racteristic
speech in which he said that "the people of Massachusetts
would not yield the office of Governor to a Tichborne claimant,
whether with or without a bond." This name, "the Claimant,"
stuck to Butler for the rest of his life.

In 1871 my opposition to General Butler and support of Governor
Washburn was well known. I announced my preference for the
latter in a letter to the Springfield _Republican._ This did
not occasion any personal quarrel with Butler, although our
relations were never cordial. But in 1873 he was very angry
with the persons who signed the address in favor of the renomination
of Governor Washburn. He wrote a letter to the people of
Massachusetts in which he angrily attacked many persons in
the Republican party whom he believed to be his opponents.
Among them he bitterly attacked me. He sent a copy of this
letter in the form of a broadside to every newspaper in Massachusetts,
I believe, and had it folded into every copy of the paper.
I instantly replied, setting forth as well as I could the
character and quality of General Butler and the nature of
his influence upon the youth of the Commonwealth. The letter
contained the following sentences:

"When General Butler proposed to pay off our national debt
in irredeemable paper, General Grant silenced him with the
ringing sentence in his inaugural, 'Let it be understood that
no repudiator of one farthing of our public debt will be trusted
in public place,' because he knew that he was trying to tempt
this people to escape from a burden by a mean and base act.

"He has quarrelled with Grant and Wilson, and Colfax and Blaine,
and Andrew, and Sumner, and the Washburnes, and Bingham, and
Schenck, and Dawes, because he is quarrelsome. They have
been compelled, each in his own way, to chastise and punish
him because he deserved to be whipped.

"Among the unprincipled adventurers who gained favor in the
corrupt times of the Stuarts, and whose evil counsels brought
Charles the First to his doom, the most notorious was Buckingham.
Gaining favor by lending himself as the subservient tool in
accomplishing every evil purpose: restless, ambitious, unscrupulous,
selfish, revengeful, thrusting himself into military employments
for which he was unfit and from which he was compelled to
retire in disgrace, getting a 'competent private fortune'
by dishonest practices, which he lavished in overcoming the
virtue of timid and venal men, his name is the shame