tic paper of Boston refused to print
it, declaring it unfit for publication.

General Butler declared in one of his public speeches when
a candidate for Governor, thereby insulting the Commonwealth,
especially the citizen-soldiery of Massachusetts, that the
soldiers of Massachusetts "needed but a word from him to clean
out the State House."

But he had his eye on a still higher prize. He hoped to
compass the Democratic nomination for the Presidency. That
nomination depended on his conciliating the old Democratic,
rebel element at the South, then powerful in National Democratic
councils. He made an attack upon the administration of the
State Almshouse at Tewksbury, in which he declared that "the
selling and tanning of human skins was an established industry
in Massachusetts." He charged the Commonwealth with desecrating
the graves and selling the bodies of deceased inmates of her
public institutions for money. General Butler's charges were
refuted to the public satisfaction by the simple certificate
of Mrs. Clara Leonard, a member of the State Board of Lunacy
and Charities, who knew all about the matter, and in whose
high integrity and capacity to decide the question everybody
had implicit confidence.

There was an investigation, and Butler signally failed to
sustain himself. One incident at the hearing revealed perfectly
his character and that of his affected sympathy for downtrodden
humanity. Some human remains were brought into the presence
of the committee, which it was alleged had come from the almshouse.
Butler was in an angry mood at something that had occurred
and called out peremptorily: "Give me the skin that came off
the nigger."

I will not undertake myself to impute the motive which inspired
this attack upon his own State. Whether it were anger inspired
by the knowledge of the estimate in which the majority of
her people held him; whether it were a gross nature with blunted
sensibilities; whether these expressions were uttered in haste
or anger, I will not say. The Honorable William P. Frye,
an able and justly distinguished Representative and Senator
from Maine, with an intimate knowledge of General Butler,
which came from a long association in the public service,
charged General Butler in a public speech in Massachusetts,
in the autumn of 1883, in my hearing, what he repeated at
many places elsewhere in the Commonwealth--that Butler had
made this foul charge against Massachusetts in order