeal to every voter present to vote as his judgment and conscience directed, with a total disregard to personal con

зequences.

The next morning the notice was no more seen. The election passed peacefully away, and the ten-hour ticket was elected. Two priceless hours were thus rescued from the day of toil, and added to those which rest and civilize.

The possibility of high civilization to the whole community-the mere possibility-depends upon these two things: an evening of leisure, and a Sunday without exhaustion. These two, well improved during a whole lifetime, will put any one of fair capacity in possession of the best best results of civilization, social, moral, intellectual, esthetic. And this is the meaning and aim of democracy-to secure to all honest people a fair chance to acquire a share of those things, which give to life its value, its dignity, and its joy. Justly, therefore, may we class measures which tend to give the laborer a free evening, as democratic.

ion, that we were bound to stand by the compromises of the constitution, not in the letter merely, but in the spirit, and that the spirit of those compromises bound the government to give slavery a chance in the territories.

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

In the legislature, to which General Butler was twice elected, once to the assembly, and once to the senate, he led the opposition to the old banking system, and advocated that which gives perfect security to the New York billholder, and which is often styled the New York system, recently adopted as a national measure. He had the courage, too, to report a bill for compensating the proprietors of the Ursuline convent of Charlestown, destroyed, twenty years ago, by a mob, and standing now a black-bones, General Butler spoke at a meeting held ened ruin, reproaching the commonwealth of Massachusetts. It is said, that he would have succeeded in getting his bill passed, had not an intervening Sunday given the Calvinistic clergy an opportunity to bring their artillery to bear apon it. He represented Lowell in the convention to revise the constitution of Massachusetts, a few years ago, and took a leading part in its proceedings. With these exceptions, though he has run for office a hundred times, he has figured only in the forlorn hope of the minority, climbing toward the breach in every contest, with as much zeal as though he expected to reach the citadel.

"But why so long in the minority? why could he and Massachusetts never get into accord ?" This leads us to consider his position in national politics.

Gentlemen of General Butler's way of thinking upon the one national question of the last twenty years have been styled "pro-slavery democrats." This expression, as applied to General Butler, is calumnious. I can find no utterance of his which justifies it; but on the contrary, in his speeches, there is an evidently purposed avoidance of expressions that could be construed into an approbation of slavery. The nearest approach to anything like an apology for the "institution" which appears in his speeches, is the expression of an opinion, that sudden abolition would be ruin to the master, and a doubtful good to the slave. On the other hand, there is no word in condemnation of slavery. There is even an assumption that with the moral and philanthropic aspects of slavery, we of the north had nothing to do. He avowed the opin

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 life and property.'

General Butler was elected a delegate to the democratic convention, held in 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 a fair nomination of Mr. Douglas, by a national democratic convention was impossible.

Nevertheless, in obedience to instructions, he voted for Mr. Douglas as long as there was any hope of procuring his nomination. He then gave his vote for Jefferson Davis. On the final disruption of the convention at Baltimore, he went with the body that nominated for the presidency John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky.

Let us see how the four parties stood in the contest of that year.

The Cincinnati platform of 1856 said: Let the people in each territory decide, when they form a constitution, whether they will come into the Union as a slave state or as a free state.

But the delay in the admission of Kansas, gave | ern, and inheriting immense and unexampled intense interest to the question, whether slavery difficulties, would break down, would quarrel could exist in a territory before its admission.

This was the issue in 1860.

The republican platform said: No, it can not exist. Freedom is the normal condition of all territory. Slavery can exist only by local law. There is no authority anywhere competent to legalize slavery in a territory of the United States. The Supreme Court can not do it. Congress can not do it. The territorial legislature can not do it.

The Douglas platform said: We do not know whether slavery can exist in a territory or not. There is a difference of opinion among us upon the subject. The Supreme Court must decide, and its decision shall be final and binding.

among themselves, would become ridiculous or offensive, and so prepare the way for the triumphant return of the democracy to power in 1865. Mr. Douglas, too, they thought, would destroy himself, as a political power, by having wantonly broken up his party. The democrats, then, would adhere to their young and popular candidate, and elect him; if not in 1864, then in 1868.

Having concluded these arrangements, they separated, to meet in Washington after the election, and renew the compact, or else to change it to meet any unexpected issue of the campaign.

On his return to Lowell, General Butler found himself the most unpopular man in Massachusetts. Not that Massachusetts approved the course or the character of Mr. Douglas. Not that Massachusetts was incapable of appreciating a bold and honest man, who stood in opposition to her cherished sentiments. It was because she saw one of her public men acting in conjunction with the party which seemed to her identified with that which threatened a disruption to the country if it should be fairly beaten in an election. The platform of that party was profoundly odious to her. It appeared to her, not merely erron

The Breckinridge platform said: Slavery lawfully exists in a territory the moment a slaveowner enters it with his slaves. The United States is bound to maintain his right to hold slaves in a territory. But when the people of the territory frame a state constitution, they are to decide whether to enter the Union as a slave or as a free state. If as a slave state, they are to be admitted without question. If as a free state, the slave-owners must retire or emaĥicipate. The Bell and Everett party, declining to con-eous, but immoral and monstrous, and she could struct a platform, expressed no opinion upon the question at issue.

Thus, of the four parties in the field, two only had the courage to look the state of things in the face, and to avow a positive conviction, namely, the republicans and the Breckinridge men. These two, alone, made platforms upon which an honest voter could intelligently stand. The other parties shirked the issue, and meant to shirk it. The most pitiable spectacle ever afforded in the politics of the United States, was the wrigglings of Mr. Douglas during the campaign, when he taxed all his great ingenuity to seem to say something that should win votes in one section, without losing votes in the other. Tragical as the end was to him, all men felt that his disappointment was just, though they would have gladly seen him recover from the shock, take the bitter lesson to heart, and join with his old allies in saving the country.

Before leaving Baltimore, the leaders of the Breckinridge party came to an explicit understanding upon two important points.

not but feel that the northern supporters of it were guilty of a kind of subserviency that bordered upon baseness. She did not understand the series of events which would have compelled Mr. Douglas, if he had been elected, to go to unimagined lengths in quieting the apprehensions of the South. She could not, in that time of intense excitement, pause to consider, that if General Butler's course was wrong, it was, at least, disinterested and unequivocal.

He was hooted in the streets of Lowell, and a public meeting, at which he was to give an account of his stewardship, was broken up by a mob.

A second meeting was called. General Butler then obtained a hearing, and justified his course in a speech of extraordinary force and cogency. He characterized the Douglas ticket as "twofaced," designed to win both sections, by deceiving both. Hurrah for Johnson! he goes for intervention. Hurrah for Douglas! he goes for non-intervention unless the Supreme Court tells him to go the other way. Hurrah for Johnson ! he goes against popular sovereignty. Hurrah for Douglas! he goes for popular sovereignty if the Supreme Court will let him! Hurrah for Johnson! he is for disunion! Hurrah for Douglas! he is for the Union.

First, the northern men received from Mr. Breckinridge and his southern supporters, not merely the strongest possible declarations of devotion to the Union and the Constitution, but a particular disavowal and repudiation of the cry then heard all over the South, that in case of the He met the charge brought against Mr. Brecksuccess of the republican party, the South would inridge of sympathy with southern disunionists. secede. There is no doubt in the minds of the "By whom is this charge made? By Pierre Soulé, well-informed, that Mr. Breckinridge was sincere an avowed disunionist, in Louisiana; by John in these professions, and it is known that he ad- Forsyth and the Atlanta Confederacy,' in hered to the Union, in his heart, down to the Georgia, which maintains the duty of the South time when war became evidently inevitable. to leave the Union if Lincoln is elected; and yet There is reason, too, to believe that he has since these same men are the foremost of the southern bitterly regretted having abandoned the cause of supporters of Douglas; by Gaulding of Georgia, his country. who is now stumping the state for Douglas, Secondly, the Breckinridge leaders at Balti-making the same speech that he made in the con more arranged their programme of future opera-vention at Baltimore, where he argued that nontions. They were aware of the certainty of their intervention meant that congress had no power to defeat. In all probability, the republicans would prevent the exportation of negroes from Africa, come into power. That party (as the Breckin- and that the slave trade was the true popular ridge democrats supposed) being unused to gov- sovereignty in full expansion.