In as few words as possible I wish to lay before the nation what's here,
howsoever small, I have had in this matter--this matter which has so
exercised the public mind, engendered so much ill-feeling, and so filled
the newspapers of both continents with distorted statements and
extravagant comments.
The origin of this distressful thing was this--and I assert here that
every fact in the following resume can be amply proved by the official
records of the General Government.
John Wilson Mackenzie, of Rotterdam, Chemung County, New Jersey,
deceased, contracted with the General Government, on or about the 10th
day of October, 1861, to furnish to General Sherman the sum total of
thirty barrels of beef.
Very well.
He started after Sherman with the beef, but when he got to Washington
Sherman had gone to Manassas; so he took the beef and followed him there,
but arrived too late; he followed him to Nashville, and from Nashville to
Chattanooga, and from Chattanooga to Atlanta--but he never could overtake
him. At Atlanta he took a fresh start and followed him clear through his
march to the sea. He arrived too late again by a few days; but hearing
that Sherman was going out in the Quaker City excursion to the Holy Land,
he took shipping for Beirut, calculating to head off the other vessel.
When he arrived in Jerusalem with his beef, he learned that Sherman had
not sailed in the Quaker City, but had gone to the Plains to fight the
Indians. He returned to America and started for the Rocky Mountains.
After sixty-eight days of arduous travel on the Plains, and when he had
got within four miles of Sherman's headquarters, he was tomahawked and
scalped, and the Indians got the beef. They got all of it but one
barrel. Sherman's army captured that, and so, even in death, the bold
navigator partly fulfilled his contract. In his will, which he had kept
like a journal, he bequeathed the contract to his son Bartholomew W.
Bartholomew W. made out the following bill, and then died: