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

General Butler has the power, possessed by but few men, of attending to several important mental operations at the same time. An incident will show you my meaning:--

In a trial of quite an important matter, in the year 1860, I was counsel on the same side with General Butler. It was a busy season of the year for lawyers like him, who always had an overflowing docket. The trial began just after his return from the nomination of Breckinridge. He was to make a report of his doings to his constituents at Lowell. The meeting was called to be held at night. Dissatisfaction existed in the party, and the General must, therefore, speak with care and consideration. He determined to write what he was to say. But the court began early and sat late. He took his seat in court, and while the adverse party examined their witnesses in chief, he wrote out his speech, apparently absorbed therein. But he cross-examined each witness at great length, with wonderful thoroughness and acuteness, evincing a perfect knowledge, not only of what the witness had said in substance, but when needful, of the phrases in which he had uttered it. At noon, over our dinner, he read over what he had written and made such corrections as were needful, which were quite as few, I thought, as would have been found if the speech had been written in the quiet of his study. In the afternoon he went through the same routine, and at night made his speech. This is but an instance. Amid confusion of transactions, where other men became indecisive, he always saw his way clear. Whatever his occupations, however intently his mind was employed, it was always safe to interrupt him by suggestions or inquiries about the matter in hand, or anything else, for he could answer on the instant, clearly and without the slightest confusion or distraction of his purpose.

Unexampled success attended his professional efforts, so characterized by zeal and shrewdness. When the war summoned him from these toils, he had a larger practice than any other man in the State. I have no doubt that he tried four times more causes, at least, than any other lawyer, during the ten years preceding the war. The same qualities which made him efficient in the war, made him efficient as a lawyer: Fertile in resources and strategem, earnest and zealous to an extraordinary degree, certain of the integrity of his client's cause, and not inclined to criticise and inquire whether it was strictly constitutional or not, but defending the whole line with a boldness and energy that generally carried court and jury alike. His ingenuity is exhaustless. If he makes a mistake in speech or action, it has no sinister effect, for the reason that he will himself discover and correct the error before any “barren spectator” has seized upon it.