Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

[564] South Carolina, if I can help it. [Cheers. “You're right.” ] Mark me now; let no man misunderstand me; and I repeat, lest I may be misunderstood (for there are none so difficult to understand as those that don't want to)--mark me again, I say, I do not mean to give up a single inch of the soil of South Carolina. If I had been living at that time, and had the position, the will, and the ability, I would have dealt with South Carolina as Jackson did, and kept her in the Union at all hazards; but now she has gone out, I will take care that when she comes in again she will come in better behaved; that she shall no longer be the firebrand of the Union, ay, that she shall enjoy what her people never yet enjoyed, the blessings of a republican form of government. [Applause.] And, therefore, in that view I am not for the reconstruction of the Union as it was. I have spent treasure and blood enough upon it, in conjunction with my fellow-citizens, to make it a little better [cheers], and I think we can have a better Union. It was good enough if it had been let alone. The old house was good enough for me, but the South pulled the “L” down, and I propose, when we build it up, to build it up with all the modern improvements. [Prolonged laughter and applause.] Another one of the logical sequences, it seems to me, that follow inexorably, and not to be shunned, from the proposition that we are dealing with alien enemies, is, What is our duty with regard to the confiscation of their property? And that would seem to me to be very easy of settlement under the Constitution, and without any discussion, if my first proposition is right. Hasn't it been held from the beginning of the world down to this day? From the time the Israelites took possession of the land of Canaan, which they got from alien enemies, hasn't it been held that the whole of the property of those alien enemies belongs to the conqueror, and that it has been at his mercy and his clemency what should be done with it? And for one, I would take it and give it to the loyal man, who was loyal from the heart, at the South, enough to make him as well as he was before, and I would take the balance of it and distribute it among the volunteer soldiers who have gone forth in the service of their country; and so far as I know them, if we should settle South Carolina with them, in the course of a few years I should be quite willing to receive her back into the Union. [Renewed applause.]

no danger from the Army.

There never has been any division of sentiment in the army itself. They have always been for the Union unconditionally, for the government and the laws at any and all times. And who are this army? Are they men different from us? Not at all. I see some here that have come back from