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

[63] hypocrite even upon that great inducement. The mistake that I made was one that I fear I have too often made since, not in religious, but in political matters, of declaring my opinions before the community was ripe for them.

Yet I believe that more often than otherwise the people have grown up to adopt these opinions. I remember one instance which it may not be out of place to recall here, although hereafter I may have occasion to discuss the matter at more length. It is that more than twenty years after I enunciated the fact that the greenback is constitutional currency, whether issued in war or in peace, the Supreme Court of the United States sustained that opinion by an almost unanimous decision. It has taken longer to vindicate my religious opinions thus enunciated; but I see by the newspapers that the Christian synod of Presbyterian Calvinists have concluded to abrogate from the Westminster Catechism and from the platform of the church, those doctrines which I attacked fifty-two years before. I thank heaven for kindly prolonging my life until the present hour, because I can now go down to my grave with a little prospect that I have some chance of salvation. I accept the compliment of their endorsement with pride and gratitude.

In the latter part of my junior year in college, a matter came to my attention, which caused an entire change of my intentions as to a future professional life.

I had occasion to contemplate the professional acumen, the varied learning, the great and commanding insight into men's motives, and the mastery of the minds of other men, shown by a lawyer in conducting a trial of a case before a jury where facts are to be elicited, fraud and falsehood foiled, conflicting testimony and discordant facts compared and put together, and a great result worked out.

In a neighboring county, a case was tried, where the country's great lawyer of that day, if not of any other day, took part (and almost sole part) in sustaining a will.

To the reader who is not a lawyer, the name of Jeremiah Mason, and his skill as a tryer of causes, are now almost unknown. Even by the profession he is largely forgotten. Almost all great lawyers who do not write books have their names handed down by tradition, and even this fades out almost entirely after the lapse of half a century.