George F. Hoar

Those persons who did not go to the war may, perhaps, possess at least this advantage, that they can form an impartial opinion of the merits of those who did.

I see that the Greenback candidate for Governor has seen fit to taunt some persons, including myself, who have ventured to exercise the privilege of free speech in this campaign, that they did not go to the war; while he boasts that he not…

I quoted these sentences with the following comment: "That, Fellow-citizens, is precisely the difference between Omnipotence and Humbug, between the Almighty and General Butler.

The limbs of this monster of Corruption have seized upon our noble Republic, but at last there is a head coming in sight, and I think the Republicans of Massachusetts are able to bear the knife and strike the blow which will destroy its…

Our Republic finds itself to- day assailed by a monster as dangerous, unpalpable, soft, horrible but strong--strong as hands of iron.

The mighty railroads to whom our public domain has been so lavishly granted, in some cases I doubt not, wisely, afford infinite opportunity for plunder and corruption.

There is already danger that the operations of the Tweeds and Goulds in New York may be repeated on a more gigantic scale at the National capital.

But this poison, this rotting from the core, is far more dangerous to the Republic.

The battle with corruption is the duty of the hour.

And now, after the war, another enemy, unarmed, but bringing even greater danger, menaces the Republic.

It would be harder to find a leading supporter of General Butler who will say that he deems him honest, truthful, disinterested, or incapable of using power to gratify both his ambition and his revenge.

But the people respected them, and chose them because they deemed them worthy, and the persons so chosen endeavored to deserve the public confidence.

The people of Massachusetts have sometimes elected to this high office men who in some particulars are not deserving of respect.

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.

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

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

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.

They have been compelled, each in his own way, to chastise and punish him because he deserved to be whipped.

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.

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.

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

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…

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.

He proceeded to attack, to promote his own ambitions, the fair name and fame of the Commonwealth itself.

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.