The weekly pioneer and Democrat. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. Territory) 1855-1865, 1861-06-14


last fall became It's candidate for. Cover
nor. Mr. Beach resuming bis Old position g
the regular candidate. Butler ct once fell
very low ii the scale Of popularity. In the
fall Of 1868, be YVES elected 20 the Sem
ate By the votes Of Republicans and DEM
ocrate, against the regular republican can
didate 10 the year 1860, be could hardly
get an audience 10 the balls where for years
be had swayed the 'ierce Democracy" Of
the spindle city. attribute his political
eccentricity at this period to the baneful
influence exercised over him by Caleb
Gushing and Fisher A. Hildreth, his BROTH
er-in-law, now or recently Postmaster Of
Lowell. Yet Buffers course was after ell
consistent with his leading political princi-
pie, which has ever been attachment and de-
votion to his party. He probably suppos-
ed that the Democratic party would contin,
ne to exist, and that the slave drivers could
resume their supremacy over it before Q
great while. Some Of the Breckenridge
men, such as Gushing and George B. Lor>l
ing, and others whose names may possibly
be found signed to some of the seized tele-
graphic dispatches, were undoubtedly deep
in the disunion conspiracy; but no suspi-
cion ever attached itself to the loyalty of
Butler. He cares nothing for slavery or
anti-savery, and is as ready to tolerate the
one as the other, to serve the interests of
his party. He has ever boldly justified the
election of Charles Sumner to the Senate
by the Democrats of 1851, while Gushing,
Hildreth & Co., who were under greater
obligations than he to the coalition, both
having received Office under it, have been
the bitterest enemies and most unrelenting
prosecutors of anti.slavery men enver since
It became their interest to make peace with
the national pro.slavery democracy.
Lucky for Gen. Butler, in the hour OF his
apparent political decadence and despon-
dency, he still maintained his Position in
the military service, having with his usual
adroitness, in the year 1857, contrived to
get elected Brigadier General, thus more
than making good the military standing
which be lost at the hands of the Know
Nothing Governor in 1855. believe he
entered the ranks in 1910 as member of
the Lowell City Guards, one of the com>
panies which bore the brunt of the conflict
at Baltimore on the 10Th of April last. He
has taste and talent for military life, eth.
er for itself or for the distinction which it
affords. He cannot be called graceful
soldier, for he has an awkward hitch in his
gait and apparently no ear for music, but
he has bold and martial air, q fearless, de-
FAINT, self-reliant bearing which more than
makes up for all triaing de6ciencies.o this
sort. The same qualities which mark him
as lawyer and politician will doubtless
distinguish him as soldier. His chief
fault is likely to be disposition to make q
sensation. He has many time hazarded,
if not lost, q case in court, for the sake of
creating laugh at the expense of the OPP
posite counsel or of refractory and hostile
witness. On such occasions, he losses his
head wildly about, and looks around for the
applause OF the bar and the outsiders, for
getful, apparently, that the jibe and jest
which make the unskillful public laugh oft
times make the judicious juror grieve. In
fact, Gen. Butler, If he lacks anything,
lacks Judgment. He is not the man to sit
coolly down and calculate his chances and
the results of his actions. As in politics
and law, he never establishes principles, but
always relies upon expedients. In war he
will be apt to fail in comprehensiveness of
plan, while in the execution ofplans framed
for him, or in movements which have to be
made upon the spur of the moment he will
probably be unrivalled. Let not the OPP
posing general fancy that he has circum-
vented aud defeated Butler until the battle
is over.
Ihave spoken of General Buffers oppo.
sition to the Lowell corporations, in the
olden time. He fought them from boyhood
till he was forty years old. He was the
legal and political adviser of the operatives
during the strikes and ten hour law agita-
tions, which frequently occurred between
1910 and 1855; and he fought the battles
of the Secret Ballet, and conducted legis-
lative investigation into alleged interler-
ences with the right of suffrage. But now
be is stakeholder and director in the Mid
dlesex mills, and lives in the house erected
by Samuel Lawrence on the banks of Con-
cord river. do not say that be has changed
his opinions, for the old questions have not
lately been revived, and have no evidence
that he would take any course different from
his former one; but if he is no longer a
radical on corporation subjects, he has but
followed general law, which makes q
democrat conservative, as soon as he gets
rich, and past the period Of youth.
Gen. Butler WINS married in 1874 to Miss
Sarah Hildreth, one of family OF some-
what brilliant girls, then living in Dracut,
. N