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notwithstanding the political influence of the trio supporting the complaint. Whereupon, having failed before the tribunal of his own choosing, Mr. Davis took advantage of his position of Senator of the United States, which gave him the ear of the country, to promulgate a slander against that officer.
  He says that he again presented his rejected resolution. Again he reiterated the same ex parte statement of an already adjudged and exploded slander, without application even to the officer then serving in the field at the head of one of the armies of his country; whereupon he claims to have received a letter which he deemed discourteous from that officer. Instead of undertaking to redress the insult in any other way, or even in the southern fashion, for the third time Mr. Davis took advantage of his position as a Senator of the United States to avenge himself for fancied insult, by denunciation of his assumed enemy in every form of opprobious epithet to which the most licensed vituperation could give tongue. He well knew that he was personally safe in so doing. He was protected by his age. He was sheltered under his senatorial toga, which made it a breach of the privilege of the Senate to call him to account for words spoken there. He was guarded by the Constitution. The officer could, therefore, call him to no account for slanders there published, either in the courts of law, or even on the so-called field of honor, if one might there shoot at a magpie. Thus sheltered, guarded, shielded, protected against any reply or defense, safely out of the reach of justice in the future, Mr. Davis admits that he hurled his calumnies and ejected the noisome effluvia of his revilings at his absent antagonist after the most high-toned manner of southern chivalry.
  Assuming the account of Mr. Davis, of Kentucky, of his own assaults upon an absent person from his bomb-proof and iron-clad position, to be literally and exactly true - which it is not - I submit to the candid judgment of the country whether the officer of the Senator acted the part of a brawling "coward?"
  But what shall be said if this account by Mr. Davis of himself, his doings and exploits, is, in fact, in circumstance, in detail, and in general, untrue; which I propose to show by the evidence of his own speeches and resolutions from the Globe.
   He says in his last statement:

  The President declined to take any action in the case. Thereupon I moved a resolution for the appointment of a select committee by the Senate to investigate this affair of Mr. Brother.

  That is not true. A resolution - given below, of entirely different purport - was the only one about General Butler that Mr. Davis ever introduced. He says:
  The Senate voted it down.

  That is not true. The Senate never was called to vote upon even that resolution. Again:
  
  At the ensuing session I introduced it again, when the majority again refused it.

  That is not true. He never did introduce the resolution again at the ensuring session, and it was never voted upon at all. Again, he says:
  
  On both occasions of offering this resolution, I stated to the Senate the facts as recounted by Mr. Brother as the foundation of introducing it.

  That is not true. On no occasion, till the 7th instant, did he, when offering a resolution, or in any other way, state to the Senate or elsewhere publicly any facts concerning General Butler, as recounted by Mr. Brother or anybody else, as the foundation for introducing a resolution or otherwise. He says:

  A few days having moved this resolution a second time, I received a discourteous note from General Butler.

  It is not true that he ever moved the resolution a second time. It is not true that he received a discourteous note from General Butler, although he did receive a note, which I will ask to have read in a moment from the Globe, which Davis himself at the time pronounced one that every man would write under the circumstances.

  Thereupon (he says) I pronounced General Butler a military plunderer, and that his cowardice and incompetence as a commander had brought shame and dishonor upon his country, its Government, and arms, at Big Bethel, New Orleans, and Wilmington.

  It is not true that he pronounced in the Senate that General Butler was a military plunderer, and that his cowardice and incompetence as a commander had brought shame and dishonor upon his country, its Government, and arms, at Big Bethel, New Orleans, and Wilmington. He never mentioned in the Senate Big Bethel, New Orleans, or Wilmington in connection with General Butler. It is not possible, in the nature of things, that he could have spoken of Wilmington, because the last mention, till the present month, Mr. Davis made of General Butler in the Senate was on the eighth day of June, 1864, and General Butler had never been at Wilmington, or within two hundred miles of it, during the war, until December, 1864, more than six months afterwards, when he commanded the Fort Fisher expedition.

  I have taken, so far, only Mr. Davis's own account of his own acts. Many things can be pardoned for the failure of memory in old age. But failure of memory is the inability to recall what has in fact happened, not the ability to recall what never did and never could happen. So there is no refuge for the falsehoods of Mr. Davis by the most charitable allowance for his increasing infirmities.

  I beg leave now to read from the Globe exactly what, and all every word Mr. Davis did say, which will show that the denials of his truthfulness just made by me are absolutely correct, and that the statements made by himself of his own supposed doings are as absolutely untrue.

  On the thirty-first day of May, 1864, Mr. Davis, without a word of preface, introduced a resolution in manner following. I quote from the Globe:

  Mr. Davis. I submit the following resolution, which I ask to have read and printed:
  "Whereas it has been frequently charged in the pub-

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lic prints and other modes, that when the leaders of the recent rebellion were engaged in plotting and maturing it, Benjamin F. Butler was cognizant of and privy to their treasonable purposes, and gave them his countenance, sympathy, and support; and that he, the said BUTLER, after some of the rebel States had published ordinances of secession, turned against the conspirators whom he had been sustaining to get position and office under the Government of the United States, to enable him to consummate his own personal and corrupt objects; and that after he was appointed to, and while he was acting in, the military service, he was, by himself and his accomplice, A. J. Butler, and many others, guilty of many acts of fraud, peculation, and embezzlement against the United States, and many acts of extortion, plunder, despoliation, oppression, and cruelty against individuals: therefore,
  "Be it resolved, That the President of the Senate appoint a committee of three to investigate all such charges against the said Butler; that said committee have power to sit during the recess of the Senate, to employ a clerk, to send for persons and papers; and that it report all the testimony and its proceedings to the next session of the Senate."
  Mr. WILSON. I object to the consideration or printing of that resolution.
  The President pro tempore. Objection being made, it will lie over.

  No further action or debate was asked or had upon that resolution, until the 8th day of June, nine days after. 

  Senator HARRIS, having called up his bill, and being about to put it on its passage, Mr. DAVIS rose and said:
  Will the Senator from New York allow me a moment to say a word personal to myself?
  Mr. HARRIS. I have no objection.
  Mr. DAVIS. I have received a letter, which I will read to the Senate:
  "HEADQUARTERS IN THE FIELD, June 3, 1864. 
"SIR: I have read your resolution of inquiry. You can do me no greater favor than to have every act of my political life, which began on the first Tuesday of November, 1839, and ended on the 15th day of April, 1861, most thoroughly scrutinized. I will thank you, also, to have every act of my official life, which began as brigadier general of the Massachusetts militia April 16, 1861, and will end when this war does if not sooner, subjected to the like examination. I have no favors to ask, and but one act of justice, that the inquisition may not be ex parte; i. e., one sided.
  "Your obedient servant,
   "BENJAMIN F. BUTLER,
"Major General United States Volunteers.

"GARRETT DAVIS, Esq.,
"Member of the Senate of the United States from Ky."

Mr. PRESIDENT, this letter is couched in terms which every man would suppose an individual, conscious of his innocence and resenting imputations against him, would use. The terms of the letter certainly appreciate General Butler in my estimation, and are somewhat prima facie evidence of his innocency. He may be innocent of the charges imputed in the resolution which I offered a few days ago. He may not be innocent. I had no personal information on the subject.

  I have no personal prejudice against General Butler. I never saw him that I am conscious of. If he and all men against whom such charges can be made can challenge, in the indignant terms that he uses, an investigation, to me it would afford satisfaction. I am conscious that I never felt an impulse or a disposition to have an innocent man punished, nor an innocent man charged; and it always affords me pleasure for a man who is charged and who is innocent to have an opportunity and be able to exculpate himself.

  General Butler says in this letter that he read my resolution. Of course he understands its terms and its effects. He is a man of ability and large experience, and no doubt of parliamentary learning, and fully and correctly appreciates the appropriate effect of the resolution if it should pass. He not only, in this letter, desires, but he challenges, investigation and scrutiny. Of course he invites it according to the terms of the resolution which I have offered. That resolution is that a select committee of three be raised by the Chair to investigate the conduct of General Butler according to the terms expressed in the resolution; that it
have power to sit during vacation of the Senate, and to send for persons and papers. I understand General Butler to have accepted the gage, and to take it up just in the form in which it has been tendered to him. Now, sir, as a Senator and as a man, I feel perfectly confident to do General Butler justice in this matter; to enter upon the investigation and the judgment of his action upon the facts that may be collected with an entirely just judgment; and to render him justice according to the truth of his case.

  I therefore hope, in obedience to his wishes and request, that the Senate will permit the resolution to be read; that they will vote upon it without any debate; that they will pass it; that they will authorize the committee to be raised; and authorize it to proceed to the execution of the matters which the resolution would charge it with, as General Butler seems to desire. I therefore ask that the resolution be read, and that the Senate pass it.
  Mr. HARRIS. I hope that will be postponed until after I have passed my bill.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The question is on the motion of the Senator from New York.

  So the matter passed by, because being out of place, and, the Globe shows, never was called up again either for debate or vote. Mr. Davis never said a word more to General BUTLER until he listened to him.
  It will be observed that this letter, produced by Mr. DAVIS to the Senate, after nearly seven years, he claims to have been discourteous, but with which at the time he found no fault, but said, "This letter is couched in terms which every man would suppose an individual conscious of his innocence and resenting imputations against him would use." All this was an after thought, for the purpose of showing some shadow of justification for his attack upon me, to do which he has deliberately falsified before the Senate and the country his own acts, not to say mine. He has characterized a letter "discourteous," of which, when he received it, he spoke in terms of praise. He claims to have denounced me as cowardly and incompetent as a military commander upon occasions where he never did so do. He claims to have stated to the Senate a specific case of my wrong-doing to induce the Senate to act, which he never did do; and all for what purpose? For the purpose of excusing himself for an ungentlemanly and profane attack upon me for listening to his speech.
  I submit once more to the judgment of the House and the country whether the officer who, in all he has done, as charged, has been fully justified by his superior, the President, and never has been impeached by any other, or the willful falsifier of his own record to justify himself in attacking an unoffending person, most deserves the epithet of "scoundrel."
  But why should I, living, hope to escape the viperous defamation of a communis ricatrix, who, claiming to be a Christian, in defiance even of the maxim of heathen Rome-"that nothing be said of the dead save good" -ghoul-like, pounces upon the new-made grave, and with unclean talons tears and feasts upon the corpse of the lamented patriot Stanton, declaring-
  If justice had been dealt out to him in his lifetime for his crimes, he would have been hung a hundred times for murder, and put in the penitentiary ten thousand times for his crimes.
  I might, perhaps I ought, to content myself here; but for nearly nine years I have silently suffered similar assaults. It may be the hour has