He puts everything in this time. He does not even allow that the Indians
destroyed the crockery or drank the four dozen bottles of (currant) wine.
When it came to supernatural comprehensiveness in "gobbling," John B.
Floyd was without his equal, in his own or any other generation.
Subtracting from the above total the $67,000 already paid to
George Fisher's implacable heirs, Mr. Floyd announced that the government
was still indebted to them in the sum of sixty-six thousand five hundred
and nineteen dollars and eighty-five cents, "which," Mr. Floyd
complacently remarks, "will be paid, accordingly, to the administrator of
the estate of George Fisher, deceased, or to his attorney in fact."
But, sadly enough for the destitute orphans, a new President came in just
at this time, Buchanan and Floyd went out, and they never got their
money. The first thing Congress did in 1861 was to rescind the
resolution of June 1, 1860, under which Mr. Floyd had been ciphering.
Then Floyd (and doubtless the heirs of George Fisher likewise) had to
give up financial business for a while, and go into the Confederate army
and serve their country.
Were the heirs of George Fisher killed? No. They are back now at this
very time (July, 1870), beseeching Congress through that blushing and
diffident creature, Garrett Davis, to commence making payments again on
their interminable and insatiable bill of damages for corn and whisky
destroyed by a gang of irresponsible Indians, so long ago that even
government red-tape has failed to keep consistent and intelligent track
of it.
Now the above are facts. They are history. Any one who doubts it can
send to the Senate Document Department of the Capitol for H. R. Ex. Doc.
No. 21, 36th Congress, 2d Session; and for S. Ex. Doc. No. 106, 41st
Congress, 2d Session, and satisfy himself. The whole case is set forth
in the first volume of the Court of Claims Reports.
It is my belief that as long as the continent of America holds together,
the heirs of George Fisher, deceased, will still make pilgrimages to
Washington from the swamps of Florida, to plead for just a little more
cash on their bill of damages (even when they received the last of that
sixty-seven thousand dollars, they said it was only one fourth what the
government owed them on that fruitful corn-field), and as long as they
choose to come they will find Garrett Davises to drag their vampire
schemes before Congress. This is not the only hereditary fraud (if fraud
it is--which I have before repeatedly remarked is not proven) that is
being quietly handed down from generation to generation of fathers and
sons, through the persecuted Treasury of the United States.