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

“ [967] them to the last dollar, and some day we shall be able to pay the principal, and whether they are quoted on the stock exchange as worth more or less they will finally be as valuable in fact as if we were in a state of perfect peace.”

But nothing that I could do or say would bring him to the point of asking proper reparation from England. We had allowed to us by the Geneva tribunal the sum of $15,000,000, reckoning interest, one third of which we had to pay back because our fishermen fished in Canadian waters, and this one third was claimed to be the value of the fish swimming in the sea we might have caught. That is all that the government ever got for national injuries. All that we did get has been paid out to private claimants, so as a nation we took nothing.

I took no part in the proceedings of the Republican party in seating Hayes, and had nothing to do with what I believed then and still believe was a wrong to the country in debasing the elective franchise.

With the exception of my services in Congress, I had but one other call to public duty on the part of the United States. At the close of the war we had a large number of soldiers wounded and disabled in the line of duty, who had no homes in which they could be properly cared for and no places of refuge at all competent for their condition, save the almshouses of the cities, counties, and States. In 1866 Congress established a national asylum for the relief of the disabled volunteer officers and men, and appointed a Board of Managers to take charge of the same. Of this board I was president and executive officer, which position I continued to hold for some fourteen years.

In 1871 I had a desire to know two things: First, whether having been a consistent Republican and acting with that party, the opposition towards me evinced in all my campaigns for Congress had ceased; and secondly, whether I had not a right to aspire to be governor of my State. Therefore I offered myself to the Republican party as a candidate for the nomination for that office. Upon the contest before the election I was not unfairly beaten by the Hon. William B. Washburn, who was nominated by a small majority over me, and whose election I supported as I ought.

In 1873, supposing that I had gauged the strength of the opposition, I presented myself again as a candidate for the nomination against Governor Washburn. He had some advantage over me in