"'General Butler, I am troubled about the negroes. We are soon to have peace. We have got some one hundred and odd thousand negroes who have been trained to arms. When peace shall come I fear lest these colored men shall organize themselves in the South, especially in the States where the negroes are in preponderance in numbers, into guerilla parties, and we shall have down there a warfare between the whites and the negroes. In the course of the reconstruction of the government it will become a question of how the negro is to be disposed of. Would it not be possible to export them to some place, say Liberia or South America, and organize them into communities to support themselves?' "General Butler replied, 'We have large quantities of clothing to clothe them, and arms and everything necessary for them, even to spades and shovels, mules, and wagons. Our war has shown that an army organization is the very best for digging up the soil and making intrenchments. Witness the very many miles of intrenchments that our soldiers have dug out. I know of a concession of the United States of Colombia for a tract of thirty miles wide across the Isthmus of Panama for opening a ship canal. The enlistments of the negroes have all of them from two or three years to run. Why not send them all down there to dig the canal? They will withstand the climate, and the work can be done with less cost to the United States in that way than in any other. If you choose, I will take command of the expedition. We will take our arms with us, and I need not suggest to you that we will need nobody sent down to guard us from the interference of any nation. We will proceed to cultivate the land and supply ourselves with all the fresh food that can be raised in the tropics, which will be all that will be needed, and your stores of provisions and supplies of clothing will furnish all the rest. Shall I work out the details of such an expedition for you, Mr. President?' "He reflected for some time, and then said, 'There is meat in that suggestion, General Butler; there is meat in that suggestion. Go and talk to Seward and see what foreign complications there will be about it.' "But that evening Secretary Seward, in his drive before dinner, was thrown from his carriage and severely injured, his jaw being broken, and he was confined to his bed until the assassination of Lincoln and the attempted murder of himself by one of the confederates of Booth, so that the subject could never be again mentioned to Mr. Lincoln."