Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

Now, these cases were no more the business of the Secretary of the Treasury, than was the question what the Emperor of China should have for breakfast the next morning. Two departments, the Law Department and the Navy Department, were already engaged in the case to look after the interests of the United States. But Corwine got his employment, and then proceeded, without any notice to any-body engaged in the case on any side of it, to make a motion before a single judge of the supreme court of the district. This judge, without giving a hearing and without notice to anybody, ordered the libels to be dismissed. How that could be done I never could understand or account for, except that there was a story that this judge sometimes drank more of something besides water than was good for him. However that may be, I did not get any notice of that most disreputable proceeding for months, and then I found it out only by looking at the docket of the court to see at what time I could give notice to go on with the taking of the testimony. I then took an appeal from that proceeding to the whole court sitting in bane, and without any difficulty got my case reinstated.

Utterly disgusted with being obliged to try a case involving more than a million in money where such unheard — of proceedings could take place, and desiring nothing but the best adjudication of the case, I appealed to the Attorney-General, the Secretary of the Navy, and the Secretary of the Treasury, as he had got into it, for an agreement that the case should be referred by the rule of the court to three arbitrators,--two of them men of the highest standing as lawyers, the Hon. Henry W. Paine, of Massachusetts, and the Hon. Thos. J. Durant, of Louisiana, and the third, the Hon. Gustavus V. Fox, late assistant Secretary of the Navy,--who would have a knowledge of the course involved in the proceedings, with the right to appeal from the judgment of the admiralty court to the Supreme Court.

When I presented this agreement to the Attorney-General, he said: “Who ever heard of a question of prize being submitted to arbitration? Have you got any precedent for it?”

“ No, Mr. Attorney-General, I have not, but I do not see why you should object. If we go on and try under arbitration and it is not proper jurisdiction you can set it all aside if you want to. It gives ”