This the
committee promised to do. This promise was in substance kept.
The gentleman who made it as the organ of the State Central
Committee had himself been for many years a sheriff of the
County of Worcester, and had been a General in the Civil
War, and was a man of large capacity for handling disorderly
assemblies. He came to me afterward and said that in a hall
like Mechanics Hall a well-disciplined force of not more than
fifty men would be better for the purpose of keeping order
than a more numerous one, and he had taken the liberty of
departing from our agreement to that extent. To this I assented.
When I went to the Hall that morning in taking leave of my
wife I told her that the chances were that I should come
home the most disgraced man in Massachusetts. If General
Butler succeeded in breaking up the Convention in disorder
the blame would be laid upon the presiding officer.
But we got through safely. General Butler had calculated
that his opponents, who were divided among several candidates,
could not agree upon any one. But such an agreement was effected
upon William B.
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