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

[925] take care of my district, I spent many weeks in the Western States. I spoke on the platform there and made a great many personal friends whether I made any Republican votes or not. But I returned only to find that in the meantime my district had been stolen away from me. This was in the year 1874, the off congressional year. It was the year of the first congressional election after the inauguration of the President, and according to the almost universal law the administration was beaten, and there was an opposition majority in the House, many of the congressional districts having changed from the Republican to the Democratic party.

My friends were very much more chagrined than myself. They gathered around me and said they would see that I was nominated and elected from that district the next time beyond all dispute. “No, gentlemen,” said I, “I am very much obliged to you for all you have done for me, but I would not represent this district again if I could have every vote cast in my favor. I have made your district of some consequence in the Congress of the United States, and I now propose to let it take care of itself. But I am going to be a candidate for the next Congress from the district where I have always lived, man and boy, to see whether they will take me after my apparent desertion here.”

At the proper time the canvass was opened, and I was regularly nominated in the Republican convention by a fairly counted majority of votes. Whereupon up started the Hon. Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, who had been an office-holder nearly all his life, and wanted to be the rest of his life by getting Grant to appoint him as associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, while he was attorney-general, but whose confirmation for reasons affected by public policy and private wishes I had caused to be rejected by the Senate. Mr. Hoar thought this election would be a good time to revenge himself upon me. There was a very popular Democratic friend of mine running against me, who had every clement to draw to him the strength of his party. So Mr. Hoar called together some of his friends in a Boston hotel and had himself nominated as the bolting candidate of the Republican party. He had before been elected to Congress in that district or perhaps he might have succeeded in beating me. But my constituents knew him too well, as they had had enough of him.