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

[580] would be safe from punishment, that the army was being continually depleted at the front even if replenished at the rear. He answered with a very sorrowful face, which always came over him when he discussed this topic: “But I can't do that, General.”

“ Well, then,” I replied, “I would throw the responsibility upon the general-in-chief and relieve myself of it personally.”

With a still deeper shade of sorrow he answered: “The responsibility would be mine, all the same.”

I returned home and remained there substantially during the rest of the year, settling up my somewhat extended law business, which I had deserted at a moment's notice, and to which, up to that time, I had paid little attention.

Soon after my return home Hon. Stephen M. Allen, of Massachusetts, called upon me bringing a letter of introduction from the Chairman of the House Committee on the Conduct of the War, the Hon. John Covode, a truer, better, and more patriotic man than whom never lived. We had been, and were to the day of his death, the warmest personal friends. It was he who left his seat at the Capitol and went over to the Treasury and subscribed and paid for the first $50,000 worth of United States bonds that were issued, and when reproached for it by one of his friends, who said: “You will never get anything back, Covode,” he answered: “Well, I can live without it.”

I said to Mr. Allen: “You need no letter of introduction to me. You and I have been long known to each other, and I recognize you as President of the First Republican Convention of Massachusetts.”

He then said that he was sent to me by the Committee on the Conduct of the War to consult with me about the manner in which the war was being conducted, and to see whether I would take part in it and in any event what I would advise to be done about it.

I told him that it was a delicate matter upon which to advise, but that I would express my opinion to him frankly and confidentially, and if the matters which I should propose could be carried out that I would again take part in the war. I said that it seemed to me that the management of the war had got entirely mixed up with politics. Most of the officers of the army were not in accord with the administration. I doubted whether the administration was in accord with itself; there were divisions in it which paralyzed its