[
276]
our
Senators in Congress, accompanied by an earnest appeal for them to examine it, and afterwards to present it to the
President.
He said,—
As I do not receive any reply from the officers of the Federal Government whom I have thus addressed, nor any redress or correction of the evils of which complaint is therein made, I am compelled thus to resort to your official intervention.
However humble and unimportant might be the person who holds the place of chief executive magistrate of Massachusetts, the venerable Commonwealth which he serves should be treated with respect.
The letter refers to the blood shed by the children of this Commonwealth at
Baltimore, at Ball's Bluff, and wherever else they have been called in arms, during the present year, and to the willingness the
State has always been to bear her portion of the burdens of the war, and closes with this paragraph:—
I am compelled to declare, with great reluctance and regret, that the course of proceeding under Major-General Butler in this Commonwealth seems to have been designed and adapted simply to afford means to persons of bad character to make money unscrupulously, and to encourage men whose unfitness had excluded them from any appointment by me to the volunteer military service, to hope for such appointment over Massachusetts troops from other authority than that of the Executive of Massachusetts.
To this letter
Mr. Sumner wrote, Jan. 10, 1862, ‘I am authorized by the War Department to say, that, if you will send on your programme with reference to
General Butler, it shall be carried out, and the department (of New England) given up. Please let me know your desires.’
This was received by the
Governor on the 14th; and he immediately telegraphed, as an answer, ‘The President has my programme written, replying to his telegram of last Saturday.
My letters should be
directly, and not
indirectly, answered by the
President or Department.’
The result of the controversy was, that the Department of New England was dissolved.
The two regiments raised by
General Butler, known as the
Eastern and
Western Bay-State Regiments, were afterwards designated the Thirtieth and Thirty-first Regiments Massachusetts Volunteers, and the officers were
