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

[122] clergy of Massachusetts. They passed the most vindictive laws for the purpose of taking away the property of a Catholic Church from those who held it by law and right, and would have succeeded in so doing had it not been that they were, in fact, what their name implied, “Know-Nothings.”

I thank God, and that always, that upon my political escutcheon there is no tarnish of its brightness, in the form of adherence to any doctrine which would deprive of his equal rights with others a man of foreign birth, who comes to this country in accordance with the law of nations, and takes part in its government under its laws. I respected my great-grandfathers too much for that.

I fought Know-Nothingism “from start to finish.” Nor can there be found upon my escutcheon the taint of any action against the equality of right and the equality of power of all men to govern themselves so long as they obey the laws of the country which gives them protection and hope of prosperity for themselves and their children. I have ever contemned any machinery of government, however cunningly devised, and however speciously concealed, by which the few shall govern the many under whatever pretence of superiority in anything, especially in color.

If this nation of ours ever comes to naught, it will be because the few, under one pretext or another, holding the power, have oppressed the many. The history of the world may be examined with a vision aided by the highest microscopic power, and it will appear that the few have ever oppressed the many when they could get the power to do it; but the many have never oppressed the few, although they always have had it in their power so to do.

I know that this declaration will be met, as it has been, with the statement: “But what do you say of the French Revolution when the people massacred the aristocracy?” My answer is: That illustrates my proposition. Long years of oppression, growing more exacting and brutal day by day, until the conditions of life became insufferable in France, had crazed the people. They uprose to change their government from a kingly aristocratic despotism to a constitutional government of the people. At first they went no further. They stopped there, as did our Puritan ancestry in England when they cut off the head of the first Charles. But the kings and lords of all the countries of Europe supported the aristocracy of France in