F. Colburn Adams

“ 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. ”

“ Here we were brought face to face with the fact that the Republican party had abandoned its principles, had abandoned truth and justice—even humanity itself—and in the future would depend on dollars and cents for its strength. Its political morality strongly resembled the Democratic party as it was twenty years ago, when slavery was its Political Fetish—when it had a Jew banker at one end of it and a prize fighter at the other. ”

“ It now remains for Congress to assert its prerogative, to rise up and wipe out this abomination, to put a stop to a scandal that has become national, and place the winding up of the affairs of the bank under the Secretary of War, with authority to appoint a competent officer to perform the duty, to the end of saving what there is left of the wreck to the poor victims of this cruel robbery, instead of having it pass into the pockets of the Commissioners and their legal retainers. ”

“ And yet amidst all the suffering and distress, all the poverty and want, the class of poor robbed by the officials of this bank here in Washington have been afflicted with for the past two winters, and which the good and the generous so worthily came forward to relieve, it does not seem for once to have occurred to these Commissioners, who were enriching themselves on the money of the washers and scrubbers, that even one month’s salary would have purchased fuel and bread enough to feed a thousand starving and shivering families for a month. ”

“ I again approach this black chapter in the history of the great—perhaps I should say once great—Republican party with feelings of sadness. Here, in this remarkable report, we have man’s inhumanity to man portrayed in all its darkest colors. ”

“ Frederick Douglas said there were men in Washington, living in palaces, and riding in their coaches, who were prominent in robbing his people of their hard earnings. Mr. Douglas never told a greater truth. I envy no man destined to carry a guilty conscience through the world with him.
To turn to this lawyer Totten, he may be eminent as a lawyer, but I never heard of it. Nor have I ever heard that his reputation at the Washington Bar was such as to entitle him to excessive fees. ”

“ We all know and appreciate the prompt, honest, and economical way in which Adjutant General Vincent brought the affairs of the Freedmen’s Bureau to a close, and exposed the canting hypocrites who had grown rich by pocketing the colored man’s bounties. We want just such a faithful and efficient officer to wind up the affairs of the Freedmen’s Bank. ”

“ Grant, himself, was their friend, associate, and partner in Seneca sandstone and other speculations. Indeed it is only the truth to say of Grant that such was the force of his democratic instincts that he never had any real, honest sympathy with the negro, to say nothing of his contempt for poor men of whatever color. It was Grant’s native dislike of the negro and the abolitionist alike, that led him into his unfortunate quarrel with Mr. Sumner. That quarrel initiated the independent Republicans, and it also initiated the disintegration of the Republican party. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To men of Purvis’ and Leipold’s type, this salary of three thousand dollars a year was a god-send of no mean dimensions. But placing them in charge of the bank’s money was a very dangerous power to intrust such men with. Grant, I am told, used to allude to these commissioners as representing Europe, Africa, and America. That it was a charming blending of colors must be confessed. The sombre clouding, however, hung around America, represented by the man Creswell. ”

“ How he got the money to build such an elegant house, to ride in his carriage, and fare sumptuously every day, is not a matter for so humble an individual as myself to inquire into. Washington has its laws, socially, legally, and morally, and I have sometimes thought that the bigger the thief the greater were his immunities. ”

“ Creswell, who resigned his position in Grant’s cabinet to escape impeachment, and with whose official and political record the country is already familiar, was his first choice. Money is Mr. Creswell’s fetish, no one has ever accused him of doing a charitable act, and as for political convictions, he has about as much use for them as a savage has for a time-piece. When a Senator, a true friend of the race, remonstrated against this appointment and predicted the result, Grant said Creswell was a lawyer, and as such could make himself useful in managing the legal affairs. ”

“ These worthy gentlemen, so true to themselves, are Republicans, holding front seats in the church of Christian statesmen; they are loud to preach and strong to pray, and they thank God of a Sunday that they are not as other men. ”

“ To be even more explicit, it was the first time in the history of felony that the workmen and workwomen, the scrubbers and washers, the orphans and widows of the poorest and most ignorant classes in the city of Washington, were unwittingly made to cash obligations issued by an organized gang of thieves and plunderers.
May I ask the reader to go back with me to the time Mr. John R. Elvans made his statement. Finding there was no other way of stopping the robbery or exposing the crime but through the press, I had recourse to that. ”

“ Depraved and vicious to an extent almost beyond belief, they yet, in many things, hold the better classes subject to their dictation, and too frequently make them responsible for their crimes. My experience has been that for Christian virtues, for all that was kindly and tractable in human nature, the negro, even as a slave, was by far the poor white’s superior ”

“ He who can elevate and place mankind on an higher plane is a benefactor of his race.” I have had these words printed in letters of gold, framed, and hung on the walls of my humble sanctum.
NOT TO BE FORGOTTEN.
Out of all the charges of vice laid at the door of the negro race there rises the fact that almost on the heels of their emancipation the men and women composing it brought out their savings of a lifetime and deposited nearly six million of dollars in this Freedmen’s Bank and its thirty-odd agencies. ”

“ This completes the transcript brought me from the books of the bank, in November, 1871. I need hardly tell the reader that the gentlemen whose names appear as original conspirators to rob the bank were Republicans of high [11] standing in the party, and professed friends of the colored man. It will also be observed that they initiated the robbery, by getting the money on worthless securities, and with two or three additions of men of the same stamp, in politics as well as religion, continued it to the very end. ”

“ He was associated with them in the paving business, and the very large amounts of money he was permitted to draw from the bank from time to time, and while Stickney had almost absolute control of its funds—nearly $200,000—convinces me that there was not only collusion, but that Vandenburgh was used as an instrument by his more designing confederates. These “Vandenburgh loans,” as they are called, are regarded as bad as any made by the bank. That Vandenburgh never could have used so large an amount of money in his own business, the Committee were satisfied. ”

“ A more illiterate, vicious, and depraved—a class more reckless of human life than the poor whites of the South it would be difficult to find in any country. I refer more particularly to what are known as crackers, wire-grass, and sand-hill men. ”

“ To us the rise is the most important part of it, and for the very reason that it repeats the story of Whittington and his cat, thrice Lord Mayor of London, to say nothing of honest Sancho Panza and his government of the island of Barritario. ”

“ The present Governor of Kentucky understood the situation I have been discussing perfectly when he said, in his message vetoing the act for the restoration of that relic of barbarism and cruelty, the whipping post: “Mankind is already too much degraded. ”