Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

[973] direction. Some of the newspapers criticised it severely. On Fast Day many of the clergymen preached upon it, and expounded its extreme obnoxiousness to everything that was decent and proper.

I bore all this with a patient shrug, “for sufferance is the badge of all our tribe.” I even waited until my good friends, the parsons, could have another lick at the proclamation on the next Sunday. Then I thought this matter had gone far enough, and I was put in mind of it by receiving a call from a short-hand reporter representing one of the leading journals of Boston, who came to me and asked me if I had read any of the criticisms of my Fast Day proclamation in the papers or any of the Fast Day sermons that had been published, and whether I would be willing to say anything about them for publication. I told him that my attention being called to the matter of the preparation of the proclamation I sat down to the task and as I was very busy and pressed for time, I bethought myself that possibly some one of my venerable predecessors in office might have issued a proclamation which would suit my case, and I sent for some of the earlier proclamations, and after examining them found one that just suited me. It was the proclamation of Governor Christopher Gore in 1810. I knew something of his history. He was a very learned and pious man, a graduate of Harvard College, for whom one of their principal halls had been named as a memorial. His proclamation calling for prayers for our fishing, navigation, and manufacturing interests seemed appropriate to my condition, and its tone was admirable. It covered every point except one, and that I inserted. Governor Gore asked the people to abstain from all secular labors, but went no further because the clergymen of that day did not usually preach upon secular topics. I added the necessary exhortation against that in the following words:

I do specially exhort the ministers of the gospel on that day to feed their flocks with the divine word and not discourse upon political and other secular topics which may direct the serious thoughts of the people from the humble worship of the Father.

So that all the criticism except upon that one sentence, for the rest was verbatim, was directed against that learned and pious man and not against me. I was glad that I made the selection of the proclamation of Governor Gore, because I could throw all the blame for want of piety or proper religious sentiment that might appear in