The Walt Whitman Archive
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Title: Amos T. Akerman to Noah Davis, 6 December 1871
Date: December 6, 1871
Whitman Archive ID: nar.02225
Source: National Archives and Records Administration. Transcribed from digital images or a microfilm reproduction of the original item. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Elizabeth Lorang, Nima Najafi Kianfar, Melanie Krupa, and John Schwaninger
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Dec. 6, 1871.
Hon. Noah Davis, U.S. Attorney,
New York.
Sir:
In answer to yours of the 5th instant, suggesting the employment of General Butler in the prosecution against Richard Baker, Jr. without expense to the Government, I have to say that I should with the greatest pleasure appoint General Butler your special assistant as you desire, if I could do so under the Constitution and laws. But I have uniformly refused to commission members of Congress as assistants either to the Attorney General, or to the District Attorneys, considering that such an appointment is made an office by the 17th section of the Act to establish the Department of Justice, (16 U.S. Stat. 164-5,) which a member of Congress is prohibited from holding by the Sixth Section of Article I of the Constitution.
Very respectfully,
A. T. Akerman,
Attorney General.
declining employment of Gen. Butler