Nugent says of him: 'His shrewdness in judging of men was
employed only to enable him to found his influence upon their
weaknesses and vices; so that, when opposed to men of capacity,
or thwarted by what remained of public virtue in the country,
he found himself in conflict with weapons of which he knew
not the use; and his counsels were dangerous, and his administration
unprosperous. His only wisdom was the craft with which he
managed weak or bad men, and his only virtue the courage with
which he overawed timid ones.' Such counsellors, fatal to a
monarch, are full of peril to a republic. Such men can only
prosper in times of public corruption.
"General Butler has done, unless he has egregiously imposed
upon us, two things well. He out-blackguarded a New York
mob in 1864, and with a United States army at his back, he
kept down a rebel city in 1862. Massachusetts is not likely
soon to stand in need of either of these processes. But he
never has accomplished anything else of much importance when
his point could not be carried by sheer blustering. The history
of all his other attempts may be comprised in three words--
_Swagger, quarrel, failure.
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