was, in a great measure, responsible for the robbery of the Freedmen’s
Bank. And this I say more in sorrow than anger. The reader will bear in
mind that the acts of Congress, under which the bank’s original charter
was granted, prescribed the character of the securities (Government
bonds) on which its money could be loaned. The men who had combined to
get possession of the bank’s money, on worthless securities, such as
Paving Company stock, Seneca Sandstone stock, Morris’ Mining Company
stock, stock of the Young Men’s Christian Association, and other stock
equally worthless and fraudulent, found this simple and very requisite
safeguard a serious impediment to the successful carrying out of their
infamous project. They went before a Republican Congress, and with the
assurance of experienced cracksmen, asked it to repeal the restrictive
clause, and pass an act which made the robbery that followed, possible.
And, as the vote will show, a Republican Congress was only too glad to
accommodate them. In truth, Congress enacted laws for their benefit,
and which virtually placed the funds of the bank at the mercy of the
thieves and plunderers, who at once entered its vaults and began the work
of emptying them. A Republican Congress placed in the hands of these
bad, designing men, the power to make the scrubbers and the washers,
the widows and orphans of the poor and the ignorant—even the maimed
soldier—unwittingly cash their worthless obligations.