CORRUPTION IN OFFICIAL LIFE.
The Democrats, having secured possession of the House of Representatives,
organized upward of fifty committees of investigation, which cast
their drag-nets over every branch of the administration, hoping to
find some evidence of corruption in which the President had shared;
but he most searching investigation failed to connect the name or
fame of General Grant with any of this traditional "picking and
stealing." Witnesses were summoned by the score, reams of paper
were covered with short-hand notes of testimony, and some of the
committees traveled far and wide in search of the evidence they
desired. They found nothing, but they reminded Massachusetts men
of old Captain Starbuck, of Nantucket, a philosophical old sea-dog,
who never permitted bad luck to dampen his faith or his good spirits.
Returning home from a three years' whaling voyage, with an empty
hold, he was boarded by the pilot, an old acquaintance, who asked:
"Waal, Cap'n Starbuck, how many bar'ls? Had a good v'yage?"
"Not 'zackly," responded the Captain, "I haint got a bar'l of ile
aboard, but I'll tell ye, I've had a mighty good sail."
Just as they were about to give up in despair, a jealous woman
revealed the fact that Caleb P. Marsh, of New York, had received
the appointment of post-trader at Fort Sill through the endeavors
of his wife with the wife of the Secretary of War, General Belknap.
Marsh made a contract with the trader already there, permitting
him to continue, in consideration of twelve thousand dollars of
the annual profits, divided in quarterly installments. The money
thus received was divided with the Secretary of War for two years
by remittances to Mrs. Belknap, but subsequently a reduced amount
of six thousand dollars a year, agreed on with the post-trader,
was similarly divided by remittances direct to the Secretary.
When General Belknap was transplanted from a revenue collector's
office in Iowa to the Department of War, he brought his wife with
him to Washington, and they occupied the house just before vacated
by Secretary Seward. Other Cabinet officers gave parties, and so
did the Belknaps, but they had been too liberal with their invitations,
especially to the young officers just fresh from army life, and
there was a great deal of disorder, with accompanying damage to
curtains, carpets, and furnishings. The result was that the Belknaps
were either obliged to retire from society and inhabit a cheap
boarding-house, or replenish the family coffers. Alas! the tempting
Marsh appeared on the stage, and the temptation could not be
resisted. Mrs. Belknap died not long afterward, but her sister,
the widow of Colonel Bowers, of the Confederate service, inherited
her "spoils of war," was a mother to her child, and in due time
became the wife of her husband.
In the interval of time required by decorum Mrs. Bowers traveled
in Europe, accompanied by Mrs. Marsh and escorted by George H.
Pendleton, of Ohio. Returning home, Mrs. Bowers was married to
General Belknap on the 11th of December, 1875, Mr. Pendleton giving
the bride away. A handsomer or an apparently happier couple never
came to Washington in their honeymoon, and they were at once
recognized among the leaders of society. Her dresses and jewels
were among the favorite themes of the industrious lady journalists
who get up marvelous accounts of Washington entertainment, and they
were worthy of comment. I well remember having seen her one night
wearing one of Worth's dresses, of alternate stripes of white satin
embroidered with ivy leaves, and green satin embroidered with golden
ears of wheat, with a sweeping train of green satin bordered with
a heavy embroidered garland of ivy and wheat. A cluster of these
in gold and emerald was in her black hair, and she wore a full set
of large emeralds, set in Etruscan gold. The costume was faultless,
and fitted to adorn the queenlike woman.
No one who had seen Mrs. Belknap wondered at the fascination she
exercised over her husband, or thought it strange that he who seemed
so sternly scrupulous about the expenditure of public money, should
have sacrificed his reputation that she might be known as the best-
dressed woman in Washington society. Perhaps, too, it was remembered
that he had brought from the camp one of its legacies. Few post
commanders refused the original delicacies for the mess-table at
head-quarters from the post sutler who desired to keep on the right
side of those in authority. Why, then, could not the Secretary of
War permit his wife to receive a _douceur_ from one of those
cormorants, who always grow rich, and who may without harm be made
to lay down a fraction of their extortionate gains?
Mrs. Lincoln, it was well known, had accepted a shawl worth one
thousand dollars from A. T. Stewart when he was supplying large
amounts of clothing and blankets to the arms, and she had also been
liberally remembered by those who had sold a steamer at an exorbitant
price to the Government. General Grant had been the recipient of
many presents, and the epoch had been styled by Charles Sumner one
of "gift enterprises."
General Belknap had promptly resigned, but it became politically
necessary that he should be impeached. He had as his counsel three
able lawyers whose personal appearance was very dissimilar. Ex-
Senator Carpenter, who was leading counsel, was a man of very
elegant presence, though his short neck and high shoulders made it
impossible for him to be classed as a handsome man. His fine head,
with abundant iron-gray hair, tossed carelessly back from his
forehead, his keen eyes and expressive mouth, shaded by a black
moustache, made up a very noticeable portrait, and his voice was
so musical and penetrating that it lent a charm to the merest trifle
that he uttered. Judge Jeremiah S. Black was a tall, broad-shouldered
man, with a clean-shaven, rugged face, a bright-brown wig, and a
sharp pair of eyes that flashed from under snow-white brows, which
made the brown wig seem still more brown. He chewed tobacco
constantly, and the restless motion of his jaws, combined with the
equally restless motion of his eyes made his a remarkable countenance.
Montgomery Blair was a plain-looking man, as "lean as a racer,"
and evidently as eager for the work before him, though his manner
was very quiet, and his bearing had none of the keen intentness
that characterized his associates. The trio carried General Belknap
safely through his troubles. The evidence was very remarkable and
gave a curious picture of "Vanity Fair." The bargain made by Marsh
with the first wife; the huckstering and business matters growing
out of it, talked about and discussed over her coffin; the marriage
of the Secretary soon after with the sister of the then dead wife;
the frequent and enormous sums paid by Marsh to him; the ominous
hints whispered about the mysterious interviews at the Arlington;
the hurried exposure; the frantic efforts to avoid it; the malignant
gratification shown by the Marshses, "we built the foundation on
which they grew; we'll hurl them from it into a quicksand from
which they will never emerge;" the admissions of guilt made by the
unhappy Secretary at a moment when, as it had been suggested, he
was contemplating suicide; the imprisonment in his own house; their
style of living; the fact of their appearance at a large dinner-
party at the Freeman Mansion, adjoining the Arlington, where, the
very day after the testimony of the Marshes had been taken, their
haggard looks and nervous manner excited general comment, which
was not entirely silenced by their early departure on the plea of
indisposition; the first effort of manliness on the part of the
fallen Secretary, begging that the women might be spared, and he
alone be allowed to assume the responsibility; his appearance one
day at a Cabinet meeting and the next day held as a prisoner in
the dock of the police court, waiting for five long hours the
appearance of friends to bail him out;--all these presented elements
of such a character as to give the case a singular and sad peculiarity
which we look for in vain in that of any other known to our records
of criminal jurisprudence. Nor was all this palliated in any way
by the conduct and manner of the alleged criminal. He saw the
point and smiled sympathetically at every effort of his counsel to
be witty and amusing, while another party at home claimed sympathy
from her friends by the strange announcement that "it was such a
shame that the politicians should be allowed to prosecute such a
man as General B. in such a manner; the President ought to interfere
and prevent it."
The "Whisky Ring" was the creation of Cornelius Wendell and other
noted Washington lobbyists. It became necessary to raise money at
the time of the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, and the revenue
officers, having been called on to contribute, conceived the idea
of making the distillers pay a percentage on their ill-gotten gains.
Secretary Bristow's efforts to break up these fraudulent and unlawful
transactions showed the immensity of the combination of capital
and ingenuity employed in cheating the Government. The weekly
payments to the Ring amounted to millions, and for some years some
of the participants pocketed four or five hundred dollars a week
as their share.
Senator Henderson, of Missouri, who had become provoked against
President Grant, having been retained as counsel for the prosecution
of some of the Missouri distillers, reported that General O. E.
Babcock, who had served on General Grant's staff during the closing
years of the war, and had since been one of the private secretaries
at the White House, was deeply implicated. The result was that
General Babcock was tried before the United States Court for the
Eastern District of Missouri. The trial showed that General Babcock
had had more intimate relations with the Whisky Ring in St. Louis
than any political necessity could justify, and the correspondence
revealed an almost culpable indiscretion in one occupying a high
position near the President. The trial occupied fourteen days.
No portion of the evidence was kept back from the jury, and the
verdict of "not guilty" under such circumstances was as complete
an exoneration from the charge of conspiring to defraud the Government
as the most ardent friends of General Babcock could have desired.
[Facsimile]
Matt H.Carpenter
MATTHEW H. CARPENTER was born at Moretown, Vermont, in 1824; was
at the Military Academy, at West Point, 1843-1845; studied law with
Rufus Choate; was admitted to the bar, and commenced practice at
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1848; was a United States Senator from
Wisconsin, March 4th, 1869 - March 3d, 1875, and again March 18th,
1879, until his death at Washington City, February 24th, 1881.