Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 September 1884 — BLACKGUARD AND SLANDERER. [ARTICLE]

BLACKGUARD AND SLANDERER.

IBeu IBiitler’s Opinion of Hendricks. In 1876 Gen. Butler, at North Vernon, Ind., delivered the following scathing speech in reply to a remark made by Hendricks in a speech at North Vernon. Butler followed Hendricks, and, from the same platform, said: "1 had come into the State; I had made some seven or eight speeches; I had never mentioned the name of mortal man in the State; I had apologized, as I did here, to e”ry audience that I addiessed for appearing before the people of Indiana in connection with a.State election, and I had done nothing of which I should complain at the hands of any gentleman, and yet Mr. Hendricks degrades the position he seeks and the one he has held so much as to say to the people of North Vernon: ’Gen. Butler is coming over here, and you must look out for your spoons.' Now, that is slander; the Democracy, ttrankdlod, can find nothing else to the way of argument. My record has been closely examined for tne last ten years, and this—this is the culmination I * * ♦ I have been the personal friend and honored guest of every Democratic President since 1845; hay, I was the friend, neighbor and family guest of President Pierce,who appointed Thcmas A. Hendricks to a subordinate office to pay for his vote. [Applause.] If Mr. Hendricks wants any more of that I can tell a good deal more about that transaction. [Tremendous cheering and cries, “Go on. Give it to him. Tell it all,” etc.] I do not come here to bear false witness against my neighbors, or true witness about transactions that should be confidential and ought not be told. lam not here for that purpose; I only say that Mr. Hendricks makes a very large draught on my gentlemanly instincts. [Loud applause, and cries of “Go on."] “One word about this, and let’s have done with it and go on to something that may be of some profit to mortal man or woman. Every creature on earth judges according to the standard which he has, which is his own capability, his own sense of propriety, or his own Kwers. The fly that lights on the dome of St. ul’s Cathedral looks around him to the distance of eight feet, the extent of his vision, and thinks it a fair, slightly piece of work. The pig that feeds out of the trough thinks it a very excellent piece of architecture. That is the best he can do with his instincts; that is as much as he can understand. He does not understand that mansion at the back of whose barn his trough is, at aIL Every man, therefore, judges every other man by himself, and whoever believes that I, a Major General of the United States, with life and death at my fingers’ ends, exercising that unlimited and despotic power given me by the war, went round picking up spoons, knows that he would have done it it he had oeen in my place. [Tremendous applause.] That is his conception of the office of a major-general. That is his idea of what a man should do, and what he would do if he had the courage to go where he could do ft, as 1 have. [Cheers.] “But Mr. Hendricks said in his speech made aga nst the enfranchisement of the black men that he bad never volunteered himself nor encouraged anybody else to volunteer, and, therefore he can be excused. But what must be the depth of a man’s heart who can belittle and demean himself so far as to utter this sort of thing ? If some drunken whisky-soak, some loafing rascal shoulclsay it, I could pardon him. God knows he does the best he kilows how; but here is a man who lived awhile with gentlemen, a man who has been in the Senate of the United States, and a man who, since my administration in New Orleans, has taken my hand in friendship, the hand he knows to be the hand of greed, or else he lies. [Cries of “He does lie: of course he does.” Cheers.] “ I have done with this once and forever: but I want to lay two or three facts before you for the use of your Sentinels and your Hendricks. They say I took $3,500,000 from the people of New Orleans. There are my accounts at the War Department; they have been examined by every rebel and every rebel sympathizer from that day to this, and no hole has been found in the account, [Great cheering.] Go through and look, and when you have looked through, tell the other side of the story. Don’t put down a part and leave out the rest, lest God treat you as He did Ananias and Sapphira. I fed 33,000 starving men and children, most of them the wives of repels in the army. From the 6th day of June to the 6th day of September, 1862, 1 employed 1,100 men in cleaning up the streets, in cleaning the canals, and making it healthy for the widows, children, and wives of the Confederate soldiers. 1 gave them 400 feet square of land at the Custom House that since has sold for $2.50 a foot, ‘amounting to quite a million of dollars. I maintained the hospital of the Sisters of Charity at an expense of $2,000 a month, and another Catholic hospital at an expense of $5,u00 a month- I made their children go to school, and

ttlrnislied the teachers. [Cheers’ I policed their city, kept it in order, so that from that 6th day es June forward a uhild or a woman could walk through the city of New Orleans with more safety than theyfcpuld go up the stairw into the Sentinel office. /Laughter and cheers.] “1 thought it was no. exactly right to tax the pevpie of the North, who alreay had so much to bear.ro pay for all this, and so I made the rich mew and the property of New Orleans ;>ay for it. This is a part of the history of this country that is notorious, and has been printed and published for years, and men who can read ipfi understand ought to know it. Y'on can go to the Treasury Department at Washington and find that I sent from New Orleans, in good, hard, sound dollars, to the Treasury .of the United Stines. Well, now, with that power of administration for good or evil, suppos? Thomas A. Hendricks had been there doing what I was, how much time would he have had left to look after spoons? **Well, now, I have done with this forever. For the first time in my life have I alluded to it, except last night at North Vernon. I hung the man who tore down the American flag on the spot where he desecrated the emblem Of his country’s power, and last night I pilloried tne blackguard who struck my character, on the spot where he committed the crime."