So ended the military career of incompetence, boasting and failure.

Massachusetts soldiers from those of the humblest origin to those who came from the most cultivated circles have always had the reputation of gentlemen.

Jobs, fraudulent contracts, trading through the lines, relatives enriched by public plunder, corrupt understanding with the enemy.

Is there another Union General, at least was there ever another Massachusetts General to whose integrity such suspicion attached?

The people would think I was a fool for not having taken twice as much.

He mingled the money of that institution with his own, got the use of it, got interest upon it, for which he never accounted.

He had a powerful political influence which made him an object of terror to timid and ambitious men.

So, much to the shame of our public authorities, the investigation was not pressed.

General Butler's chief title to distinction in political life was a scheme which Massachusetts has pronounced a scheme of dishonesty and infamy in every method by which her sentiment can be made known.

This scheme was to pay off the national debt and all other debts public and private, including all widows' and soldiers' pensions, in irredeemable paper money.

Resolved, That we warn the people of the Commonwealth, whose votes General Butler is now soliciting by promises to serve them faithfully, that his professions when seeking office have been found in our experience to be easily made and as…

That they are neither gold nor good paper, but are a kind of fiat currency, having no intrinsic character, being cheap, delusive, irredeemable and worthless.

Can there be found in the history of Massachusetts such a record of shameless dishonor and such a terrible indictment and conviction?

The matter of General Butler's title to public respect, if the rest of his record could be erased as by a wet sponge, might be determined by the experience of a single year.

One of his speeches was so gross in its nature that the principal Democratic 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…

If that be true, this charge of General Butler's is the most disgraceful single utterance that ever came from American lips.

When I went to the Hall that morning in taking leave of my wife I told her that the chances were that I should come home the most disgraced man in Massachusetts.

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.

His only wisdom was the craft with which he managed weak or bad men, and his only virtue the courage with which he overawed timid ones.' Such counsellors, fatal to a monarch, are full of peril to a republic.

But he never has accomplished anything else of much importance when his point could not be carried by sheer blustering.

The history of all his other attempts may be comprised in three words-- Swagger, quarrel, failure.

This man seeks nothing but his own selfish ends, utterly regardless of the wishes, the welfare, or the harmony of the great party to which he professes to belong.

He has fallen at the very gate of an honorable and eminent career, and a thousand hopes are buried in his grave.