Dear Brother: . . . This morning at breakfast I received a note
from Gen. B. F. Butler, asking me to say when he could see me. I supposed it
was about a son of his nephew George and Rose Eytinge, about whom I had written
him two months ago. After breakfast I went to the office and found that he was in
Room 1, on the ground floor, so I went there. He was alone, and asked me to be
seated. I commenced to speak of his grand-nephew, when he said that was not the
reason of his call. He then took up the conversation, and said that the country
was in real danger, revealed by the death of the Chief Justice, that there was
a purpose clearly revealed for the old rebels to capture the Supreme Court, as
shown by the appointment of Lamar and the equal certainty of Waite being
succeeded by a Copperhead or out and out rebel; that in the next four years
Miller and Bradley would create vacancies to be filled in like manner, thus
giving the majority in that court to a party which fought to destroy the
Government, thereby giving those we beat in battle the sacred fruits of
victory. That is a real danger.
SOURCE: Rachel
Sherman Thorndike, Editor, The Sherman Letters: Correspondence Between
General and Senator Sherman from 1837 to 1891, p. 378
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