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

“Well,” I said, “if you have sent away so much gold you must have received a large portion of it from outside. Your eighty thousand dollars in greenbacks would not have gone a great ways in buying gold at 240. Upon your own statement, and I believe it, you, a young secessionist, left Kentucky after secession to get away from the Union army; and left Tennessee when the other secessionists left there; went to New Orleans and left there as soon as the Union troops arrived; went to Liverpool, and there undertook, as a British neutral subject, to get a large quantity of gold for the use of the Confederates, certainly upon the representation that you had left it there at your own bank, as a neutral British subject. You then came to Montreal, substantially stripped of all your means, and in connection with your brother, and the bitterest Copperhead I know, set up this business of speculating in New York, acting all the time with the Peoples' Bank of Kentucky, which is a financial agent of Jeff Davis. It is difficult to see why, finding you here acting with other conspirators in endeavoring to put up the price of gold in order to interfere with the government, I should not take you and take care of you and punish you under the law for what you are doing and what you have done. How long do you think the clemency of the government will shield you?”

“Then,” said he, “I suppose I am to be arrested, General?”

“No, Mr. Lyons; where a man can give as bail three million dollars in gold,--because your gold will never go away until I get through with it and you,--there is no occasion to arrest him. I don't threaten you with arrest; I only say I am going to retain certain gold which I suppose belongs to the Confederacy until I can fully examine into that question. To punish you is not my business now, provided you will aid me in preventing the success of this conspiracy to raise the price of gold to 300. You can do it, and if you will keep gold down until Wednesday morning to not more than 250,--because I am willing you should sell your gold at a little profit,--then I will give you my honor that you shall go where you please and take your gold with you. You will pardon me if I believe that even your clients, the Confederates, won't get much of it, and if the election is determined in favor of Lincoln it is of no consequence where the gold goes afterwards; the country will take care of that. And if he is not elected I have not much interest ”