tler--a man
disgraced alike in war and peace, the vilest figure in the politics of
that time. It was he who, when in command at New Orleans (after braver
men had captured it), issued the infamous order which virtually
threatened Southern women who showed disrespect for the Federal uniform
with rape--an order which, to the honour of the Northern soldiers, was
never carried out. He was recalled from his command, but his great
political "influence" saved him from the public disgrace which should
have been his portion. Perhaps no man, however high his character, can
mix long in the business of politics and keep his hands quite clean. The
leniency with which Butler was treated on this occasion must always
remain an almost solitary stain upon the memory of Abraham Lincoln. On
the memory of Benjamin Butler stains hardly show. At a later stage of
the war Butler showed such abject cowardice that Grant begged that if
his political importance required that he should have some military
command he should be placed somewhere where there was no fighting. This
time Butler saved himself by blackmailing his commanding officer. At the
conclusion of peace the man went back to politics, a trade for which his
temperament was better fitted; and it was he who was chosen as the chief
impugner of the conduct and honour of Andrew Johnson!

The immediate cause of the Impeachment was the dismissal of Stanton,
which Congress considered, wrongly as it would appear, a violation of an
Act which, after the quarrel became an open one, they had framed for the
express purpose of limiting his prerogative in this direction. In his
quarrel with Stanton the President seems to have had a good case, but he
was probably unwise to pursue it, and certainly unwise to allow it to
involve him in a public quarrel with Grant, the one man whose prestige
in the North might have saved the President's policy. The quarrel threw
Grant, who was already ambitious of the Presidency, into the hands of
the Republicans, and from that moment he ceased to count as a factor
making for peace and conciliation.

Johnson was acquitted, two or three honest Republican Senators declaring
in his favour, and so depriving the prosecution of the two-thirds
majority. Each Senator gave a separate opinion in writing. These
documents are of great historical interest; Sumner's especially--which
is of inordinate length and intensely characteristic--should be studied
by anyone who thinks that in these