There was a certain curiosity, as many men expressed it, to
see what Butler would do and to test his professions of reform,
with a feeling that he would be quite harmless with a Republican
Legislature and Council. So the experiment was tried. The
people of the Commonwealth had no desire to try it a second
time. The matter of General Butler's title to public respect,
if the rest of his record could be erased as by a wet sponge,
might be determined by the experience of a single year. There
was never such an exhibition as that made by him in the executive
chair of Massachusetts. He proceeded to attack, to promote
his own ambitions, the fair name and fame of the Commonwealth
itself. One of his speeches was so gross in its nature that
the principal Democratic paper of Boston refused to print
it, declaring it unfit for publication.
General Butler declared in one of his public speeches when
a candidate for Governor, thereby insulting the Commonwealth,
especially the citizen-soldiery of Massachusetts, that the
soldiers of Massachusetts "needed but a word from him to clean
out the State House.
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