<^

THE CHABGES

AGAINST

Mr. BLAINE

EXAMINED

^l REPUBLICAN.

A word of explanation is perhaps proper. I have never been a follower
of Mr. Blaine. I was at the National Convention at Cincinnati in 1876, as a
supporter ol Mr. Conkling and an earnest opponent of Mr. Blaine, being
actively concerned in the arrangements which resulted in the nomination of
Mr. Hayes. I was not at Chicago in 1880, because while I had no sympathy
with the grounds of the opposition to General Grant, I did not think it wise
to nominate him, and yet felt that I could not appear there without seeming to
give aid to the supporters of Mr. Blaine. In the recent canvass for the nom
ination at Chicago, I was the earnest supporter of Gen. Arthur, and was
heart-sick when Mr. Blaine was nominated, not only because it was the defeat
of the friend who I thought deserved the nomination, but because, with
no knowledge on the subject, I had come to believe there was some
thing in the Blaine-Mulligan episode which seriously reflected upon the
candidate. Frankness requires me, however, to add that such impressions
as I had did not for a moment lead me to hesitate in the acceptance of Mr.
Blaine as the standard-bearer in the present campaign, because I believed
that any Republican not absolutely corrupt was better than any one the
Democratic party was likely to nominate.
In this frame of mind, with an indefinite dread of the Mulligan papers, I
was compelled, for personal reasons, to spend a month in a distant and
secluded part of the country with nothing to do. I determined to devote a
portion of my time to a thorough examination of the charges made against
Mr. Blaine and the evidence on which they rested. I procured, with a good
deal of difficulty, the necessary documents. The "Congressional Record"
of 1876 was readily obtained, but the testimony taken before the Committee
of the House of Representatives, in May and June, 1876, was procured with
so much difficulty that I did not wonder at the fact which became more and
more obvious to me as my examination progressed, that nearly all of those
who have written or spoken on the subject seem not to have read the testi
mony but to have either repeated what they have heard from others, or to
have confined their examination solely to the " Congressional Record." In
deed, except in the New York " Evening Post " and " Nation " — which are
one— and in the abstract prepared for the Brooklyn Young Republicans, I
liave not happened to observe any indication that the Testimony had been
read by those who were writing or speaking about the charges. The Brooklyn
abstract I may say, though plausible, is conspicuously unfair.
Having procured the testimony and the "Record" and all the charges
against Mr. Blaine that I could lay hands upon, I first carefully read over
the whole. I then took up the charges as I found them, and abstracted the
testimony which bore upon each, whether in support or refutation of them.
The result was so surprising to me that I decided to prepare the following
pages, believing that others must have been misled as I was. I am not aware
that there has yet been printed any complete statement of the charges and
the evidence, so brought together as to enable anyone to judge for himself. In
the following pages I have intended to state all the evidence fully and fairly

on both sides while frankly expressing the conclusions to which I have been
led. Anyone who will read what is written, will, I think, be in a position to
decide for himself whether or not he shares in my conclusions. If I have
erred in calling attention to any of the testimony it has been wholly uninten
tional. Perhaps I ought to add that neither Mr. Blaine nor any friend of his,
nor indeed, any human being had any knowledge of my decision to prepare
this pamphlet. II.
The only systematic formulating of the charges against Mr. Blaine which
has come under my notice is comprised in a series of articles recently published
in the New York "Evening Post,"— and, I think, in its tender, the "Nation,"
though I have not seen them in the latter— which articles have been reprinted
in a pamphlet, which contains also a partial reply by William Walter Phelps.
It was these charges so formulated that I took as the basis of my examination.
Mr. Carl Schurz has repeated some of them in a recent speech.
The evidence brought forward against Mr. Blaine is contained in Miscel
laneous Document No. 176 of the House of Representatives, First Session of
the Forty-fourth Congress, a document of 174 pages. This evidence was
taken in May and June, 1870. It was taken by a sub-committee of the Judi
ciary Committee, consisting of two Democratic Ex-Confederates and one Re
publican member of Congress. Though one of the resolutions for an investiga
tion had been passed in the previous January and looked to a full inquiry
into all the acts of all the railroad companies which had received land grants
or subsidies, nothing was practically done under it till May 15, when the sub
committee began the examination of one of the charges against Mr. Blaine.
The sub-committee seems to have ceased its operations on June 10 following.
Their whole activity was consumed in investigating Mr. Blaine. It began a
few weeks before the National Republican Convention of that year, before
which it was known Mr. Blaine would be a prominent candidate, and it closed
just before that Convention met. Mr. Blaine publicly charged on the floor of
the House that it was, in effect, the Democratic scheme to get charges and
alleged evidence in support of them before the public and not to allow the
opportunity for the evidence in reply to be fully heard and a report made.
He first intimated his belief in this Democratic scheme when on April 24,
several weeks before the committee commenced operations, he rose to a per
sonal explanation and answered the charge relating to the seventy-five bonds
sold to the Union Pacific Road by Thomas A. Scott. After meeting that
fully by documentary proofs, he said :
" Several newspapers — some of them doubtless from friendly motives —
have urged that I should ask for a committee to investigate these charges. I
might have done that and awaited the delay and slow progress that inevitably
attend all Congressional investigations. Three and a half years ago I moved
a committee to investigate the Credit Mobilier charges, and, though every
particle of proof in complete exculpation of myself was before the committee
in thirty-six hours after its first meeting, I was compelled to wait for more
than two months, indeed seventy full days, before I got a public report exon
erating and vindicating me from the charges. If I had asked for a committee
to investigate the pending matter, I should have been compelled to wait its
necessarily slow action with the charge all the while hanging over
me, undenied and unanswered ; and pending the proceedings of an investiga
tion which I had myself asked, propriety would have forbidden my collect-

ing and publishing the decisive proofs which I have now submitted. For
these reasons I have deemed that the shortest and most expeditious mode of
vindication was the one I was bound to choose by every consideration
of myself personally and of my official relations. I have not omitted the tes
timony of a single material witness to the transaction on which the accusation
against me is based, and, unless I misapprehend the scope and force of the
testimony, it leaves no charge against me. In any and all events I am ready
to submit the whole matter to the candid judgment of the House and the
country, and if the House thinks the matter should be further inquired into
I beg to express my entire readiness to give all the assistance in my power to
make the investigation as thorough, as rigid and as impartial as possible."
After the sub-committee began operations about the middle of May Mr.
Blaine constantly sought to compel them to come to a speedy close by trying
to confine them to the matters which they were authorized to investigate, by
excluding anything but pertinent testimony and by urging them to make a
report as soon as the}' had finished examining the charge specially referred to
them. Instead of that they passed to another charge — that relating to the
Northern Pacific Railroad. When this was exhausted they took up a third
one, relating to the Kansas Pacific Railway, which proved so absurd that it
has never since been revived.
In Mr. Blaine's efforts to hurry things through before the Convention met
he made various objections to the reception of testimony on the ground that
it was not pertinent and would open a wide field for delay. These objections
are now in some quarters unjustifiably attempted to be twisted into evidence
of a desire to avoid the facts.
Seeing the determination of the Committee to prolong their examination,
Mr. Blaine on several subsequent occasions, "rose to a personal explanation "
in the House, which led to more or less debate. What was stated and
produced during these debates furnishes all the evidence, other than the Tes
timony taken by the sub-committee, which bears upon the charges. It is to
be found in the "Congressional Record" for April 24, 1876, pages 2724 and
2725 ; for May 1, 1876, pages 2863, 2864 ; for June 5, 1876, pages 3602 to 3617 ;
for June 8, pages 3693, 3694 to 3698 ; and for June 9, pages 3725 to 3728.
The passage in the " Record " of April 24 relates to the charge as to the
Union Pacific Railroad, and to some extent to that connected with the
Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad ; that on May 1 relates to the abandoned
charge of improper transactions connected with the Kansas Pacific Railroad,
the same which the New York Tribune made in September, 1872, and
which the New York Times answered so effectively that the Tribune
withdrew it within a few weeks. The " Record " of April 24 and June 5,
1876, contains all that is really important in the present connection. The
"Record" of June 8 and 9 only discloses an unsuccessful attempt by Mr.
Blaine to force the Democratic majority to print a telegram in the possession
of the Chairman of the Committee which he had suppressed, and which
tended to exonerate Mr. Blaine from one of the charges.

III.
In considering the charges it ought not to be necessary to suggest that
Mr. Blaine is entitled to some measure of the consideration given to the com
monest accused person, and that there should not be applied to him the ordi-

4
nary newspaper rule of the present day, which is to believe a man guilty
until he is proved to be innocent. When the charges were preferred in 1876
the "Nation" truthfully said: "His integrity has never been impeached
until now." He had then been for nearly twenty years in public life. He
had held with distinguished ability the position of Speaker of the House ot
Representatives, a position second in power and honor only to that of Presi
dent. He has since been continuously in public life, selected by GarfieM as
tlie premier of his administration, and more recently chosen by a Convention
admittedly able, honest and truly representative, to be the standard-bearer of
a party which has for a quarter of a century controlled the Government and
commended itself to the People as on the whole pure and honest. ^ Such a
man is entitled to rest on the ordinary presumption of honesty and integrity
until something like evidence is produced to show that he has been dishonest
and corrupt. If any act or expression is equally capable of two interpreta
tions, he is entitled to that most favorable to him. Imprudence or bad taste
is not to be taken as proving corruption. On the other hand, I do not think
that in the case of a man seeking the suffrages of the People it can fairly be
said, as some have said, that he must be proved to be guilty beyond a reason
able doubt. He is. however, entitled at least to the same consideration which
led the American People, after a full discussion, to acquit Garfield when
charged with similar official misconduct upon testimony quite as strong as
any that has been produced against Mr. Blaine.
Tlie latter in closing a personal explanation in the House of Representa
tives on April 24th, 1876, said :
' ' 1 am now, Mr. Speaker, in the fourteenth year of a not inactive ser
vice in this Hall. I have taken and have given blows. I have no doubt
said many things in the heat of debate which I would now gladly recall. I
have, no doubt, given votes which in fuller light I would gladly change. But
I have never done anything in my public career for which I could be put to
the faintest blush in any presence, or for which I cannot answer to my con
stituents, my conscience and the great Searcher of hearts."

IV.
The opponents of Mr. Blaine uniformly seek to prevent or to prejudge
any fair consideration of the charges against him and the evidence by which
they are sought to be sustained by assuming it to be an admitted fact that he
wrongfully possessed himself of evidence which made against him and
then suppressed it. Thus the " Evening Post" says :
"The charge of having obtained the letters from Mulligan by pledging
his word of honor to return them, and then breaking his pledge, Mr. Phelps,
we take it for granted, tacitly confesses on his friend's behalf ; so that no
more need be said about it."
Elsewhere it says :
' ' He obtained certain letters, which there is every reason to believe contained
matter gravely compromising him, from a perfectly reputable witness, Mr.
Mulligan, who was the proper and lawful custodian of them, after having
vainly tried appeals to his pity, by pledging his word of honor to restore them
and then broke this pledge retaining them by force and then read such of them
as he pleased to the House in aid of his vindication."

Now, I agree that if Mr. Blaine got letters surreptitiously or wrongly in
any manner, and then suppressed them, no inference as to their contents
could be too strong against him. The familiar maxim that everything is to
be presumed against one who so seizes papers — the spoliator — is the simplest
common sense.
But when such a charge is made, instead of accepting it as admitted,
would it not be common decency for Mr. Blaine's opponents to say that the
charge is denied in all its essential parts ? Mr. Blaine's opponents ought to
state that he denies that he broke his word in getting possession of the letters ;
that he claims that he only exercised the right which the law gave him when
he found private letters written by himself to a personal friend in the posses
sion of a third party, who claimed the right to use them in a way the law for
bids, and that after getting possession of the letters and retaining them, under
this claim of right, he first offered them to the person to whom they were
written, and not only did not suppress them, but read them all upon the floor
of the House of Representatives and printed them in the ' ' Congressional
Record." Such being the allegation and the denial, let us see how the evidence
stands. All the facts rest upon the testimony of Mr. Blaine, Mr. Mulligan, Mr.
Warren Fisher and Mr. Elisha Atkins, the latter a well-known capitalist of
Boston. On some points Mr. Blaine and Mr. Mulligan are the only witnesses,
and contradict each other, but Messrs. Fisher and Atkins state facts which, to
some extent, throw light even upon these points.
Well, then, the facts are these : Mr. Mulligan, a strong Democrat, and a
man, as Mr. Atkins swears and his actions show, unfriendly to Mr. Blaine, be
ing summoned to appear before the Democratic Sub-committee in May, 1876,
given no notice, as he says, as to the subject on which he was expected to
testify, further than that it related to the Northern Pacific Railroad in con
nection with Mr. Blaine, and without any requirement to produce any
papers, proceeded to take from a drawer to which he had access, eighteen
private letters and papers, mostly written by Mr. Blaine, not relating to the
matters under investigation, and carried them with him to Washington,
making a list and abstract of their contents, which latter is in its terms
alone sufficient to show his hostile feeling towards Mr. Blaine. He took
them with the consent of Mr. Fisher, to whom they had been written
at a time when the latter was in intimate personal and business relations
with Mr. Blaine. Mr. Fisher seems to me, both at this time and earlier, to
have been guilty of great double-dealing towards Mr. Blaine. He says that
until Mr. Mulligan, who was a sort of volunteer clerk of his, called his atten
tion to these letters, he supposed they had been returned to Mr. Blaine, at the
time of a general settlement of long and varied business connections, made in
September, 1872, when it was agreed that all papers on both sides should be
returned, and that they would then have been returned if attention had been
called to them. On the arrival of Mr. Fisher and Mr. Mulligan in Washing
ton, Mr. Blaine learned of Mulligan's possession of the letters, and that one
of them was claimed by him to refer to the matters under investigation. Mr.
Blaine first- asked Mr. Fisher to get the letters back from Mulligan as he,
Fisher, was their proper custodian. Mr. Fisher applied to Mr. Mulligan to
return them and he refused. As this is, as it seems to me, a very important

Ii
element in the transaction which Mr. Blaine's opponents always remember to
forget, I cite what Mr. Fisher swears to upon this subject:
" Q. Have you ever demanded from Mr. Mulligan the possession of those
letters? "A. I have, sir.
"Q. When?
"A. Since I have been in this city. . ,
"Q. Had you ever demanded them until Mr. Blame got possession 01
them?
< " A. I had, sir.
v "Q. When?
" A. Since I have been in this city ?
" Q. At whose instance did you make that demand for those letters i
"A. I made it at my own instance.
" Q. Was it not suggested to you?
" A. No, sir.
" Q. Were you not requested to make that demand ?
" A. Not the first time I made the demand.
" Q. Were you ever requested by anybody to make that demand after the
first time? " A. I was.
" Q. By whom '(
" A. Mr. Blaine.
" Q. He asked you to demand those letters?
" A. He did not ask me to demand them.
" Q. Well, what did he say?
" A. Mr. Blaine asked me to get Mr. Mulligan to give them to me.
" Q. What were you to do with them if you got them?
" A. I proposed to keep them if I got them."
Now, as it is admitted that Mr. Mulligan did not give up the letters to Mr.
Fisher, though they were twice demanded, it is obvious that though Mr. Mul
ligan's possession of them, when he brought them to Washington, might have
been rightful, as it was with Mr. Fisher's consent, yet before Mr. Blaine took
the letters from him he had ceased to be what the "Evening Post" calls him,
"the rightful and lawful custodian of them."
After Mr. Mulligan's refusal to return the letters to Mr. Fisher, Mr.
Blaine says that he applied to Mr. Mulligan, who had been an acquaintance of
his for many years, in the rooms of Mr. Atkins at the hotel to give him the
letters, and, on his refusal to do this, to let him see them, and that there was
some reluctance on Mr. Mulligan's part to let them go out of his hands even
for examination. Mr. Mulligan says Mr. Blaine promised upon his honor to
return them, while Mr. Blaine says that there was no direct promise of this
sort. The difference is, however, unimportant, for there is no dispute that
Mr. Blaine after reading them did, in fact, return them all to Mr. Mulligan and
that the latter took them to his room, declining to yield to Mr. Atkins' and
Mr. Fisher's request, concurred in by Mr. Blaine, that he would give them all
to Mr. Blaine, retaining if he choose the one which he thought referred to the
matter under investigation, or that, if he would not do that, that he would re
turn them to Mr. Fisher. As to this interview in Mr. Atkins' room Mr. Mul
ligan swore that
"After my examination here yesterday Mr. Blaine came up to the hotel
the Riggs House, and there had a conference with Mr. Atkins, Mr. Fisher and
myself. He wanted to see those letters that I had. I declined to let him see
them. He prayed — almost went on his knees — I would say on his knees  and
implored me to think of his six children and his wife, and that if the Committee
should get hold of this communication it would sink him immediately and

ruin him forever. I told him I should not give them to him. He asked me
if I would let him read them. I said I would if he would promise me on the
word of a gentleman that he would return them to me. I did let him read
them over. He read them over once and called for them again and read them
over again. He still importuned me to give those papers up. I declined to
do it. I retired to my own room."
He says elsewhere: "Mr. Atkins and, I think, Mr. Fisher were in the
room when I first gave them to him."
Now, it will be perceived that Mr. Mulligan says that all this occurred in ¦
the presence of Mr. Atkins and probably of Mr. Fisher. Mr. Fisher testifies
to nothing of this sort, but states distinctly that he was not present when Mul
ligan gave the letters to Mr. Blaine, though he subsequently came into
the room while they were there. Mr. Atkins says that "the interview
with Mulligan was in his (Atkins') parlor;" that " the conversation was
quite general between us;" that "the general purport of it was that Mr.
Blaine was persuading him to give the letters to him as his private letters ;''
that Blaine "put it on the ground that they were his private property and
had no reference to the transaction before the Committee;" that Mulligan,
after Mr. Blaine had read the letters, declined in the most positive manner to
give them to him.
Neither Mr. Fisher nor Mr. Atkins says a word about any talk by Mr.
Blaine of "ruin to his family," of "praying on his knees" or anything
of the sort. Is it probable that such a thing could have occurred in
their presence only the day before they testified and they not remember it, or
not mention it when fully questioned about the interview ? The truth is that
it is the pure invention of Mr. Mulligan, and yet all of Mr. Blaine's oppo
nents harp upon it as if it were either not denied or was fully proved. In
fact, as to all of the interviews of that evening as to which it is possible to
produce evidence other than that of the immediate parties Mr. Mulligan is not
in any manner sustained where he differs from Mr. Blaine.
After Mr. Mulligan had left Mr. Atkins' room Mr. Blaine remained in con
versation for s,ome time, and then, as Mr. Atkins testifies, left saying he
was going to Mr. Mulligan's room to see again one of the letters, the one al
leged to be pertinent to the matter then under investigation. What occurred in
Mr. Mulligan's room rests entirely upon the evidence of the two gentlemen, and
they, as I have already said, contradict each other. Mr. Mulligan says Mr.
Blaine "went over the same history about his family and his children, and
implored me to give them up to him, and even contemplated suicide;" thus by
his reference to the appeal about the children and family as "gone over again,"
precluding any excuse to the effect that Mr. Blaine did, in fact, at sometime
talk about ruin, &c. , though Mr. Mulligan was mistaken in saying that it took
place in the presence of Mr. Atkins, if not of Mr. Fisher.
Mr. Mulligan further says Mr. Blaine wanted to see them again, and he,
let him have them on his promise to return them ; that he refused to give
them up permanently to Mr. Blaine, saying he did not mean to use them un
less an attempt was made to impeach him, which he saw by an evening paper,
was to be done. He further says that Mr. Blaine, having got them, refused
to return them, saying they were his letters written to Mr. Fisher. Mulligan
said to the Committee: "He (Blaine) admitted to Mr. Fisher and Mr. Atkins
that the only thing that made him not give up the papers to me was my re
mark that if any reports were made, where the veracity of my testimony was
impugned, I should publish those' letters."

8
He further says that Mr. Blaine said he did not want the letters to "go
before the Committee or the world ; " "that they would ruin him forever.'
" He began to talk politics and about his friends ; I talked freely to him; he
asked me if I liked my present position, and I told him no, I did not care
about it. He asked me how I should like a political office, and I told him I
did not care about one. He asked me if I would not like a consulship."
This is all that Mr. Mulligan says about that interview. Mr. Blaine says :
••I may have been there, I think, the better part of an hour, but the
form which he gives to the interview, about my offering him a consulship,
and about my being ruined and all that sort of thing is mere fancy.
Nothing of the kind occurred. I talked as calmly as I am talking this
moment, and as the talk before had been in the presence of these gentlemen.
Very soon I said to him I would like to see one letter among thein ; 1 wanted
to see the letter on which he based his testimony. He handed me the
package. I looked them all over and I said to him : ' Now, you keep that
letter which you think bears on this matter ; I am perfectly willing that you
should keep that, but here is a mass of my private correspondence, covering
many years and detailing matters that have nothing to do with the subject
of the investigation, which it would probably be embarrassing to me to
have published, as any man's private correspondence would be, and I don t
want it published. You ought to give me those letters ; you have no right to
them. There are only two persons in the world that have a right to them :
the one is the writer, the other is the person to whom they were written.
Now, if you will give those letters to Mr. Fisher I will be abundantly satis
fied. They will then be in rightful ownership.' "
Mr. Blaine says Mr. Mulligan refused, and with much profanity said he
was going to hold them for his own protection. When asked if he would give
them up after his examination was closed, Mr. Mulligan said he would not
but that, if at any time any one questioned his veracity in the newspapers or
elsewhere, he would publish them. Mr. Blaine then says :
"The first time when he handed them to me he showed reluctance,
and as I have stated. I remarked, ' You are not afraid of my keeping
them, are you?' and he answered, 'Oh, no,' and he handed them to me;
but he gave them to me the second time without any assurance at all,
and without anything being said about it ; but I had no idea of doing any
thing else than handing them back to him until he announced his purpose
and determination, that no matter wlw should question his testimony, or impeach
or impugn his veracity, he would publish the letters."
Mr. Blaine says, that on hearing this declaration, he decided on the spot
that he would not return the letters to Mr. Mulligan, and so stated to him.
Mr. Blaine says that he then rang the bell and sent for Mr. Fisher ; that
when the latter came he, Mr. Blaine, stated what Mr. Mulligan had said ' 'in his
declaration in the language of menace," and I said " ' This is very grossly un
fair, Mr. Fisher.' I then repeated that I would be glad if Mr. Fisher would
take charge of the letters, as they would be rightfully in his possession, or
rightfully in mine, but not a{ all in any other person's. Mr. Mulligan again
asserted his intention to publish them if any one attacked him." Mr. Blaine
says he then said, " ' Under these circumstances, I will not give these letters
up.' And in order that he might not be mistaken as to the ground of my
action, I called Mr. Atkins from the lower room, for I wanted to tell him the
ground on which I stood. I said, ' I will not return these letters because
you threaten to make a use of them which is illegal, which is unfair, which is
entirely unjust, and I have no idea that any man shall take my private cor
respondence and hold it as a menace over my head to be used at his beck and

9
option to avenge himself upon me for somebody else's transgressions.' " They
then all went downstairs and the same things were in substance repeated by
Mr. Blaine and Mr. Mulligan, and Mr. Blaine went away, taking the letters
with him. He promised to return with the letters later in the evening. He
did so return, but says that Mr. Mulligan was not there. Mr. Atkins and
Mr. Fisher confirm him in this, while Mr. Mulligan insists that he was there
when Mr. Blaine returned. Before he left the first time, Mr. Blaine offered
to give the letters to Mr. Fisher if he would keep them, but, though the latter
had urged Mulligan to give them to him earlier, now as Mr. Atkins swore,
since so much feeling had arisen, he declined to receive them. As to this offer
to give them to Mr. Fisher, and as to everything which Mr. Blaine states
occurred after Mr. Fisher was sent for to come to Mr. Mulligan's room, Mr.
Fisher, and Mr. Atkins as to what occurred after his arrival, fully and entirely
confirm Mr. Blaine, and Mr. Mulligan does not deny it. Indeed, in his state
ment to the Sub-Committee of Mr. Blaine's reasons for retaining the letters
which I have already quoted, he directly confirms Mr. Blaine.
I ought to add that Mr. Blaine specifically denies Mr. Mulligan's state
ments as to his contemplating suicide. Any one who reads the letters will, I
believe, agree with Mr. Blaine in saying, as he did, to the Committee, that in
such case he would have " committed suicide on a pretty cheap basis." Mr.
Blaine also says that the consulship story may have arisen from a joking ref
erence, but he explicitly denies having offered Mr. Mulligan any fee or reward
for the letters.
It will be observed that the only real dispute between Mr. Blaine and Mr.
Mulligan as to what occurred at this interview in Mr. Mulligan's room, is as to
whether Mr. Blaine obtained the letters on an express promise to return them,
and as to whether Mr. Blaine " went over" again what he was falsely said to
have said in Mr. Atkins' and Mr. Fisher's presence, as to the ruin which the
publication of the letters would bring upon himself and his family, and as to
the addition that he contemplated suicide.
Now, whether there was an express promise or not to return the letters, I
presume no one will doubt that Mr. Mulligan would not have entrusted them
to Mr. Blaine if he had not expected they would be returned, and Mr. Blaine
says he intended to return them till after Mr. Mulligan's avowal of what he
would do with them.
As Mr. Mulligan is shown to be wrong, as to the talk of "ruin," " going
on his knees," &c, at the interview in the presence of Mr. Atkins and Mr.
Fisher, he is hardly to be believed when he says the same thing was ' ' gone
over again" when they were alone, especially as the letters, whatever view
may be taken of them, call for no such severe remedy.
As bearing upon the question whether Mr. Mulligan's or Mr. Blaine's
version of what occurred in the former's room is correct, as to whether Mr.
Blaine was in the excited, suicidal frame of mind which Mr. Mulligan says he
was, it is to be noted that Mr. Fisher says that when he was called in Mr.
Blaine was perfectly quiet and calm, with no indications of excitement other
than that of walking the room, while Mr. Atkins says Mr. Mulligan was in a
state of great excitement, using much language that Mr. Atkins was unwill
ing to repeat, though he did finally repeat that Mr. Mulligan said he "would
not give them up to God Almighty or his father." " Generally," says Mr.
Atkins, "he uses the language of a gentleman, but in this instance he was

10
under great excitement, and used language that he would not use under
other circumstances."
I have, I believe, thus stated fully and fairly all the testimony on both
sides as to the manner in which Mr. Blaine became possessed of the letters.
It will be seen that they were private letters which he had written to Mr.
Fisher, letters which should have been returned, under the agreement of
settlement between Mr. Fisher and Mr. Blaine years previously, and which
were accidentally overlooked ; that only one of them was pretended to re
late to anything the Congressional Committee was then investigating ; that
Mr. Fisher, who had intrusted them to Mr. Mulligan first of his own motion,
and subsequently, at Mr. Blaine's request, demanded their return by Mr.
Mulligan to him, so that Mr. Mulligan's possession of them was from that
time forth unauthorized ; that Mr. Blaine made, however, no objection to
his retaining the one letter that he alleged related to the matter under inves
tigation ; that Mr. Mulligan insisted that he was going to keep them to pub
lish when and as he chose ; that Mr. Blaine sought in vain to have them
returned to Mr. Fisher, and, on a refusal, announced his determination to
retain them, giving his reasons for his course. It does .not appear that Mr.
Fisher, when sent for, made any objection to this course. He refused then
to receive them himself, because, as Mr. Atkins says, so much feeling had
been developed, apparently not wishing to be further involved in the con
troversy. Mr. Mulligan even seems to have given a, sort of compulsory con
sent, for he said to the committee, referring to Mr. Blaine, " I told you in the
presence of these other gentlemen to keep your letters, and that I should
make this statement to the committee in the morning;" to which Mr. Blaine
replied to the committee, " Yes, and I told you to go ahead. If you had not
made the statement I should undoubtedly have made it for you."
Now, on this state of facts, I cannot but think that any man of spirit
would under such circumstances have acted precisely as Mr. Blaine did act.
As a. matter of mere dry law I am under the impression that the Courts
would say that Mr. Blaine's position was correct, that only he or Mr. Fisher
had any right to the custody of these letters, that Mr. Fisher could not
legally pass them to Mr. Mulligan with, a right to publish them, and that if
he had ever attempted to do so his demand of their return revoked the right
Mr. Blaine said before the committee, ' ' I justify myself in not returning the
letters. It was lie that was in unlawful possession of these letters. He hadi
no right to these letters. I take that ground most distinctly that there are
but two men that can possess a rightful interest in printed correspondence
— the writer and the person written to — and on that right I stand."
After Mr. Blaine got the letters he submitted them to that ardent Democrat
Ex-Attorney-General Jeremiah S. Black and to Senator Carpenter of
Wisconsin. They gave him a written opinion that the letters were' not
relevant to anything under inquiry by the committee, "As a result of this it
follows," say they, "that Mr. Blaine, having the letters and papers in his
possession, is not bound to surrender them. Referring to Mr Blai '
private affairs, and being wholly beyond the range of the investigation which
the committee is authorized to make, it would be most unjust and tyranni • 1
as well as illegal to demand their production. We advise Mr. Blaine
assert his right as an American citizen, and resist any such demand to tl
last extremity." Upon this opinion and position he challenged the Democratic Committe

11
to submit the matter to the Democratic House of Representatives and they
refused to do so.
As to the legal position taken by Mr. Blaine, I write at a distance from
law books, and cannot, therefore, speak in detail with reference to authori
ties. But on writing to a friend in New York, asking him to look at the
question, he replied :
" The leading case upon the question of title of private letters is Woolsey
vs. Judd, 4 Duer, 379; 11 How., 49, overruling Wetmore vs. Scovil, 3 Edw.,
515, and Hoyt vs. Mackenzie, 3 Barb. Ch., 320, where it was held that
literary value was essential to a ground for interference.
"In Woolsey vs. Judd, the Court, Duer, J., says: First. That the
receiver of letters has only a special or qualified property confined to the
material on which they are written, and not extended to the letters as
an expression of the mind of the writer. Second, That neither the receiver
tliereof nor any other person has any right to publish the letters without tlie consent
of the im-iter. And lastly, That the property which the writer retains, gives him
an exclusive right to determine wliether the letters shall be publislied or not; and
when he forbids their publication it makes it the duty of a court of equity to
aid and protect him by an injunction.
" It appears to us equally certain that those rules * * * embrace all
letters, whether intended to be published or not, and whatever may be the
subjects to which they relate."
In Kiernan vs. Manhattan Quotation Tel. Co., 50 How., 194, Van Brunt,
J., — a democrat elected to the Supreme Court of New York by the Democrats
a year ago — says :
"It is the unquestioned law of this State that in the case of letters the
general property and the general rights incident to property belong to the
writer, and the person to whom letters are addressed has but a limited right.
or special property in such letters as a trustee or bailee for particular purposes,
either of information or of protection, or of support of his rights and character,
and the publication of letters even by the receiver has been restrained when
such publication was not made for purposes of protection or of support of his
rights or character." Citing Woolsey vs. Judd, supra.
After Mr. Blaine announced the legal position he took, the Chairman of
the Judiciary Committee, Proctor Knott, assumed to controvert it. But his
denial was confined to this; he said that after Mr. Blaine parted with his
letters by writing and sending them to Mr. Fisher, he had no right of property
in them, and, therefore, no right to seize them, though he had a right to pre
vent their publication by any one and could enforce this right by injunction.
" I affirm," said Mr. Knott, and he quoted a Kentucky decision to sustain him,
' ' that the only right the gentleman from Maine had at all in these letters was
to publish their contents for his own private use, if he thought proper, or re
strain, by injunction, the publication by another." In other words, accepting
Mr. Knott's law as correct, when Mr. Blaine heard Mr. Mulligan avow that he
would publish the letters when and where he chose, Mr. Blaine had no right
to take possession of them and thus interpose a peremptory injunction of his.
own, but must go to the Courts and get from them an injunction, to which he
was admittedly entitled.
In view of this admitted law, I do not think, under this view of the
facts and the law, any fair-minded man will greatly censure Mr. Blaine
for what he did. He had written private letters to Mr. Fisher, a friend
of many years' standing, with whom his intimacy, at least, had subse
quently ceased. Mr. Fisher had permitted Mr. Mulligan to take them, but
had afterwards demanded them back from Mr. Mulligan, who refused to give
them up. While Mr. Blaine had them temporarily in his possession, Mr.

12
Mulligan avowed to him that he was going to do witli them something which
the law forbade him to dp, and which, it is admitted. Mr. Blaine could,
through the Courts, have enjoined him from doing. Thereupon Mr. Blaine
declared his intention to retain them unless Mr. Fisher would take them, and
when Mr. Fisher declined to take them Mr. Blaine retained them. This is the
whole story of spoliation. Whatever may be thought of the wisdom of Mr.
Blaine's action in retaining the letters, the transaction certainly does not, in
any view of it, furnish any ground for an attack on his integrity or his
motives. Under great provocation he asserted a right he claimed to possess,
and which lawyers and the Courts say, in its result, he did possess. As he
claims, he violated no pledge or promise, nor did he act with any premedita
tion or deceit. It is, at most, the not unusual state of things in which a man
does, himself, something which he had no legal right to do in the way he did
it, but which he had a perfect right to accomplish in another way. In a
Court of law he might have exposed himself to a verdict for nominal dam
ages. Before the grand inquest of public opinion, when it is shown what use
he made of the letters, I am confident he must stand wholly acquitted of any
blame so far as taking or retaining them is concerned.
Still it is certain that no matter how Mr. Blaine got possession of these
letters, whether rightfully or wrongfully if he had destroyed them, or had
concealed their contents, he would necessarily have exposed himself to the
general belief that there must be in them something excessively damaging to
him. Indeed, in such case public opinion would almost inevitably, in spite
of the circumstances showing the contrary, have accepted the concealment as
proof that Mr. Mulligan's version of the interview with Mr. Blaine was cor
rect, and that he did, in fact, say to Mr. Mulligan that their production would
ruin him.
Mr. Blaine, however, did not expose himself to any such inference to be
derived from a concealment of the letters. He showed them, the evening he
got them, to two friends, prominent men. After having given the Democratic
Sub-Committee the opinion of Jerry Black, already referred to, he offered
to allow the Sub-Committee to examine them privately and repeated the same
offer to the Chairman. When, however, this was stated in the House, the
Chairman quibbled by saying he understood this offer was made to him in his
private capacity.
Mr. Blaine also, within a few days thereafter, showed them to several other
persons. It seems to me that it was at first his intention to show the letters
only to a few prominent persons, Democrats and Republicans, and thus, while
protecting his private correspondence from publication, protect himself also
from the suspicion that he was suppressing papers which were fatal to his char
acter. But in the heat of the canvass for the Presidential nomination, when the
Democrats were seeking to "throw dirt" upon every prominent Republican,
and when friends of rival Republican candidates were not unwilling to see
Mr. Blaine rendered unavailable, it soon became obvious that he could not
relieve himself from suspicion in that way. He, therefore, on June 5, 1876,
"rose to a personal explanation" in the House of Representatives.
In so rising, he said :
"When the famous witness Mulligan came here, loaded with information
in regard to the Fort Smith road, the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Hunton,
Chairman of the Sub-Committee], drew out what he knew had no reference
whatever to the question of investigation. He then and there insisted on all

13
of my private memoranda being allowed to be exhibited by that man, in
reference to business that had no more connection, no more relation, no more
to do with that investigation than with the North Pole. And the gentleman
tried his best, also, though I believe that has been abandoned, to capture and
use and control my private correspondence. The man had selected out of
correspondence, running over a great many years, letters which he thought
would be peculiarly damaging to me. He came here loaded with them. He
came here for a sensation. He came here primed. He came here on that
particular errand. I was advised of it and I obtained these letters under
circumstances which have been notoriously scattered about the United States,
and are known to everybody. I have them. I claim I have the entire right
to these letters, not only by natural right, but upon all the precedents and
principles of law, as the man who held these letters in possession, held them
wrongfully. The Committee that attempted to take these letters from that
man, for use against me, proceeded wrongfully. They proceeded in all bold
ness to a most defiant violation of the ordinary, private and personal rights
which belong to every American citizen, and I was willing to stand or meet
the Judiciary Committee on this floor. I wanted them to introduce it. I
wanted the gentleman from Kentucky and the gentleman from Virginia to
introduce that question upon this floor, but they did not do it."
" Mr. Knott: I know you wanted to be made a martyr of."
" Mr. Blaine: And "you did not want to, and there is the difference. I
go a little further; you did not dare to."
*********** " I repeat, the Judiciary Committee I understand have abandoned that
issue against me. I stood up and declined not only on the conclusion of my
own mind, but by eminent legal advice. * * * Then there went forth
everywhere the idea and impression that, because I would not permit that
man or any man whom I could prevent from holding as a menace over my
head my private correspondence, there must be something in it most deadly and
destructive to my reputation.
" I would like any gentleman on this floor, and all gentlemen on this
floor are presumed to be men of affairs whose business has been varied, whose
intercourse has been large; I would like any gentleman to stand up here and
tell me that he is willing and ready to have his private correspondence
scanned over and made public for the last eight or ten years. I would like
any gentleman to say that. Does it imply guilt ; does it imply any sense of
weakness that a man will protect his private correspondence ? No, sir ; it
is the first instinct to do it, and it is the last outrage upon any man to violate
it. " Now, Mr. Speaker, I say that I have defied the power of the House to
compel me to produce these letters. > I speak with all respect to this House.
I know its powers, and I trust I respect them. But I say that the House has
no more power to order what shall be done or not done with my private cor
respondence than it has what I shall do in the nurture and education of my
children— not a particle. The right is as sacred in the one case as in the other.
But, sir, having vindicated that right, standing by it, ready to make any
sacrifice in the defense, of it, here and now, if any gentleman wants to take
issue with me in behalf of this House, I am ready for any extremity of contest
or conflict in behalf of so sacred a right.
" And while I am so I am not afraid to show the letters. Thank God
Almighty, I am not ashamed to show them. There they are. There is the
very original package. And with some sense of humiliation, with a mortifi
cation that I do not pretend to conceal, with a sense of outrage which I think
any man in my position would feel, I invite the confidence of forty-four mil
lion of my countrymen, while I read these letters from this desk. Now, as
regards many of these letters I have not the slightest feeling in reading them.
Some of them will require a little explanation. Some of them may possibly,
as I have said, involve a feeling of humiliation. But I would a great deal
rather take that than take the evil surmises and still more evil inferences
which might be drawn if I did not act with this frankness."
Mr. Blaine then proceeded to read the letters, interspersing the reading
with remarks and, in some .cases, explanations.

14
He closed by saying :
" I have now read these fifteen letters— the whole of them. The House
and the country now know all there is in them. They are dated and tnej
correspond precisely with Mulligan's memorandum, which 1 have here.
To the inquiry whether "the exhibit which the gentleman has made
covers every paper of every kind whatever that came from Mulligan," ^Mr.
Blaine replied, "Every solitary scrap and scrimption, as the children say."
He then, on request, caused Mulligan's memorandum to be read, and he
added :
1 ' Now, gentlemen, these letters I have read were picked out of correspon
dence extending over fifteen years. The man did his worst, the very worst he
could out of the most intimate business correspondence of my life. 1 ask,
gentlemen, if any of you, and I ask it with some feeling, can stand a severer
scrutiny or more rigid investigation into, your private correspondence ?'
Upon this subject the Boston " Daily Advertiser," now an earnest oppo
nent of Mr. Blaine, said in 1876 :
"We do not believe there is a member of the Massachusetts delegation
to the Republican Convention who would dare to submit himself, his history,
his correspondence to the process which those of Mr. Blaine are undergoing.
And yet we do not suppose one of them has ever done anything that would
on the score either of public or of private morality unfit him to be a candi
date for any office. If he is to be driven from public life because of any
thing that has yet been proved, where are we to find the thousands of saints
needed to fill our public offices ?"
The letters, therefore, all stand printed in the " Congressional Record "
by Mr. Blaine's own act, which, by the way, perhaps implies something in his
favor. He is to be judged, in any event, by what they in fact contain, not
by any statement or suspicion as to what they contain. The prejudice sought
to be excited against him by misstatements as to the circumstances under
which he became possessed of them can have no effect upon any fair-minded
man. I have said that Mr. Blaine read all his letters. He stated in the House
that he did so, and until very recently no one has pretended to point to any
evidence that he did not. The test whether he did read them all is found in
the fact that with the letters there was a brief schedule made by Mr. Mulligan
giving the date of each letter and describing in a gem'ral way its contents,
though usually in an unfair manner. The list specified fifteen letters and
papers. Of these ten, being letters of Mr. Blaine, were admittedly read by
him. He read further a letter of June 29, 1869, while the schedule called for
one dated June 27, 1869. But there is no doubt of the identity of the letter
for it is the " deadhead " letter on which Mr. Blaine's opponents count so
much, the one which they appeal to as conclusively showing his want of
integrity. The reading by him of this letter alone seems to me conclusive
proof that Mr. Blaine did not suppress or change any of the letters, for if he
was going to deceive as to any of them he would have included that in his
deception. If, too, it is admitted that a letter dated June 29 is really the one
called for by Mr. Mulligan's schedule as dated June 27, then it must follow
that a mere discrepancy in date is not sufficient basis for a charge of change
or suppression. The schedule called for a letter dated July 25, 1869. Mr. Blaine read one
of which the date as printed in the "Congressional Record" is July 2. In its

IS
contents it fully answers the description contained in the schedule, and it
moreover bears internal evidence that it was not written many days after the
letter of June 29. The errors in date in both cases doubtless arise from an
error of Mr. Mulligan in preparing his original schedule or in the preparation
of the copy for the printer or of the printer. I am informed by the gentlemen
who supervised the obtaining of copies for the Associated Press on the even
ing of the day the letters were read in the House, that these copies were ob
tained from slips procured from the Public Printer late on that evening, and
tha<t the original letters were not furnished to the Public Printer.
This makes twelve of Mr. Blaine's letters which he read, every one writ
ten by him that is specified in the schedule. The "New York Times," which
a couple of weeks since announced with great parade that it was going
to show that Mr. Blaine did not read all the papers called for by Mr. Mul
ligans' schedule, boldly charged Mr. Blaine with suppressing two papers,
which it was in a day or two compelled to admit that he had printed
in the " Record^"' though he did not read them, as he stated, because
they were not written by him, nor by any one whose handwriting he
recognized. The two papers were apparently treated by Mulligan
as one, and described as " Contract with Northern Pacific." It is obviously
a copy of the form of subscription paper circulated by Jay Cooke & Co. when
they were building that railroad.
This leaves unaccounted for only one of the fifteen papers called for by
the memorandum of Mulligan, and that purported to be a letter of Mr. Fisher's
to Mr. Blaine, not of Blaine to Fisher, and dated October 24, 1871. Mr. Blaine
expressly stated that he did not read it, because he did not find it in the
package of papers received from Mulligan. Mr. Mulligan's abstract of its
contents says "Fisher to Blaine urging settlement, N. P. R. R. Account,
125,000." Even if Mr. Blaine could be bound by any letter of Fisher's, this
abstract made by Mulligan shows that the missing letter was of no importance.
When I come to refer to the matter of the " N. P. R. Account," which 1
shall do directly, this will appear even more conclusively. At present it is
sufficient to suggest that one of the letters of Mr. Blaine, which is produced
probably refers to the missing letter of Mr. Fisher, and accords with Mr.
Mulligan's statement of its contents. Mr. Blaine's letter of April 22, 1872,
contains the following passage referring to the Northern Pacific matter.
" Some months ago you wrote me (twice), declaring that you would not re
ceive the share, but demanding the return of the money," which money was
admittedly $25,000.
All the papers specified in the memorandum are therefore accounted for.
Not even the "New York Times" makes any question that everything
written by Mr. Blaine was read, except the single letter of July 25, which it
refuses to believe is the same as that published in the "Record" as dated
July 2. No one 'else, however, can doubt it. At any rate, the " New York
Sun," which is surely not biased in favor of Mr. Blaine, says :
"An examination of the " Record," suggested solely by a desire to ascer
tain the exact truth, and certainly with no purpose on our part to manufac
ture a defense for Mr. Blaine against the " Times' " important accusation,
satisfied us that the 'suppressed' Mulligan letters were all accounted for. A
similar examination, we think, will satisfy any candid person that there is
nothing in the "Times'" charge. That newspaper had been misled into a
wholly false position, either by its bias against Blaine or by heedlessness
which is simply amazing."

16
" If the purpose of the "Times" is to confuse the minds of its readers,
instead of enlightening them, and to avoid a confession of its own mistake
after the error has been fully exposed, we have nothing further to say. ine
plea of carelessness and hasty inference no longer covers the case, ine
"Sun" prefers to conduct its operations against Mr. Blaine with some regard
to the principles of justice and with due appreciation of the value ot ascer
tained facts."
I may add that Mr. Blaine also read three other letters written by him
self, which were not on Mr. Mulligan's schedule, but which Mr. Blaine stated,
he found in the package. This hardly looks like a desire to suppress any
thing, for he did not read them as a substitute for anything called for by the
memorandum, but in addition to them. In other words, the memorandum
called for fifteen letters and papers ; he read or produced eighteen, and stated
that one called for by the memorandum was not among the papers given to
him. The "New York Times," true to its instinct of believing the worst of
every one, insinuates that Mr. Blaine took these unmentioned letters from his
portfolio and substituted them for those in Mulligan's package, without ven
turing to tell us how Mr. Blaine would have in his portfolio his own letters to
others. This instinct of the "Times," is perhaps derived from its former
editor, who having passed to the control of a leading paper in Brooklyn, is,
as earnest in his denunciation of Mr. Blaine and his character, and in misrep
resenting him, as a man ought to be who has lived his entire life in this
country under a name not his own, adopted to conceal the circumstances
under which he left Great Britain. But whatever the origin or the nature
of the insinuation, the "Times" would have spared it, if it had read Mr.
Mulligan's testimony, for in that it appears that when asked, " How many
letters did you surrender to Mr. Blaine?" he answered, "There were four
teen that I had numbered, and there are about four more in another en
velope, making eighteen or nineteen letters, and one statement about that
Northern Pacific Railroad." In fact there were fifteen that he had numbered
(counting the two Northern Pacific papers as one), and three in the envelope,
and all these Mr. Blaine faithfully read or produced and printed.
Now, in the light of the facts thus stated, and which cannot be contra
dicted, will not the reader turn back to the quotation from the "Evening
Post," with which I commenced the examination of this question, and form
his own opinion of the fairness of that journal. Is it admitted or is it a fact
that Mr. Blaine obtained the letters from Mulligan by pledging his word of
honor to return them, and then breaking his pledge ? Were the letters ob
tained from "the proper and lawful custodian of them ? " Is it true that Mr.
Blaine "vainly tried appeals to his pity;" that he pledged "his word of
honor to restore them and then broke this pledge, retaining them by force ? "
Is there any foundation for the insinuation of the "Post" that Mr. Blaine
suppressed anything that was in the letters ? In the light of this evidence.
what shall we think of the honesty of Carl Schurz, who in his recent speech
in Brooklyn showed that he had read the evidence, and yet he dared to say,
"at any rate, it is not denied by anybody that Mr. Blaine got possession of
these letters and kept them without authority in violation of his promise to
return them, and that he made a desperate struggle, to conceal them " and
elsewhere said, "fiercely- he struggled to keep the Mulligan letters' con
cealed?"

17
V.
The charge against Mr. Blaine which the Congressional Committee orig
inally had under investigation arose out of a sale of seventy-five bonds of the
Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad Company made to the Union Pacific
Railroad Company in December, 1871. It was alleged in effect that they were
Mr. Blaine's bonds, and that they were forced upon the Union Pacific Com
pany at greatly more than their value, the inference being that this was done
through Mr. Blaine's official position and power. This charge was not only
not proved but was so completely disproved, so thoroughly disposed of by
the uncontradicted testimony of unimpeached witnesses of unquestioned in
tegrity that George William Curtis said in 1876 that Mr. Blaine's answer
was "as thorough a refutation as was ever made." Yet the "Evening
Post " sneakingly, by insinuation rather than directly, revives it. It is worth
while to examine the matter a little in detail, for I think the way in which the
charge is now revived after being thoroughly disproved, throws a lurid light
upon the fairness, the sincerity and honesty of those who make these charges
against Mr. Blaine.
As to this charge the "Evening Post" says :
" The investigation on this point was never pushed home, owing to the
sudden illness which overtook Mr. Blaine in 1876."
This is at the outset a direct and bold falsehood. Upon this one, at least,
of all the charges made against Mr. Blaine, the investigation was ' ' pushed
home." Every witness but one who, it appeared, could by any possibility know
anything of the matter was examined by the adverse Democratic Sub-Commit
tee, as well as several who could only speak by the merest hearsay. A scoop-net
was drawn from Maine to Arkansas to get witnesses. The one witness not exam
ined was a Mr. Caldwell, who was and had been for a long time in Europe en
gaged in business there, which still detains him there, and he sent to the Com
mittee a cable dispatch, entirely exonerating Mr. Blaine. The Committee
closed their examination of this charge on June 7, some time before Mr.
Blaine's illness, and entered upon another charge, simply because they had
exhausted the testimony.
The facts as to this charge were these : In December, 1871, the Executive
Committee of the Union Pacific Road, authorized Morton, Bliss & Co. to draw a
draft on its Treasurer at forty days sight, for $64,000, and to " hold as collateral
security for the company seventy-five land-grant bonds of the Little Rock &
Fort Smith Railroad Company's bonds, $1,000 each." This was in effect a.
purchase of the seventy-five bonds, which were not at that time worth in the
market anything like $64,000 ; probably not over $30,000 to $40,000. The
Union Pacific Company was then just emerging from financial difficulties
and had no funds to invest in doubtful securities of another, a disconnected
and bankrupt road. The transaction was, therefore, unexplained, a very
extraordinary one. It seems to have been known to only a few of the officers
of the company at the time it took place, and its explanation was not known
tb all of them. At a meeting of the Directors two years later, in September,
1873, the matter was brought up by the presentation of a circular from the
President of the Little Rock & Fort Smith R. R. Co. , seeking a consent to
a surrender under a scheme of reorganization of the seventy-five of its bonds
held by the Union Pacific Company. Mr. John C. S. Harrison, a Government

18
Director in the latter company, the gentleman now under arrest at Indianap
olis for the appropriation of moneys in his hands as Receiver, at once made a
motion for a committee to investigate and report how the bonds came into the
possession of the Company. Mr. E. H. Rollins, the Secretary, immediately
suggested to Mr. Harrison to withdraw his motion, saying that an investiga
tion would bring Mr. Blaine's name into the matter and create a scandal. Mr.
Harrison complied with the request and never pursued the subject, though
he remained a director for several years, but he did, in 1873, call the atten
tion of a Congressional Committee to it. In 1876 the Sub-Committee already
referred to examined Mr. Harrison— who manifested a good deal of personal
feeling— Mr. Rollins, and Mr. Millard, another director. Though they
differed somewhat as to the precise language used by Mr. Rollins, I think there
can be no doubt that he then believed that an investigation would show that
Mr. Blaine had had something to do with these seventy-five bonds and
thought the effect of instituting an inquiry would be injurious to him. He was
doubtless influenced in part by the feeling that the public mind was then, as
now, in that condition in which the mere preferring of a charge is by many
accepted as proof of its truth. Mr. Harrison claimed that Mr. Rollins said it
would affect Mr. Blaine in his canvass for re-election to Congress, but this can
not be true, for he had been triumphantly re-elected only two days previously,
and Mr. Rollins was too much of a politician not to know that fact.
Mr. Rollins on his examination stated that he had heard a story that the
bonds came from Mr. Blaine, or that he had had something to do with them ;
that he could npt remember from whom he had heard it ; that he knew
nothing as to the. facts and that his appeal to Mr. Harrison was an " impul
sive" one, on the spur of the moment. He stated that he had subsequently
heard that Thomas A. Scott had something to do with the matter and that
the story about Mr. Blaine was without foundation.
Mr. James F. Wilson, of Iowa, a. Government Director, swore that he
was present at the meeting at which Mr. Harrison said he made his motion for
an investigation, though he did not. hear it ; but that soon afterwards Mr. Har
rison told him what had occurred ; that he then inquired of Mr. Rollins about
it and that the latter told him the statement was a mistake, and that he ought
not to have made it.
At this stage of the investigation the matter certainly looked suspicious,
but it was soon completely cleared up by the testimony of Mr. Thomas A.
Scott, Mr. Andrew Carnegie, Mr. Levi P. Morton, and Mr. Sidney Dillon.
It appeared that Mr. Scott had, early in 1871, become the President of the
Union Pacific Railroad Company at a time when it was in great financial diffi
culties ; that by his influence it had been extricated, in a great measure, from
these difficulties, the market value of its securities having more than doubled ;
that there had been no agreement as to the salary or compensation to be paid
to Mr. Scott ; that his predecessor had received a salary of only $8,000 a year,
but that Mr. Scott expected a much larger compensation for his special ser
vices. Before this matter was settled he became himself embarrassed for
money. Through his friend Mr. Carnegie, in June, 1871, he borrowed $60,000
of Morton, Bliss & Co. upon collaterals which, included the 75 Fort Smith
bonds or 74 of them, Carnegie giving his own acceptance therefor and a large
amount of his own securities as collateral thereto. The loan was continued,
the collaterals being from time to time somewhat changed, till in December!
1871, in pursuance of the vote already referred to, Morton, Bliss & Co.'

19
drew a draft for $64,000 upon Mr. Rollins, as Treasurer, with the Fort
Smith bonds alone as collateral. The draft was for a little more than the
amount of the original loan to Mr. Carnegie and the interest, the excess being
subsequently refunded. Mr. Carnegie swore that he got the Fort Smith bonds
from Mr. Scott, and that he never heard of Mr. Blaine's name in connection
with them or with the loan or the sale to the Union Pacific Company, and
that he never had any transaction with Mr. Blaine. Mr. Levi P. Morton swore
to the making of the loan, its mode of payment, and that he never heard of
Mr. Blaine in connection with the matter, and that his lirm never had any
transaction of any nature with Mr. Blaine.
Mr. Thomas A. Scott swore that he bought the seventy-five bonds of
Josiah Caldwell sixteen or eighteen months previous to the sale to the Union
Pacific Company ; that he bought them with many more, paying for them 80
per cent., or $60,000 for $75,000 in bonds; that he understood that Caldwell
acted for himself and his associates who had the contract to build the Fort
Smith road and got the bonds in that way ; that he (Scott) bought the bonds
in connection with a scheme in wliich he was engaged for a connected route
from the Atlantic to Arkansas and Texas, and in which he invested many
hundred thousand dollars ; that he made the purchase as a speculation and
made it a year before he had anything to do with the Union Pacific road ; that
the Fort Smith scheme turned out unprofitably because of Caldwell's inability
to complete the road. This inability, I may here say, was stated to have
arisen in part from the failure of arrangements made to raise money in
Europe, the failure being consequent upon the Franco-German war. It was
also shown that Mr. Caldwell, as the contractor to build the Fort Smith
road, became possessed of four millions of its land grant bonds, besides a
large amount of other securities.
Mr. Scott further swore that he had become embarrassed for money ; that
he had a large unsettled claim for services upon the Union Pacific Company,
and that its Executive Committee in order to help him agreed to take and pay
for the seventy-five bonds at 80 per cent, or a price sufficient to pay off the
loan from Morton , Bliss & Co. , but to give him (Scott) the option to redeem the
bonds at any time ; that this was done in consideration of his extraordinary
services to the Union Pacific Company, and was independent of his claim for
the ordinary salary, the amount of which it was not thought expedient to
change ; that he thought he was entitled to much more than this arrangement
allowed him. Mr. Sidney Dillon, at the time a member of the Executive
Committee of the Union Pacific Company, swore to the same state of facts.
After this evidence had been given there was and could be no pretense of
doubt as to the nature of the transaction so far as the Union Pacific Company
was concerned. It was one with which Mr. Blaine had no connection. It
may well be that it was a transaction which the Union Pacific Company
had no right to make ; that they thereby paid Mr. Scott more than he was en
titled to, or that they paid a claim they were willing to recognize, but in an
underhand and improper manner. But with that Mr. Blaine had no connec
tion direct or remote.
Seeing that this was so the Democratic Sub-Committee started the idea
that Josiah Caldwell, who sold the bonds to Mr. Scott some time early in 1870,
either got them from Mr. Blaine or represented Mr. Blaine in the transaction.
Even if this had been shown there was nothing agamst Mr. Blaine in it, for
Mr. Scott swore that he paid for these seventy-five bonds only what he paid

20
for other similar bonds ; so thai, assuming them to have belonged to Mr.
Blaine the latter got for them only what a shrewd railroad man was at the
lime willing to pay for them as a speculation.
But not only did Mr. Scott say that in fact he never heard of Mr. Blaine
in the transaction but Mr. Caldwell denied that he obtained the bonds from Mr.
Blaine, or that the latter had anything to do with them. Mr. Caldwell was at
the time of the investigation and had been for a long time previously in Eng
land, where he still resides. The committee, after Mr. Scott had sworn that
he bought the bonds of Mr. Caldwell, voted to cable him for a statement.
The chairman, however, apparently afraid of the result, failed to send the
dispatch, claiming that he was trying to ascertain Mr. Caldwell's address.
The latter, seeing the proceedings in the Nev\ York papers, sent of his
own motion a dispatch to the chairman of the committee, in which, as stated
by the latter ("Congressional Record," p. 3616), he said he had seen Mr.
Scott's testimony in the papers, that it was substantially correct ; that he had
not let Mr. Blaine have any bonds, and he would send an affidavit to that
effect ; that he was engaged in railroad enterprises there and could not come
here to give testimony without serious pecuniary loss. This dispatch Mr.
Proctor Knott received on the morning of June 1, 1876. He showed it to
some of his Democratic associates but deliberately suppressed it till on June
5, Mr. Blaine in the House charged the suppression upon him and offered a
resolution directing the committee to report the facts forthwith. Mr. Knott
attempted to ward off the blow by insinuating that Mr. Blaine was in com
munication with Mr. Caldwell and learned of the dispatch from him, but Mr.
Blaine replied ;
" The gentleman from Kentucky in responding, probably, I think from
what he said, intended to convey the idea I had some illegitimate knowledge of
how that dispatch was obtained. I have had no communication with Josiah
Caldwell. I have had no means of knowing from the telegraph office whether
the telegraph was received. But I tell the gentleman from Kentucky that
murder will out. And secrets will leak. And I tell the gentleman now, and
I am prepared to state to this House that at eight o'clock on last Thursday
morning or thereabouts, the gentleman from Kentucky received and receipted
for a message addressed to him from Josiah Caldwell in London, entirely cor
roborating and substantiating the statements of Thomas A. Scott, which he
had just read in the New York papers [it had been given on May 15th], and
entirely exculpating me from the charges, which I am bound to believe from
the suppression of that report the gentleman is anxious to fasten upon me."
Mr. Blaine having moved the previous question on his resolution, the
Democratic House dodged a direct vote by an extraordinary ruling by the
chair and a reference of the resolution to the Judiciary Committee after Mr.
Knott had interposed the poor excuse that he did not know the dispatch
really came from Mr. Caldwell. Three days afterwards, a resolution having
been passed to print the testimony before the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Blaine
tried by amendment to order the Caldwell dispatch included with it, not as
evidence but as a fact. The Democratic Speaker on two different occasions
ruled it out of order, giving what was regarded as a pledge that Mr. Blaine
should be heard to call up his motion when it was in order, but the next day
in the absence of Mr. Blaine, the Speaker recognized the chairman of the Sub'
Committee to move to take up Mr. Blaine's motion, and to kill it by laying it
on the table, and though Mr. Blaine at once came in, the Democrats after a
struggle succeeded by a party vote in cutting off Mr. Blaine's motion His

21
purpose, was, however answered, for Mr. Knott was compelled by public
opinion to give the dispatch to the newspapers. It was as follows :
m r, London.
To Chairman, House Judiciary Committee,
Washington, D. C:
Have just read in New York papers Scott's evidence about our bond
transactions and can fully corroborate. I never gave Blaine any Fort Smith
Railway Bonds, directly or indirectly. I have three foreign railway contracts
on my hands, which make it impossible for me to leave without great pecuniary
loss, or would gladly voluntarily come home and so testify. Can make affi
davit to this effect and mail it if so desired. Josiah Caldwell."
Besides the evidence I have already stated, the only other testimony pre
sented as to this charge consisted of certain statements which were entirely
hearsay and were moreover so contradicted as to be entitled to no considera
tion. It was shown that in the spring of 1881, a Mr. Robinson, the Engineer
of the Fort Smith -Road, who had for twenty-five years been a friend of Mr.
Blaine's, took from Mr. Caldwell in Boston to Mr. Blaine in Washington a roll
of paper,, tied up with a string and not sealed. It was given him by Mr. Cald
well with no intimation that it contained anything of value, and was delivered
to Mr. Blaine publicly in the ante-room of the House of Representatives and
by him left on his desk. Mr. Blaine swore that it contained a map and some
papers relating to coal lands in Arkansas, in which it had been suggested to
him to invest, but which, after some examination he let alone, and Mr. Rob
inson stated that at the time of the delivery of the package Mr. Blaine made
inquiries as to those lands. The whole pretended pertinency of this branch of the
inquiry was founded on the assertion of a Mr. Curry, who admitted that he was
hostile to Mr. Blaine, that Mr. Robinson told him five weeks previously that the
package contained bonds, at least $20,000, and that he understood this was only
an installment. Mr. Robinson denied having made any such statement, or
that such was so, so far as he knew, the fact. Mrs. Curry, by telegraph
confirmed her husband. Obviously, there was in this testimony under
any view of it, no ground for founding any charge against Mr. Blaine. If
Mr. Robinson did in fact tell Mr. Curry there were bonds in the package and
then denied it under oath, there was to say the least, a failure of proof against
Mr. Blaine. Moreover, as Mr. Scott swore he bought his bonds of Caldwell
early in 1870, there was no point in showing that Caldwell sent bonds to Mr.
Blaine in 1871.
A good deal of time was taken up by the Committee in an attempt to prove
an implied admission by Mr. Blaine that he had sold the seventy-five bonds to
the Union Pacific Company. The evidence amounted to this : Mulligan, whose
unfriendliness to Mr. Blaine was clear, swore that Mr. Atkins , a Director of the
Union Pacific Road, had told him and Fisher that Scott had forced that Company
to buy seventy-five bonds of him, and that the bonds came from Mr. Blaine, who
had taken them up from parties to whom he had previously sold them. Mr.
Atkins utterly denied making any such statement, and said he could not have
made it, as he had no such knowledge. He said that in an interview in 1872,
when it was desirable to find out where all the Fort Smith bonds were, preparatory
to proposing a scheme of exchange and reorganization, he stated to Mr. Fisher
and Mr. Mulligan that the Union Pacific Company held seventy-five bonds
which it got from Scott, and that thereupon either Mr. Fisher or Mr. Mulligan
said they must have come from Mr. Blaine, and were those he took back from

22
persons to whom he had sold them. Mr. Atkins said he never heard, except
by this statement, that Mr. Blaine had anything to do with the bonds, and that
in fact Horace F. Clark, who was the President of the Union Pacific Co.,
gave him the same account of the transaction that Messrs. Scott and Dillon
and Carnegie had sworn to. Mr. Fisher denied that Mr. Atkins said expressly
that the bonds came from Mr. Blaine, though he inferred so from what Mr.
Atkins said. Mr. Mulligan claimed that after getting this information from Mr.
Atkins, Mr. Fisher made use of it in a controversy in which he was then en
gaged with Mr. Blaine as to a settlement of transactions extending over many
years, and which included transactions in the Fort Smith bonds. Mr. Mulli
gan said Mr. Blaine complained of his losses consequent upon taking back the
bonds he had sold to others in good faith, though he was under no legal obli
gation to take them back. Mr. Mulligan said that, after getting this infor
mation from Mr. Atkins, Mr. Fisher wrote Mr. Blaine in reply, saying he
could not have made any losses, for he knew that Mr. Blaine had sold bonds
for $64,000, and that Mr. Blaine replied, referring to the statement and not
denying it, but saying the money did not benefit him, for it was at once paid
over to those from whom he took back bonds. Mr. Fisher said he did write
Mr. Blaine a letter, saying he knew where he had sold bonds, but said he did
not mention the Union Pacific Company, though he thought he had it in his
mind. Mr. Fisher did undoubtedly write such a letter, for Mr. Blaine's letter
referring to it was produced by him. The essential weakness in these state
ments as evidence against Mr. Blaine was, however, that he was not consider
ing an allegation that he sold bonds to the Union Pacific Company, but a general
statement that he had sold bonds, which was undoubtedly true. The same
defect in value as testimony of wrong-doing by Mr. Blaine attaches to Mr.
Mulligan's statement that in a conversation the same charge was made, and
Mr. Blaine did not deny it. Even Mr. Mulligan does not pretend that either
in the letter or in the conversation anything was said in terms about a sale to
the Union Pacific Company. In this respect the " Evening Post" grossly mis
states Mr. Mulligan's testimony. It equally misstates the evidence, without
a particle of excuse therefor, when it says that Mr. Mulligan testified that Mr.
Atkins made to Mr. Blaine personally the statement that the Union Pacific
bonds came from Mr. Blaine, or that he believed they so came.
The truth seems to be that Messrs. Mulligan and Fisher, when they learned
that the Union Pacific Company had seventy-five of the Fort Smith bonds,
jumped to the conclusion that they came from Mr. Blaine, and by letter to
Mr. Blaine and in conversation referred to the fact that he had made a good
sale, but without mentioning to whom. As Mr. Blaine had made sales, though
not to the Union Pacific Company, he of course denied nothing, having no idea
what was in their minds. This too was probably more or less directly the ori
gin of the report which Mr. Rollins had heard and which led him to stay Mr.
Harrison's proposed investigation.
While it is clear that Mr. Blaine had Fort Smith bonds which he
voluntarily took back from those who had bought through him, it is surely no
ground of complaint that Mr. Blaine sold these bonds whether to Caldwell or
any one else, provided he got only the selling price for them and did not use
his official position to procure the sale. Caldwell sold these bonds and
others to Mr. Scott at 80. Why Mr. Blaine might not sell to Caldwell at that
or any price, less or more, is not clear.

23
In fact, Caldwell says, Mr. Blaine did not sell to him. There is one con
clusive fact which shows this must be true. Mr. Scott swore he bought of
Caldwell early in 1870 and paid 80 per cent. , not only for these bonds but for
others. Caldwell was therefore in possession of the bonds as early as the
first months of 1870. Now, at that time Mr. Blaine could not have taken
back the bonds he had sold, for the scheme was then apparently on the
high road to success, and the bonds were worth as much as or more than
he had sold them for to his friends in Maine. It was long after this, long
after Caldwell had the bonds, after Scott bought them, that Mr. Blaine
took back the bonds he had sold. When in 1872, Fisher and Mulligan learned
that Mr. Scott had sold bonds to the Union Pacific Company, but without
knowing the time when Mr. Scott got them, they doubtless jumped to the
conclusion that these were bonds which Mr. Blaine took back from parties in
Maine long afterwards.
There is another piece of testimony strongly tending to show that the
bonds which the Union Pacific Company bought from Caldwell could not
have come from Mr. Blaine. These bonds were undoubtedly land grant
bonds. The vote of the Executive Committee so specifies and Messrs Mor
ton, Carnegie, Scott, Rollins and all so state. But Mulligan produced a
schedule of the bonds Mr. Blaine sold for Fisher or received from him. That
statement shows only $28,000 of land grant bonds delivered to or sold by Mr.
Blaine. One of the famous letters dated August 9, 1872, two years and more
after Mr. Scott bought the bonds, fourteen months after Mr. Carnegie deposit
ed them with Morton, Bliss & Co., and eight months after the sale to the
Union Pacific Company, shows that at its date Mr. Blaine had not received all
the bonds agreed to be given him by Fisher. Another letter of April 13, 1872,
shows that even at that time only $60,000 of the land grant bonds had been
delivered, and no more were delivered prior to the settlement between Mr.
Blaine and Mr. Fisher in September, 1872. Under these circumstances it
is impossible to figure out $75,000 of the land grant bonds in Mr. Blaine's
hands as early as the spring of 1870, when Caldwell sold the seventy-five
bonds to Mr. Scott. When Fisher and Mulligan jumped to the conclusion
that the latter bonds came from Mr. Blaine, they either did not know that the
bonds which the Union Pacific Company had were land grant bonds, or over
looked the fact that there were not so many bonds which Mr. Blaine could
have had at his disposal.
Mr. Blaine explicitly denied under oath that the seventy-five bonds came
from him directly or indirectly, or that he knew anything about them, or had
anything to do with them, or the sale to Mr. Scott, or to the Union Pacific
Company. It should also be mentioned that in 1873, just after Mr. Harrison
made his abortive movement for an investigation, and therefore before the
matter had been made to assume the importance it did in 1876, James F. Wil
son of Iowa, a Government Director, told Mr. Blaine of Harrison's statement,
and that Mr. Blaine expressed his surprise at it and utterly denied any interest
in or knowledge of the bonds.
I have now stated fully and fairly every particle of evidence bearing upon
Mr. Blaine's alleged connection with the sale of Fort Smith bonds to the
Union Pacific Railroad Company or with the bonds so sold, except I ought to
say that there was one witness who testified to a declaration of James F.
Wilson, which the letter said was misunderstood, and which was at best
mere hearsay. I have gone into the circumstantial evidence, not because it

24
seemed to me necessary after the declarations of Mr. Scott and others, but for
the sake of completeness.
Let me recapitulate what seems to me to be absolutely proven.
1. In December, 1871, the Union Pacific Railroad Company bought from
Thomas A. Scott seventy-five of the land grant bonds of the Little Rock and
Fort Smith Railroad Company.
2. The price paid was just about that which Scott had paid for them
some eighteen months previously, when he bought them with other bonds as
a speculation, believing that the road would be finished and that then they
would bring par or over.
3. The Franco-German war and other matters interfered with the finan
cial arrangements made for finishing the road, the bonds diminished in value,
and no one states that when they were sold to the Union Pacific Company they
were worth over sixty per cent., while others put them much less. Mr. Scott,
however, still thought when he sold them that they would greatly increase in
value if the Fort Smith road should be finished, and he therefore, in the sale
to the Union Pacific Company, reserved a right to repurchase them.
4. The reason why the Union Pacific Company took the bonds at so much
more than the market value was, that that company was under great obliga
tions to Mr. Scott for services and credit, that Mr. Scott was embarrassed for
money and the Company took this method of paying him in part for his extra
ordinary services. Mr. Scott, Mr. Dillon and Mr. Carnegie are uncontradicted
witnesses to all the foregoing matters.
5. Several months before this sale was made Mr. Carnegie had borrowed
of Morton, Bliss & Co. $60,000 in his own name, and using his own securities
with Mr. Scott's seventy-five bonds, but letting it be known the loan was for
Scott. Scott wanted to relieve Carnegie, and he therefore arranged to sell
his seventy-five bonds for the precise amount due Morton, Bliss & Co. on that
loan. Mr. Scott, Mr. Carnegie and Mr. Morton are uncontradicted witnesses
on this point.
6. Mr. Scott bought these seventy-five bonds with others from Josiah
Caldwell, who had the contract for building the Fort Smith Road. He bought
them early in 1870, and paid eighty per cent, for them. Mr. Scott's uncon
tradicted testimony proves this.
7. Mr. Blaine had nothing to do, directly or indirectly, with these
seventy-five bonds or their sale to the Union Pacific Company. This is proved
by Mr. Scott and by Mr. Caldwell's dispatch. It is confirmed by the fact
that neither Mr. Dillon, Mr. Atkins nor Mr. Morton ever heard or dreamed
of Mr. Blaine in connection with the matter, and by the further fact that
neither at the time of the sale of the bonds to Scott, nor even at the time of
the transfer to the Union Pacific Company had Mr. Blaine any seventy-five
land grant bonds which he could sell.
8. The only pretense of evidence to connect Mr. Blaine with the transac
tion is that Mr. Rollins had heard such a story; that Mr. Mulligan says Mr
Atkins told him and Fisher so ; while Mr. Atkins says he said nothing of the
sort and could have said nothing of the sort, for he had no knowledge that
Mr Blaine ever had any of the Fort Smith bonds, but that either Fisher or
Mulligan to d him that the bonds owned by the Union Pacific Company came
rom Mr Blaine ; Fisher says Atkins told him of the ownership of the bond
by the Union Pacific Company, and he inferred, he meant to say, they came
from Mr. Blame. Mr, Mulligan says Fisher wrote Mr. Blaine that he knTw

25
when he had sold bonds, and that Mr. Blaine replied, not contradicting the
statement, but referring to it in a way that confirmed it. But both Mulligan
and Fisher say the letter did not mention the Union Pacific Company, but
only referred to bonds sold by Mr. Blaine at a good price. It is not clear
that the letter stated the number sold or the amount paid, though Mr. Mulli
gan seems so to say.
9. Finally, Mr. Blaine denied in every possible form before the committee
any connection with the seventy-five bonds or their sale. He had done the
same thing in the House on April 26 before the investigation commenced and
before the attempt to connect him with Caldwell in the matter. He then said:
" I desire here and now to declare that all and every part of this story
that connects my name with it is absolutely untrue, without one particle of
foundation in fact, and without a tittle of evidence to substantiate it. I have
never had any transaction of any kind with Thomas A. Scott concerning
bonds of the Little Rock & Fort Smith Road or the bonds of any other rail
road, or any business in any way connected with railroads, directly, indi
rectly, immediately or remotely. I never had any business transactions what
ever with the Union Pacific Railroad Company or any of its officers or agents
or representatives, and never in any manner received from that company,
directly or indirectly, a single dollar in money or stocks or bonds or other
form of value. And as to the particular transaction referred to, I never so
much as heard of it until nearly two years after its alleged occurrence."
Yet in the face of all this direct evidence of men of unimpeached char
acter the " Evening Post " has the hardihood to say :
' ' The charge that the Union Pacific Railroad Company relieved Mr.
Blaine of $75,000 of Little Rock & Fort Smith Railroad bonds after that spec
ulation had turned out badly * * * rests upon circumstantial
evidence of such serious and remarkable and self-supporting character' that
it could not possibly have been invented by any person or any number of
persons, and the testimony of Scott is, therefore, the only offset to the cir
cumstantial evidence going to show that Mr. Blaine did receive the $64,000
in question." Again it says :
" The evidence, we repeat, taken in connection with the relations of all
the parties strongly pointed to the sale of the bonds to Mr. Tom Scott at
nearly double the market rate by Mr. Caldwell in Blaine's behalf, and a sub
sequent and more extraordinary sale of the same bonds to the Pacific Railroad
Company." As a further instance of the unfairness of the " Post " on this subject it
states that Mr. Atkins "failed to remember telling him [Mulligan] and Fisher
that the bonds came from Blaine," thereby implying that Mr. Atkins' denial
was only of a remembrance of saying any such thing, when in fact Mr.
Atkins, being asked under oath before the committee if he ever said to Mr.
Mulligan or in his presence that Mr. Blaine " was the owner, or was under
stood to be the owner or in any way suspected of being the owner of the
bonds that went through Thomas A. Scott to the Union Pacific Rail
road Company," answered, "I never told anybody that you owned any of
those bonds or had anything to do with them. I never said to Mr. Mulligan
or any one else that those bonds came from you."
It seems pretty clear that we may apply to the " Evening Post " what the
" Boston Advertiser "—now one of Mr. Blaine's opponents— said in 1876 of
another journal which was apparently as perverse as. the " Post " : "The
modern theory that a man is to be believed guilty until he is proved innocent

26
does not satisfy the " Post," which would believe him guilty after he has
proved his innoceuce," and I may add would suppress and misstate the
evidence to mislead others.

VI.
The main charge unfavorable to Mr. Blaine's integrity is that, in the spring
of 1869, he, while Speaker, by a suggestion saved the defeat of a pending bill,
in which his friends were interested ; that he at once wrote to the promoters
of the bill, and claimed and secured some benefit for his services in saving
the bill. As phrased by the " Evening Post," the charge is as follows :
' ' The first of these charges is that in the spring session of Congress in
1869 a bill was before the House of Representatives which sought to renew a
land grant to the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad of Arkansas, in wMbh .
some of Mr. Blaine'1 s friends were interested; that an attempt to defeat it by an
amendment was made, and was on the point of being successful, and its pro
moters were in despair ; that at this juncture Mr. Blaine, being then Speaker
of the House, sent a message to General Logan to make the point of order
that the amendment was not germane to the purposes of the bill ; that this
point of order was accordingly raised and promptly sustained by Mr. Blaine
as Speaker, and the bill was in this manner saved ; that Mr. Blaine wrote at
once to the promoters, calling attention to the service he had rendered them,
and finally, after some negotiations, secured from them, as a reward for it, his
appointment as selling agent of the bonds of the road, on commission, in
Maine, and received a number of such bonds as his percentage."
Now, in the first place there is not only no evidence that any friend of
Mr. Blaine's was, at the time of the passage of the bill, interested in it, but the
contrary is the fact, and this appears in the very evidence produced to support
the attack upon Mr. Blaine. In the second place Mr. Blaine did not " at once ''
write to the promoters of the bill ; on tjie contrary, the first letter was from a
friend to him, and his reply was written nearly three months after the passage
of the bill, and he wrote no letter referring to his services till about six months
after the bill passed, at which time he had already derived all the benefit that
it is even pretended he derived from the bill. Thirdly, though there was an
offer to give him an advantage, not open to all the world, under a -contract,
made under the legislation referred to, this offer was made by an old friend some
seventy or eighty days after the bill passed, was accompanied with circum
stances which show not only that Mr. Blaine made no claim to it, but that it
was a surprise to him, and apparently could not become effective without the
assent of a person whom Mr. Blaine did not know, and whose consent was
never given. And finally it is not pretended that Mr. Blaine did or said any
thing in behalf of the road after the abortive offer was made to him in June
1869, except to sell for his friends some of the securities, and in so doing he
got no advantage not open to all the world.
The facts as stated by William Walter Phelps in a letter to the ' ' Evening
Post " are as follows :
" Mr. Blaine's friends were not connected with the Fort Smith and Little
Rock Road at the time of the passage of this bill. Those to whom you refer
as his friends were Caldwell and Fisher. The bill passed April 9 1869 In
April, 1869, Mr. Blaine did not know that there was any such man as Cald
well ; and Fisher, who was Mr. Blaine's friend, did not know that there was
any such enterprise as the Little Rock Railroad in the world. The evidence
of these assertions was before Congress, was uncontradicted and is within

27
your reach. On the 29th of June, nearly eighty days after Congress had ad
journed, Mr. Blaine, from his home in Maine, wrote to Fisher, and spoke of
Fisher's ' offer to admit him to a share in the new railroad enterprise.' Fisher
had introduced the subject to Mr. Blaine for the first time a week before at
the great music festival at Boston. He told him there that Mr. Caldwell,
whom Mr. Blaine had not yet seen, had now obtained control of the enterprise
and had invited Fisher to join him. At that time Fisher was a sugar refiner
of considerable wealth in Boston, had been a partner of Mr. Blaine's brother-
in-law, and through him had made Mr. Blaine's acquaintance. The offer Mr.
Blaine refers to in his letter was Fisher's offer to induce Caldwell, if he could,
to let Mr. Blaine have a share in the bed-rock of the enterprise. Mr. Fisher
failed to do this, and Mr. Blain'e never secured any interest in the building of
the Fort Smith and Little Rock Railroad."
The letter of Mr. Blaine, which it is claimed sustains the charge, is as fol
lows: ' ' Augusta, June 29, 1869.
"My Deak Me. Fisheb — I thank you for the article from Mr. Lewis. It
is good in itself, and will do good. He writes like a man of large intelligence
and comprehension. Your offer to admit me to a participation in the new
railroad enterprise is in every respect as generous as I could expect or desire.
I thank you very sincerely for it, and in this connection I wish to make a
suggestion of a somewhat selfish character. It is this : You spoke of Mr.
Caldwell's offer to dispose of a share of his interest to me. If he really de
sires to do so, I wish he would make the proposition definite, so that I could
know just what to depend on. Perhaps if he waits till the full development
of the enterprise, he may grow reluctant to part with the share ; and I do not
by this mean any distrust of him. I do not feel that I shall prove a deadhead
in the enterprise if I once embark in it. I see various channels in which I
know I can be useful. " Very hastily and sincerely your friend, " James G. Blaine.
" Me. Fisheb, India street, Boston."
This was succeeded by the following letter :
" Augusta, Me., July 2, 1869.
" My Deae Me. Fishee— You ask me if I am satisfied with the offer you
made me of a share in your new railroad enterprise ? Of course I am more
than satisfied with the terms of the offer; I think it a most liberal proposition.
If I hesitate at all, it is from considerations in no way connected with the
character of the offer. Your liberal mode of dealing with me in all our busi
ness transactions of the past eight years has not passed without my full ap
preciation. What I wrote you on the 29th was intended to bring Caldwell to
a definite proposition. That was all. I go to Boston by the same train that
carries this letter, and will call at your office to-morrow morning at 12 M. If
you don't happen to be in.no matter; don't put yourself to any trouble
about it. " Yours, " J. G. B.
" W. Fishee, Jr."
Mr. Fisher had been for many years an intimate friend of Mr. Blaine, the
partner of his relative, and they had, as the letter itself shows, been jointly inter
ested in various business enterprises, so that the proposal to let Mr. Blaine have
an interest in the contract for building the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad
was a natural one. But though Mr. Fisher had originally taken the contract
he retained it only for a short time. As one of the witnesses before the Con
gressional Committee says "he failed," though he probably means failed to
raise the means to carry it out, and he assigned his contract in the summer of

28
1869 to Josiah Caldwell, with whom Mr. Blaine had no acquaintance. Though
Mr. Caldwell seems to have expressed a willingness to let Mr. Blaine become
a partner in the contract, in fact he never did so, and Mr. Blaine got no inter
est in it. It is to be noted that the letters above quoted do not involve the
idea that Mr. Blaine was to have an interest in the contract without paying
something for it. The reference to "Mr. Caldwell's offer to dispose^ of a share
of his interest to me " seems to imply the contrary, and Mr. Blaine, in refer
ring to it in the House in a passage to be quoted further on, says, " That was
a proposition to sell me a share in what was called the bed-rock of the road."
Of course, however, Mr. Blaine's language shows that he regarded the
terms suggested as liberal. Here I call attention to the fact that
while Mr. Blaine's opponents represent that his position as Speaker
would have made him an invaluable associate in the enterprise, as he could
have given it great official aid, yet Mr. Caldwell, a shrewd business man, did
not so regard Mr. Blaine's value as a partner, for he never did admit him as
such, so that Mr. Blaine's only relation to the enterprise was that he took and
sold securities of the Road on the precise terms that were open to every one
else to take and sell them. Either Mr. Caldwell did not consider that Mr.
Blaine was offering the aid of his official position or he did not want such aid.
In either case the force of the charge made would seem somewhat broken.
The letters which it is claimed show that Mr. Blaine sought to barter his
official action for an interest in the contract are as follows, written, it will be
seen, six months after his action in Congress. " Augusta, Me.", Oct, 4, 1869.
" My Deae Sie — I spoke to you a short time ago about a point of interest
to your railroad company that occurred at the last session of Congress. It
was on the last night of the session, when the bill renewing the land grant to
the State of Arkansas for the Little Rock Road was reached, by Julian of In
diana, Chairman of the Public Lands Committee, and by right entitled to the
floor, attempting to put on the bill as an amendment the Fremont El Paso
scheme — a scheme probably well known to Mr. Caldwell. The House was
thin, and the lobby in the Fremont interest had the thing all set up, and
Julian's amendment was likely to prevail if brought to a vote. Root and the
other members from Arkansas, who were doing their best for their own bill,
to which there seemed to be no objection, were in despair, for it was well
known that the Senate was hostile to the Fremont scheme, and if the Arkan
sas bill had gone back to the Senate with Julian's amendment, the whole
thing would have gone on the table and slept the sleep of death. In this di
lemma Root came to me to know what on earth he could do under the rules,
for, he said, it was vital to his constituents that the bill should pass. I told
him that Julian's amendment was entirely out of order, because not germane.
But he had not sufficient confidence in his knowledge of the rules to make the
point, but he said General Logan was opposed to the Fremont scheme
and would probably make the point. I sent my page to General Logan with
the suggestion, and he at once made the point. I could not do otherwise
than sustain it, and so the bill was freed from the mischievous amendment
moved by Julian, and at once passed without objection. At that time I had
never seen Mr. Caldwell, but you can tell him that, without knowing it, I did
him a great favor. " Sincerely yours, " James G. Blaine.
" W. Fishee, Je., Esq.,
" No. 24 India street,
" Boston."

29 "Augusta, Me., Oct. 4, 1869.
"My Deae Me. Fishee — Find enclosed contracts of the parties named in
my letter of yesterday. The remaining contracts will be completed as rapidly
as circumstances will permit. I enclose you a part of the Congressional Globe
of April 9, containing the point to which I referred at some length in my pre
vious letter of to-day. You will find it of interest to read it over and see what
a narrow escape your bill made on that last night of the session. Of course, it
was my plain duty to make the ruling when the point was once raised. If tlie
Arkansas men had not, however, happened to come to me when at their wits'
ends and in despair, the bill would undoubtedly have been lost, or at least
postponed for a year. I thought the point would interest both you and Cald
well, though occurring before either of you engaged in tlie enterprise. I beg you
to understand that I thoroughly appreciate the courtesy with which you have
treated me in this railroad matter, but your conduct toward me in business
matters has always been marked by unbounded liberality in past years, and,
of course, I have naturally come to the conclusion to expect the same of you
now. You urge me to make as much as I fairly can out of the arrangement
into which we have entered. It is natural that I should do my utmost to this
end. I am bothered by only one thing, and that is definite and expressed ar
rangements with Mr. Caldwell. I am anxious to acquire the interest he has
promised me. But I do not get a definite understanding with him as I have
with you. I shall be in Boston in a few days, and shall then have an oppor
tunity to talk matters more fully with you. I am disposed to think that what
ever I do with Mr. Caldwell must really be done through you. Kind regards
to Mrs. Fisher. Sincerely, "J.G.BLAINE."
"W. P., Je., Esq."
It should perhaps be here said that no one has pretended to deny that Mr.
Blaine's ruling referred to in these letters was as matter of parliamentary law
correct. Mr. Blaine stated the objection, the ruling and the reasons for it in
the House in 1876, and no one pretended to question his correctness. He
said: ' ' The amendment referred to in that letter will be found in the Congres
sional Globe of the first session of the Forty-first Congress, page 702. That
was before the Boston persons had ever touched the road.
" 'Mr. Julian — I offer the following as an additional section to the bill' ;
" And then the Clerk read the whole of the El Paso bill.
" ' Mr. Logan — I rise to a question of order that the amendment is not ger
mane to the pending bill. The bill is to revive a certain land grant and to ex
tend the time, while the amendment is another charter for a Pacific Railroad
authorizing the building of bridges, granting the right of way and everything
else of that sort. I have been in favor of the pending Arkansas bill, but I
do not wish to be made to carry this Pacific Railroad bill. I do not think the
amendment is in order. '
" ' The Speaker — The Chair sustains the point of order for two reasons.
It is expressly prohibited by the rule that where a land grant is under consid
eration another grant to a different company shall be entertained. This is not
a specific land grant, but it does give away the public land of the United
States so far as to give the right of way. Again, by the rules no proposition
upon a subject different from that under consideration can be admitted under
color of amendment. '
" Therefore, the amendment was out of order on either ground. If it
was a land grant, of course it was out of order, because no land grant could
be attached to another ; and, if not a land grant, it was out of order because
it was attempting to introduce a different subject under color of amendment.
Therefore, in either way, the amendment was excluded."
This is the whole story, the .whole evidence produced to sustain the
charge. Beyond dispute Mr. Blaine, by a suggestion as to parliamentary law
when applied to by the members from Arkansas, prevented the addition of a

30
crippling amendment to the Fort Smith bill. There is no evidence that he
then knew that any friends of his had any interest under the bill, nor that
any friends of his had in fact at that time such an interest. Mr. Phelps says
that at that time Mr. Blaine had never heard of Caldwell, and Fisher, who
was Mr. Blaine's friend, had not only no interest in the Fort Smith Road, but
did not know of its existence. Mr. Blaine in his letter — which constitutes the
only evidence against him — says neither Caldwell nor Fisher had then any in
terest in the scheme.
Up to this point it is, therefore clear, that Mr. Blaine was guilty of no im
proper act. On the application of the members from a State which was
deeply interested in a pending bill he made a parliamentary suggestion which
probably saved that bill from defeat. In making this suggestion he only con
formed to the recognized custom in Congress. It is well known that when
ever any member is in doubt as to any parliamentary question or desires
to know in what parliamentary manner he can obtain or prevent any action
in Congress, it is the universal custom to apply privately to the Speaker
for information or suggestions. This is so much the custom that, except on
political questions, it has long been regarded as a right. Mr. Blaine referred
to this custom in his explanation in the House in the following terms, and from
his statement there was no dissent.
"What I did in that case, and every occupant of the chair will bear me
out in the statement, is what is very frequently done by the Speaker ; it was
helping a member in that direction ; nothing in it unusual, nothing extraor
dinary at all."
When, therefore, there was an attempt to unite the gigantic El Paso
scheme — which very many deemed a great fraud — with the Fort Smith bill,
and when the lobby had made their arrangements for carrying out this plan,
and thus defeating the Fort Smith bill, or compelling it to carry along another
scheme which would probably defeat it in the Senate, the members from that
State which was chiefly interested in the Fort Smith bill, in accordance with
Ihe custom referred to, applied to the Speaker to know what they could do
to prevent the success of the scheme. Mr. Blaine made the suggestion, which
it would seem should on one of its grounds have occurred to the merest tyro in
parliamentary law, that the amendment was not germane to the bill, and was
in spirit forbidden by a special rule. This suggestion was in the interest of
decent legislation, by preventing the combining of two schemes so as to aid
the weakness or rascality of one by the strength and propriety of the other.
Mr. Blaine, as Speaker, would have been fully justified in raising the objec
tion himself, but it is well known that presiding officers usually seek to avoid
doing this, and in such cases send a page to some member to have him take
the objection. Three months after Mr. Blaine had done this usual and perfectly proper
act, an intimate friend, who at the time Mr. Blaine so acted, had no interest
in and had never heard of the Fort Smith road or bill, having become in
terested in the contract to build the road, proposed to Mr. Blaine that he
should become an associate in the enterprise, sharing in its profits, if any,
and responsible for its losses. Apparently, this offer never became operative,'
and Mr. Blaine never became such associate because Mr. Caldwell never
could be brought to consummate the arrangement. Mr. Fisher had prepared,
for in the course of his statement in the House, Mr. Blaine was asked, after
he had read the letter of June 29th :

31
'• If the trade which is alluded to there between him and Mr. Caldwell,
called a share, or scheme, or something of that kind, was ever entered into
between him and Mr. Caldwell ?
"Mr. Blaine. It was not; that was a proposition to sell me a share in
what was called the bed-rock of the road, to let me be interested in the
building of it ; that transaction was never consummated ¦ all that I ever had
to do with the road was the most unfortunate transaction of my life, pecuni
arily and otherwise, in buying and selling some of the bonds.""
But as Mr. Blaine seems to have accepted the offer and to have been de
sirous of becoming an associate in the enterprise, he must be judged precisely
as if he had finally been admitted as a partner on liberal terms, though not as
one who was to be admitted gratuitously.
Was he forbidden by any consideration of propriety to become such
partner ? Nay, for that is what the opponents of Mr. Blaine claim ; does his
willingness to become such partner indicate any want of integrity on his
part? Bear in mind that it was three months previously that Mr. Blaine had
acted in the passage of the bill. Bear in mind that at that time neither Mr.
Fisher nor any friend of Mr. Blaine had any interest in or under the bill.
Bear further in mind — and perhaps most important of all — that no one has
ever ventured to suggest that after the receipt of Mr. Fisher's offer in June,
1869, Mr. Blaine ever did or said, or sought to do or say, anything to promote
the enterprise, or that Mr. Blaine was or could be in any way benefitted by
anything he thereafter did or said. In making this last statement I, of course,
remember the admitted fact that Mr. Blaine, during the summer of 1869, sold
for the parties interested in the Fort Smith Road a considerable amount of
its securities and received a commission therefor; but in so doing he
was acting entirely outside of any proposed interest as partner in the scheme,
and, what is more to the point, he received and accounted for the securities
at precisely the same rates which it was open to all the world to receive them,
and at which, in fact, millions were received by others. I propose to show
this distinctly in examining a charge which the "Evening Post," the " Brook
lyn Union " and Mr. Schurz bring against Mr. Blaine, that he did not in tlie
House of Representatives truthfully describe his relations to the purchase and
sale of these securities. But it is sufficient here to repeat that there is no evi
dence that from the time Mr. Blaine received Mr. Fisher's offer to become a
partner in the building contract he ever said or did a thing to benefit the road.
If this is so, what impropriety did Mr. Blaine commit in accepting the
offer to become a partner ? The question of the right of Senators and Mem
bers of Congress to make or retain investments in corporations or schemes as
to which there has been or may be legislation, has arisen frequently of late
years. Every member settles it for himself, and, I apprehend, very few set
tle it against the right so to do. Upon this subject, in 1876, after the attack
was first made upon Mr. Blaine, Rev. Edward Everett Hale, the distinguished
clergyman of Boston, said :
" Whatever fickleness towards her own New England may have shown,
she does not at heart have the least confidence in an absurd proposal ad
vanced with some confidence by the essayists who are lecturing her just now.
When they tell her that the statesman of to-day must be unconnected with
private affairs, that he must never buy a share of railroad stock, never invest
in railroad bonds, never import a cask of sugar, and never make a yard of
cloth, New England laughs to scorn that absurdity. Whatever else we want
in public Office we do not want men of mere theory. If any supposes that
the enthusiasm of New England voters is damped when they know that a

32
candidate has been engaged in large business affairs, he entirely misappre
hends the people who made Hancock President of the First Continental
Congress." Mr. Blaine said in the House on April 24, 1876 :
" I take it, when any security, from Government bonds to town scrip, is
offered at public sale to any one who can pay for it, every American citizen
is free to buy. If you exclude a Representative from the investment on the
ground that in some secondary or remote way the legislation of Congress has
affected or may affect the value of the article, then you exclude every man on
this floor not only from holding a Government bond or a share in a National
bank, but also from owning a flock of sheep, or a field of hemp, or a tobacco
plantation, or a cotton mill, or an iron furnace ; for all these interests are vitally
affected by the tariff legislation on which we vote at every session and of
which an important measure is even now pending."
In this connection I should note that the "Evening Post," in order to
give point to its charge of want of integrity on Mr. Blaine's part, quietly as
sumes that the proposition made by Mr. Fisher to Mr. Blaine at some time
prior to June 29, 1869, and referred to in Mr. Blaine's letter of that date to ad
mit him as a partner under the contract, was the same transaction as that by
which Mr. Blaine sold the bonds. But a little examination shows that this is
not so, Mr. Fisher made Mr. Blaine, at some time just prior to June 29, •
1869, an offer to " admit" him "to a participation in the enterprise," and this
on terms which Mr. Blaine described as •• generous." In another let
ter, written on July 2, Mr. Blaine describes the offer of Mr. Fisher
"of a share in your new railroad enterprise" as "most liberal," but
says he hesitates to accept, " from considerations in no way connected with
the character of the offer." Mr. Fisher soon assigned his contract to Cald
well. The date of the assignment does not appear, but Mr. Fisher testifies
that he held the contract a very short time, and says a transaction which took
place in the fall of 1869 was after the assignment. Caldwell did not " come
to time " with the proposal to let Mr. Blaine have an interest in the enter
prise, for on October 4, 1869, Mr. Blaine writes Fisher that he has and can
get no definite understanding with Caldwell. "lam anxious to yet acquire
the interest he has promised me. But I do not get a definite understanding
with him, as I have with you * * * I am disposed to think that whatever
I do with Mr. Caldwell must really be done through you." That this pro
posed arrangement for an interest in the profits of the contract was entirely
different from the arrangement under which Mr. Blaine was selling bonds is
clear, apart from Mr. Blaine's statement to that effect just quoted, from the
fact that in this very letter of October 4, 1869, in which Mr. Blaine com
plains that the agreement for an interest is not completed, he refers to and
transmits contracts which he had made with parties in Maine to buy the se
curities under the other arrangement under which he was selling them and
from the further fact that Mr. Blaine's agreement with Fisher as to a sale of
the securities is dated September 5, 1869, and refers to the fact that he had
even then sold all the securities which he ever did sell for Fisher.
Moreover, the memorandum produced by Mr.. Mulligan shows that the
sales of securities must have been made prior to that date, for it shows that
the parties were to pay at various future dates, commencing November' 15
1869 and extending to June 5, 1870. In other words, at the precise time thai
Mr. Blaine was complaining that the offer to admit him as a partner was not
carried out, all the sales of securities which Mr. Blaine ever made were nearly

33
or quite completed. The two transactions were therefore wholly distinct, as
Mr. Blaine says they were, and neither Fisher nor Mulligan denies it.
The "Evening Post" and Mr. Schurz are, therefore, more than unfair
when they seek to connect Mr. Blaine's expressions of gratitude to Mr. Fisher
for his abortive offer of an interest in the contract to build the road with his
sale of the securities of the road. Mr. Blaine's expressions of gratitude re
lated to an interest in the profits of the contract. The arrangement under
which he got bonds to sell to others was an entirely different matter. Any
one could get bonds on the same terms, and therefore that called for and re
ceived no expressions of gratitude. Any one could not, of his own motion,
become a partner in what it was then believed would be a profitable contract
dependent on selling the bonds for a sum greater than it would cost to build
the road, and therefore an offer to admit him to a share in that contract
naturally evoked expressions of gratitude, whether that offer was accepted or
not. The confusing these two separate matters is deliberately done for the
purpose of persuading people that Mr. Blaine did in fact derive some peculiar
and exceptional advantage from the Fort Smith Road, and did not tell the
truth when he said he only got securities on the same terms that others could
get them. " This cannot be true," says the " Evening Post," the " Brooklyn
Union " and Mr. Schurz, " for if he only got securities on the same terms as
others, why these expressions of gratitude ? " all of which would be a very
good argument if the expressions of gratitude had not related to a very dif-
erent matter. I shall directly show beyond all possibility of dispute that Mr.
Blaine was entirely truthful when he said he got securities only on the same
terms that any one else could get them.
But while tacitly confessing their inability to show that Mr. Blaine actu
ally did any improper act after he received Mr. Fisher's suggestion of a part
nership in the building contract, Mr. Blaine's enemies place stress upon the
passage in his letter in which he says that if he went into the part
nership he should not " prove a deadhead in the enterprise," and that
"I see various channels in which I know I can be useful." They claim
that this means that Mr. Blaine intended to use his official position to
improperly aid the enterprise. But what right have they to assume
this ? I have already called attention to the fact that Mr. Caldwell did not so
understand this language. The words are obviously and naturally capable of
an innocent interpretation. Why do his opponents insist that a guilty inter
pretation shall be applied to them, though they admit that no guilty result
followed ? Why do they assume that Mr. Blaine— whom they do not charge
with being a fool— deliberately placed on record in the hands of another a
statement that he proposed to do a wrongful, if not an infamous thing, and
that he so wrote it down when there was no necessity for his so doing, for the
letter written three days later shows that he would have an opportunity to
state the same thing to Mr. Fisher verbally, if he had really intended such an
improper thing ?
Is it not much more probable, much more consistent with the fair mean-
in °- of Mr. Blaine's words that he meant that if he became by purchase
associated with Fisher and Caldwell as a partner in building the road he would
do so, not with the intention of merely drawing his share of the expected
profits, and doing nothing to earn them— but that he would contribute his full
share by personal exertions, among his large circle of acquaintances and in
other proper ways to make the scheme profitable. At any rate, as the bur-

34
then is upon Mr. Blaine's opponents to show some act or word on his part,
which fairly interpreted, is inconsistent with integrity, they certainly do not
do this by appealing to this, at the most, an ambiguous passage in one of his
letters. But Mr. Blaine's enemies say in effect that while he originally did nothing
wrong in aiding the passage of the Fort Smith bill, and even if he was at lib
erty to become a partner in the contract for the construction of the road, and
even if he did not mean to offer his official influence as a consideration for an
interest in the contract, still his letters of October 4, 1869, in which he nar
rated what he had done six months previously, are in some way conclusive
proof of his want of integrity. The doing of the act was not improper. The
narrating that he had done it and how he came to do it was, they say, in the
highest degree improper. It clearly showed a want of integrity, a corruption
of heart which renders him unfit to be President, and which should lead the
Republicans to vote for a man who represents everything that they oppose !
Now, I frankly say that it seems to me that it would have been far better
if Mr. Blaine, had not, even in the freedom of a private letter, referred, when
speaking of becoming a partner in the enterprise, to what he had done in
Congress in reference to the Fort Smith bill. And yet, what was more natural
than that in writing to an intimate friend, who had some months previously
offered him an interest in the contract, he should call his attention to the co
incidence that he (Mr. Blaine) had innocently and ignorantly made a parlia
mentary suggestion which had saved from defeat the bill which was now
believed to make the contract a valuable one ?
Mr. Blaine's statement made in the House when he produced the letter on
June 5, 1876, showing the circumstances under which he wrote it, was as fol
lows :
" I now pass to a letter dated Augusta, Maine, October 4, 1869. Now, to
this letter I ask the attention of the House. In the March session of 1869,
the first one at which I was Speaker, the extra session of the Forty-first
Congress, a land grant in the State of Arkansas to the Little Rock road was
reported. I never remember to have heard of the road until at the last night
of the session, when it was up here for consideration. The gentleman in
Boston with whom I had relations did not have anything to do with that
road for nearly three or four months after that time. It is in the light of that
statement that I desire that letter read.
" In the autumn, six or eight months afterwards, I was looking over the
" Globe," probably with some curiosity, if not pride, to see the decisions I
had made the first five weeks I was Speaker. I had not until then recalled
this decision of mine, and when I came across it all the facts came back to
me afresh, and I wrote this letter."
This seems a very natural explanation, much more so than the claim of
his opponents that he was peddling out his official power.
Under any view of the letter what is there in it which, in all fairness and
decency, justifies the abuse which has been heaped upon Mr. Blaine ? What
is there which should induce any Republican to abandon the candidate of
his party, and the exponent of the principles every Republican believes in,
and to take up in his place Mr. Cleveland, the candidate of the party whose
principles and actions every Republican abhors, and to do this on some
pretence that Mr. Cleveland is in some way better than his party, and in
spite of the charges made against him which are in some of their worst
features admitted ; in spite too of the manner in which he betrayed the cause

35
of municipal reform in the later days of the recent session of the Legislature,
in spite of his absurd reasons for refusing to sign the Tenure of Office bill
which would have probably terminated Hubert O. Thompson's career,
in spite of his refusal to sign the Fifth Avenue paving bill because it was
distasteful to Hubert O. Thompson ; of his refusal to sign four small claim
bills because they were barred by the statute of limitations, and his signing
on the same day another bill equally barred and involving much more
money, because it was for the benefit of Tweed's protegee, Tim.
Campbell ; in spite of his refusal even to examine for four or five months
the charges preferred by the Reform Committee against one of his chief
supporters, Sheriff Davidson, for fear he should be compelled to remove him,
in spite, in short, of the scores of proofs which the last three or four months
have produced that even Governor Cleveland with all his professions cannot
stand up against the selfish wishes of even the lower partizans of the
Democratic party.
Any Republican who is told that Mr. Cleveland's character is better than
Mr. Blaine's, and that, therefore, he should prefer Mr. Cleveland, should
remember the undoubted truth, forcibly enunciated by Mr. Jones, the Demo
cratic Senator from Florida, in a recent interview that ' ' Tlie President does
not create the policy of his party, but the party creates it for him and he is guided
by it." Bearing this truth in mind should not every Republican vote for the
candidate of his party unless he is shown to be personally unfit, and what is
there in this record, when fairly examined, that shows Mr. Blaine to be unfit
or unworthy of confidence ? VII.
The " Evening Post " and its "me too," the "Nation," as well as Carl
Schurz and the "Brooklyn Union, "further assert that in defending himself in
the House of Representatives against the charge I have just been considering,
Mr. Blaine made false statements. It places an absurd stress upon its alleged
proof of untruthfulness on the part of Mr. Blaine, because it says, if he can
be proved to have spoken falsely in anything, then not only must Mr. Mul
ligan's version of his interview with Mr. Blaine be taken as true, but, ap
parently, it claims that thereby it establishes Mr. Mulligan as a truthful wit
ness in every respect. It does this while carefully suppressing the fact, which
I have already shown, that while Mr. Atkins and Mr. Fisher give Mr. Mulli
gan a previous good character for veracity, they both proceed at once to
show that in the investigation before Congress he had, in numerous instances,
not told the truth.
But let us see how the "Evening Post " and its double-headed "me too "
succeed in their attempt to prove that Mr. Blaine did not speak truthfully.
One of its charges is that Mr. Blaine stated that the Fort Smith Railroad
bonds were bought by him at precisely the same rate as others paid, while in
fact he did not buy any bonds, but received what he got as commissions on
sales made by him as agent for others, which agency he secured through his
position and aid in Congress, " that he paid nothing for his bonds, the consid
eration being his ruling as Speaker and his subsequent efforts to sell them ; "
in other words, he did not buy with money but with labor. Mr. Schurz

asserts that Mr. Mulligan produced a book which showed that "Mr. Blaine
had received as gratuity or commission about $130,000 in bonds and $15,150
in money." The gist of any charge against Mr. Blaine in this connection is that,
through his official position or action he got bonds on better terms than others
could, at the same time, get them. If he did this, it was, of course, highly
censurable. If he got no better terms from those originally holding the bonds
than others got or could get, it makes no difference in morals or propriety
whether he bought them for cash, or on credit, or by services, and resold
them at a profit, or whether he got a commission on his sales payable in
bonds, provided, always, the result was that those from whom he bought or
for whom he sold on commission received net the amount for which they
were willing to sell and did sell to all applicants.
Bearing this in mind, let us see what Mr. Blaine said and did. Mr. Blaine
said in Congress, on April 24, 1876 :
" In common with hundreds of other people in New England and other
parts of the country, I bought some of these bonds — not a very large amount
— paying for them at precisely the same rate that others paid. I never heard
and do not believe that the Little Rock Company, which I know is controlled
by highly honorable men. ever parted with a bond to any person except at the
regular price fixed for their sale. The enterprise, though apparently very
promising, proved unsuccessful, as so. many similar projects did about the
same time. I lost a considerable sum of money (over $20,000) by my invest
ment, and I presume New England made a net loss of $2,000,000 in complet
ing that road for Arkansas, as she has lost over one hundred millions by
similar ventures west and south within the last twelve years. In addition to
my investment in the bonds, I united with others in raising some money for
the company when it met its first financial troubles. Proceedings are now
pending in the United States Circuit Court in Arkansas to which I am a party
of record, for the reimbursement of the money so advanced.
The fact is, as the evidence shows, that Warren Fisher undertook to
build the Fort Smith Railroad and by contract received $3,500,000 of its first
mortgage bonds, $4,000,000 of its land-grant bonds and a large amount of
stock in compensation for work to be performed, he expecting to raise the
money to build the road by a sale of the securities ; he was also to receive a
million of State aid bonds of the State of Arkansas for every ten miles of road
completed. Fisher soon assigned his contract to Josiah Caldwell, but seems
to have continued to act for and with him to raise the money. ¦ Fisher and
Caldwell sold the securities thus received at various prices. Thus one wit
ness, the agent of the State of Arkansas, testifies that Fisher sold the first
mortgage bonds from 90 per cent, down to 75, giving purchasers a bonus in
land-grant bonds and stock. " Caldwell made the best arrangement he could
and gave as little as possible. He had to have money and of course he made
the best arrangement he could." His prices depended " upon his exigency
and requirements for money. In order to induce purchasers, he gave a bonus
of land-grant bonds, or the stock, and in some instances both. It was about
50 per cent."
Mr. Fisher himself testified as follows :

" Q. If a person would sell $10,000 of these bonds and get 50 cents on
the dollar for them, what bonus would he give in the shape of stock ?
"A. He would give as much in stock, common and preferred.
" Q. Were not land-grant bonds sometimes given?
"A. Oh, yes; if I sold $10,000 of these first mortgage bonds, I would

37
als? Sile as a bonus $10>000 of land-grant bonds, $10,000 of common stock
and $10,000 of the preferred stock.
* .JaS;™ ° that ina sale of *10'000 of these bonds there was really a transfer
li?1'^?l0l'tgage bonds' *10>000 land-grant bonds, $10,000 preferred stock
and $10,000 common stock ?
"A. Yes.
" Q. Making a transfer of $40,000 instead of $10,000?
"A. Yes, sir."
He further says the mortgage bonds, so sold, netted him a little less than
50 cents on the dollar.
Mr. Joseph Atkins, a well known Boston capitalist, testified that he
knew of the sale of the original bonds and stock of the Fort Smith road and
was a subscriber; that " the common rate of subscription in Boston was, for
instance, $50,000 in money. For that they would get $50,000 of first mort
gage bonds, $50,000 of land-grant bonds and $50,000 of each of two classes
of stock, making four for one, as they call it, of the face value." "Four for
one was what I got. That was the ordinary way in which things were put
on the market. I never knew of any other way. There were a great many
sold in that way I know."
The evidence shows that Mr. Blaine arranged with Mr. Fisher to get
bonds on these terms, and that he then sold them to his friends in Maine, on
the best terms he could, as a general thing making sales on such terms that
he kept as his profit the bonus of land-grant bonds ; that is, in each sale of
$10,000 of first mortgage bonds, while Fisher gave Mr. Blaine as a bonus $10,-
000 land-grant bonds, $10,000 common stock and $10,000 preferred stock, or
$40,000 nominal face value in all, Mr. Blaine usually gave to those who bought
from him, $10,000 first mortgage bonds, $10,000 preferred stock and $10,000
common stock, or $30,000 nominal face value in all. He also got from Mr.
Fisher for himself, in first mortgage bonds, 25 per cent, of the cash on each
sale. The net result was that Fisher sold his bonds through Blaine so as to net
him 45 per cent. There were also special sales made by Mr. Blaine, under which
he got for himself cash instead of bonds. In each of these cases the amount
of cash retained by Mr. Blaine was so graduated that Mr. Fisher always net
ted his 45 per cent. , though the proportions of the different kinds of securi
ties given to the purchasers varied in the different instances. In some cases
Mr. Blaine guaranteed his custumers against loss, and in all cases in the re
sult — whether legally bound so to do or not — he saved them from loss by
taking back what he had sold them.
There is and can be no dispute that for the bonds sold by Mr. Blaine, Mr.
Fisher netted at least his 45 per cent., and this was, according to Mulligan's
statement, precisely what he netted from his sales to or through every one
else. Mr. Mulligan testified that bonds were sold through Mr. Blaine to his
friends in Maine," they netted Mr. Fisher 45 cents on the dollar." He said
that on a sale of bonds there was always a bonus in other bonds and stock.
Suppose a man paid $50,000 in cash for 50 first mortgage bonds; he received
the bonds, $50,000 in common stock and $50,000 in preferred stock. Some
got more and some less.
" These bonds sold through Mr. Blaine netted Mr. Fisher 45 cents on the
dollar. Mr. Blaine made the contract for them."

38

Mr. Mulligan was asked :

" Do you know of any other sale of the bonds of that company?" and he
answered :
"Yes." " Q. Were the other sales made on the same terms as this sale ?
"A. No, sir; quite different.
" Q. Was the percentage, which was realized by Mr. Fisher on these otlier
sales, different from that realized on this sale ?
"A. It oxer aged almost the same."
Mr. Mulligan's answer was on the assumption that Mr. Fisher paid Mr.
Blaine in bonds all that he agreed to, but in point of fact, the evidence is clear
that he did not do this, so that really Mr. Fisher realized more for the bonds
sold through Mr. Blaine than he did for those sold to or through others. Mr.
Blaine's letters of Oct. 4, 1871, and April 13, 1872, in connection with Mulli
gan's evidence, show distinctly that down to the time of the final settlement
between Mr. Blaine and Mr. Fisher in September, 1872, Mr. Blaine had
received only $50,000 land grant bonds, leaving $101,000 bonds due him, and
that he took in full settlement of this amount $40,000, so that, in point of
fact, Mr. Blaine got much less than other persons got. Mr. Mulligan
expressly says that of $130,000 land grant bonds, which Mr. Blaine
should have got under his arrangement with Fisher, there were 36 which he
never got. In the face of this Mr. Schurz distinctly says that "Mr. Blaine
had received as a gratuity or commission about $130,000 in bonds."
Here let me say, as throwing light upon the statement of Mr. Schurz, that
Mr. Blaine had received bonds "as a gratuity," Mr. Fisher emphatically
swore Mr. Blaine never received a bond as a gratuity, and yet, Mr. Schurz com
pounds his lie as to the amount of bonds received by Mr. Blaine, by saying he
had received them " as a gratuity or commission," well knowing he did not
receive a single bond " as a gratuity."
Not only is this the case, but while everyone else got their bonds as soon
as the money was paid, Mr. Blaine was kept out of his for years. Thus in
his letter of Oct. 1, 1871, produced by Mulligan, but which Mr. Blaine's op
ponents never quote, Mr. Blaine, referring in part to an unpaid loan of $19,-
000 which he had made for Fisher and Caldwell, says :
" For this $19,000 I am individually held, and considering all the circum
stances I think you and Mr. Caldwell should regard it as an honorary debt,
and you should not allow me to suffer for money which I raised under the
peculiar circumstances attending this. It is a singularly hard and oppressive
case, the features and facts of which are familiar to you and Mr. Caldwell.
And then again I have been used with positive cruelty in regard to the bonds.
I have your positive written contract to deliver me $125,000 land bonds and
$32,500 first mortgage bonds. The money due you on the contract was all
paid nearly a year and a half ago ; of this whole amount due me I have re
ceived but $50,000 land grants, leaving $75,000 of those and $32,500 first
mortgage still due. I know you are pressed and in trouble, and don't wish
to be too exacting, rather I wish to be very liberal in settlement.
" Now, I make this offer: Pay me the cash due on the borrowed money
account, call it $19,000 in round numbers and $40,000 land bonds, and we will
call it square. Mr. Caldwell has repeatedly assured me that I should be paid
all bonds due me under contracts with you, and outside of that, $20,000 due
me from him. I now voluntarily offer to make a very large reduction if I can
have the matter closed.

'I am without doubt the only person that has paid for bonds and not re-
¦"""'l them, and I think you will agree with me that I have fared pretty
roughly. It will be an immense, unmeasurable relief to me if I could receive

ceive

39
the money, in time to pay off the indebtedness within the next six weeks, so
that I can go to Washington this winter with the load taken off my shoulders.
It was placed there in the fullest faith and confidence that you and Mr. Cald
well would not let me suffer. I still cling to that faith and confidence. You
will much oblige me by showing this letter to Mr. Caldwell."
And again in his letter of April 13, 1872, likewise produced by Mulligan,
he says: "There is still due to me on articles of agreement between us $70,000 in
land bonds and $31,000 in first mortgage bonds, making $101,000 in all. For
these bonds the money was paid you nearly three years ago, arid every party
agreeing to take bonds on same basis has long since received its full quota. I
alone am left hopeless and helpless — so far as I can see. Then there is the
$25,000 which I borrowed and paid over under your orders to Mr. Pratt for
which I have received no pay. Mr. Caldwell paid me a small fraction of the
amount as I supposed, but he now says the money he paid must be credited
to another account on which he was my debtor, and that he denies all respon
sibility, past, present and future on the $25,000 for payment of which I must,
he says, look solely to you. I only know that I delivered the money to Mr.
Pratt on your written order. I still owe the money in Maine, and am carry
ing the greater part of it at 8 per cent., nearly $2,000 per annum steady draw
on my resources which are slender enough without this burden."
On April 18, in the same year, he writes :
"You have been for some time laboring under a totally erroneous im
pression in regard to the Fort Smith matter. The sales of bonds which
you spoke of my making, and which you seem to have thought were for my
own benefit, were entirely otherwise. I did not have the money in my pos
session forty-eight hours, but paid it over directly to the parties whom I tried
by every means in my power to protect from loss. I am very sure that you
have little idea of the labors, the losses, the efforts, and the sacrifices I have
made within the past year to save those innocent persons, who invested on
my request, from personal loss.
"And I say to you to-night solemnly that I am immeasurably worse off
than if I had never touched the Fort Smith matter."
And again on April 26 :
"My losses in the Fort Smith affair have entirely crippled me and de
ranged all my finances. You would, I know, be utterly amazed if you could
see the precise experience I have had in that matter. Very bitter, I assure
you. Among other things I still owe nearly all of the $25,000 which I deliv
ered to Mr. Pratt, and this is most harassing and embarrassing to me."
I have stated the whole and the uncontradicted evidence bearing upon
this question whether Mr. Blaine told the truth. It shows beyond dispute
that Mr. Blaine got his bonds on certainly no better terms than others got
them. Mulligan, Mr. Blaine's enemy, expressly so states. Mr. Atkins states
substantially the same thing, though his figures give a net result of 50 per
cent., while Mulligan's give 45 per cent., and Fisher says a little less than 50
per cent., but this difference is probably explained by the fact referred to by
the other witnesses that there was a concession as the necessities of the con
tractors got greater. Mr. Atkins is apparently talking of the original rate of
subscription, on which it is very likely a commission was even then allowed
to those bringing in subscribers. But, however that may be, Mulligan's evidence
is conclusive that Mr. Blaine got certainly no better terms than others
were then getting, and this obviously disposes of the essence of the charge
against him.

40
But having said so much, I am bound to add that it does not seem to me
that, taking the evidence as it stands on the record, including a memoran
dum in Mr. Blaine's writing, produced by Mr. Mulligan, Mr. Blaine was
strictly accurate in referring to his bonds as " bought " by him. He did not,
in form originally buy them at all, except by services rendered. He in form
sold for Fisher to friends in Maine certain bonds at certain prices, and re
ceived in payment for his services certain bonds and some cash, the intended
result being that Fisher got precisely the sum he was willing to sell them for
to any one who applied for them, though in the final result Mr. Fisher got
more for the securities sold through Mr. Blaine, than for those sold to or
through others.
The different terms that Mr. Blaine made with different customers seem
lo show that he was operating under an agreement with Fisher, by which he
was at liberty to sell in any form or on any conditions he could, provided in the ag
gregate he paid Fisher, 45 per cent, on each sale. He could have sold, if he
could have found a customer, the first mortgage bonds at par in cash without
giving any bonus, and have paid Fisher only 45 per cent., keeping all the sur
plus and all the bonus in land grant bonds and stock to himself. The prob
ability seems to be that his agreement with Fisher gave him an absolute right
to have bonds on the basis of 45 per cent., and he could, therefore, have
treated them as sold to him as fast as he himself sold any of them to others.
This view seems to be confirmed by Mr. Blaine's letter of May 14, 1878, pro
duced by Mr. Mulligan, in which he says:
"I think, on the whole, I had better not insist on the $40,000 additional
bonds at same rate. My engagement was not absolute, and I can back out of
it with honor. I would rather do this than seem to be exacting or indelicate.
* * * But I will follow your judgment in this matter if I can find what it
is." But whatever may have been the arrangement in fact, inform and on there-
cord, Mr. Blaine did not put it as a sale to him. His memorandum purports to
show sales by Fisher to the several customers whom Mr. Blaine found, and an
agreementtopayMr.Blaineabonusfor services. For this reason Mr. Blaine was
unfortunate in using the word "bought." It should, however, be remembered
that inasmuch as Mr. Blaine guaranteed some of the sales, and at the time he
used in the House the word "bought," had taken back and paid for all the
bonds, his use of that word is not after all a very inaccurate phrase in de
scribing the whole transaction in its results.
In any event there was in the actual transaction not an atom of evidence
to sustain the charge that the "consideration" for his bonds was in part "his
ruling as Speaker," nor that he secured an agency to sell " through his posi
tion and aid in Congress," for any one could have got a chance to do precisely
what Mr. Blaine did.
Nor is there in the inaccurate use of the word " bought" anything that
can reflect upon his integrity. There is nothing in the transaction of which
the public can complain. Had he not redeemed all the bonds sold by him,
1 think it probable those who purchased from Mr. Blaine would have thought
they had cause to complain, and possibly rightly. Had they been dealino-
with some of those who are loudest in attacking Mr. Blaine's integrity 1 am
confident, from some knowledge of character, that they would not have so
readily escaped loss.

41
Another charge made by the " Evening Post" and by Mr. Schurz, against
the veracity of Mr. Blaine is :
" That he asserted at first on the floor of the House, with the view of cov
ering up this affair, that the Little Rock and Fort Smith Road ' derived its
life, franchise, and value wholly from the State,' and not from Congress ;
whereas the evidence, subsequently taken by the Congressional Committee!
disclosed the fact that the road derived the value on which these bonds were
based from the act of Congress of which Mr. Blaine secured the passage in
1869." F °
What Mr. Blaine said on this point was this, as it appears in the " Con
gressional Record" •
" More than twenty-three years ago, in the closing days of Mr. Fillmore's
administration, this Government granted to the State of Arkansas some pub
lic lands within its own limits to be applied to the construction of railroads in
that State. The Legislature of Arkansas incorporated the Little Rock and
Fort Smith Railroad Company the same year, and gave to the Company a
portion of the lands it had received from the General Government to aid in
the construction of the road, about five thousand acres to the mile, I think.
But the Company were unable to raise any money for the enterprise though
they made the most strenuous efforts, and when the war broke out in 1861—
eight years after the State had given the lands to the Company— not a mile
of the road was built. Of course nothing was done during the war. After the
war all the grants of land previously made to the Southern States were re
newed in gross in the session of 1865-66. The Little Rock and Fort Smith Com
pany again received a grant from the State and again tried to raise money to
build their road ; but 1865. 1866, 1867, passed without their getting a dollar.
Finally, toward the close of 1868, a company of Boston gentlemen, represent
ing considerable capital, undertook its construction. In raising the requisite
means they placed the bonds of the road on the New England market in the
summer of 1869, offering them on terms which seemed very favorable to the
purchaser, and offering them at a time when investments of this kind were
fatally popular.
" As to the question of the propriety involved in a Member of Congress
holding an investment of this kind, it must be remembered that the lands
were granted to the State of Arkansas, and not to the railroad company, and
that the company derived its life, franchise, and value wholly from the State,
and to the State the company is amenable and answerable, and not in any
sense to Congress. Since I purchased the bonds but one act of Congress has
passed in any way touching the subject, and that was merely to rectify a pre
vious mistake in legislation. * * *
" In the seven intervening years since Little Rock and Fort Smith bonds
were placed on the market, I know few investments that have not been more
affected by the legislation of Congress. But this case does not require to be
shielded by any such comparisons or citations ; for I repeat that the Little
Rock Road derived all that it had from the State of Arkansas, and not from
Congress. It was in the discretion of Congress to give or withhold from the
State, but it was solely within the discretion of the State to give or withhold
from the Little Rock Railroad Company."
This is what Mr. Blaine said, but the "Evening Post," in order to sus
tain its charge of untruthfulness, while pretending to quote what he said, de
liberately suppresses all the earlier portion of the passage, that portion which
precedes the words, " As to the question of propriety." I ask any one, after
reading the statement I am about to make, to turn back to this extract and
see if the mutilation of the passage by the "Post" is consistent with an
honest purpose on its part.
The history of the legislation is as follows as I gather it from the statute
book.

42
Congress on February 9th, 1853, made a grant to the States of Arkansas
and Missouri for the construction of a railroad on a specified route. What
the respective States were to do with the land was left wholly in their discre
tion, except that 120 sections could be sold at once, and as often as the
Governor of either State should certify that twenty miles of continuous
railroad were built, they were to receive 120 sections more. It was required
that the entire road should be completed in ten years, and that if it was not
done " the land unsold shall revert to the United States."
Thereafter, as Mr. Blaine says, the Legislature of Arkansas incorporated
the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad Company and assigned to it its
right to a portion of the lands received from Congress.
On July 28, 1866, Congress passed an act extending the time to complete
the road for a further period of ten years from that date, making some
changes in the lands and allowing ten sections of land per mile to be* certified
and sold as fast as ten miles of road were completed. There was a require
ment that twenty miles should be completed within three years, and twenty
miles in each year thereafter and the entire road within ten years. On failure
all the lands "which, at the time, shall be unpatented to or for the benefit of
the road or company making or suffering such failure, shall revert to the
United States." There was a provision that "the provisions of this act, so
far as they relate to * * * the Little Rock and Fort Smith branches of
said road shall not take effect" until the company had rescinded certain
grants made during the Rebellion.
Then in April, 1869, came the act of which Mr. Blaine facilitated the
passage. I give this in full :
' ' Chap. xxvi. An Act to extend the Time for the Little Rock and Fort
Smith Railroad Company to complete the first section of twenty miles of said
road. * ' Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United
States of America in Congress assembled, That an act approved July twenty-
eight, eighteen hundred and sixty-six, entitled ' ' An Act to revive and extend
the provisions of ' Ail Act granting the right of way and making a grant of
land to the States of Arkansas and Missouri, to aid in the construction of a
railroad from a point upon the Mississippi river, opposite the mouth of the
Ohio river, via Little Rock, to the Texas boundary near Fulton in Arkansas,
with branches to Fort Smith and the Mississippi river, approved February
9, eighteen hundred and fifty-three, and for other purposes, be so amended as
to extend the time to the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad Company, for
building the first section of twenty miles provided for in the second section of
said act, for the term of three years from the thirteenth day of May, eighteen
hundred and sixty-seven, the time of filing the certificate of organization to
said company provided for in the third section of said act :
" Provided, That the land granted by the act hereby received shall be sold
to actual settlers only, in quantities not greater than one-quarter of a section
to one purchaser, and for a price not exceeding two dollars and fifty cents per
acre. " Approved April 10, 1869."
I submit that a reading of these statutes shows that the facts are precisely
as Mr. Blaine stated them. He said that the lands were granted to the State
of Arkansas, and not to the railroad company. They were expressly so
granted. He stated that the company derived its life, franchises and value
from the State, and " to the State the Company is amenable and answerable,
and not in any sense to Congress." This is clearly so. Arkansas incorporated
the company ; Congress did not. Arkansas could discipline the company ;

43
Congress could not. Arkansas granted to the Company the lands Congress
had granted to it. Arkansas could have granted them to any other company.
Mr. Blaine, having said that Congress granted the lands to Arkansas, not to
the Company, went on to say the Little Rock Road derived all that it had
from the State of Arkansas, and not from Congress, and this was the
undoubted fact. There was no concealment on Mr. Blaine's part of any step
in the record or claim of title. He stated it precisely as it was, and it seems
to me worse than childish to try to make a charge of untruthfulness against
Mr. Blaine out of it.
Indeed, it is difficult to see precisely what the " Evening Post" is driving
at, but I presume its quibble is based on the fact that Mr. Blaine, in explaining
his relations to the bill, which on its face was a bill to renew a land grant to
the railroad company did not, when he stated the relations of the road to
Congress and the State, especially call attention to the provisions of the bill
to which he referred, whose title showed its scope, and whose object was
familiar to all his hearers.
It may be worth while to mention that in spite of the provision contained
in this and other land grants made by Congress, that the grant should be for
feited unless the work was completed in a limited time, the Supreme Court
has held that if the roads were not built within the time limited, the lands
were not ipso facto forfeited, but that the parties might still go on and build
their roads and receive their lands, unless Congress interfered, and by an
express act declared the lands forfeited. The whole contest on this subject
in the Congress just adjourned was to procure the passage of acts forfeiting
the grants, though the forfeiture was to be confined — at least that was the
prevailing view — to unearned lands, that is, to lands which had not been
earned by the actual building of the road, leaving to companies which had
built roads after the time limited by Congress had expired the lands earned
thereby. In this view of the case even the renewal bill which Mr. Blaine
aided, was in a measure unnecessary. VIII.
The sole remaining charge against Mr. Blaine is in connection with the
Northern Pacific Railroad, and is one as to which there is absolutely no dis
pute as to the facts. The only difference is one as to the conclusion which
different persons draw from the admitted facts. They are as follows : On
November 25, 1870, Mr. Blaine wrote to his friend Warren Fisher, Jr., a let
ter, in which he said :
" A year ago and more I spoke to you about purchasing an interest in the
Northern Pacific Railroad for yourself and any you might choose to associate
with yourself. The matter passed by without my being able to control it, and
nothing more was said about it. Since then the Jay Cooke contract has been
perfected, the additional legislation has been obtained, and 230 miles of the
road are well-nigh completed, and the whole line will be pushed forward rap
idly. By a strange revolution of circumstances I am again able to control an
interest, and if you desire it you can have it. The whole road is divided into
twenty-four shares, of which Jay Cooke & Company have twelve. The inter
est I speak of is one-eighth * of one-twenty-fourth, or one one-hundred-and
•In the Testimony taken In Congress this is printed " one-halt " instead of " one-eighth,"
but the figures which follow " one one-hundred and ninety-second," show that this Is a
mistake, and the evidence of Mr. Fisher, who identified the copy before the Committee,
shows that the paper produced really read " one-eighth."

44
ninety-second of the entire franchise, being that proportion of the $81,000,000
of stock that are being divided as the road is built, and a like proportion of
the Land Company stock that is formed to take and dispose of the 52,000,000
acres of land covered by their grant as amended by the law of last session.
The amount of stock which this T|¥ would have in the end would be about
$425,000, and the number of acres of land it represents is nearly 275,000. The
road is being built on the 7.30 bonds, $25,000 to the mile, which Jay Cooke
takes at 90. Instead of mortgaging the land, they make a stock company for
its ownership, dividing it pro rata among the holders of the franchise. The
whole thing can be had for $25,000, which is less than one-third of what some
other sales of small interests have gone at. I do not suppose you would care
to invest the whole $25,000. I thought for a small flyer eight or ten of you
in Boston might take it — $2,500 each. For $2,500 thus invested you would
get ultimately $42,000 stock and the avails of some 27,000 acres of land. Five
of you at $5,000 each would have a splendid thing of it,
" The chance is a very rare one. I can't touch it, but I obey my first and
best impulse in offering it to you.
"All such chances as this since Jay Cooke got the road have been accom
panied with the obligation to take a large amount of the bonds at ninety, and
hold thetn not less than three years. I will be in Boston Tuesday noon, and
will call upon you. Of course, if you don't want it, let it pass. You will re
ceive an immediate issue of stock to a considerable amount, and certificates of
land stock also."
The evidence shows that Mr. Fisher mentioned the matter to his friend
Josiah Atkins, and that Mr. Atkins and his firm and Mr. Fisher agreed to take
tlie block of stock and bonds, and on December 1, 1870, they paid to Mr.
Blaine the $25,000, and he gave them a receipt, of which the following is a
copy: "Received of Warren Fisher, Jr., $25,000 in trust, in consideration of
wliich I am to deliver to said Fisher properly authenticated certificates of an
interest in the North Pacific Railway Company, equivalent to one-eighth part
of one of the twenty-four principal shares in which the franchise stock of said
company are divided ; certificates to be in the name of Elisha Atkins.
' ' Witness my hand,
"James G. Blaine."
From this time on it appears by the testimony of Mr. Atkins and Mr.
Fisher that they were seeking to get their certificates of stock and the bonds
from Mr. Blaine, and that he was unable to obtain them so as to deliver
them. In one of the letters produced by Mulligan, that dated October 1, 1871,
Mr. Blaine writes to Fisher :
"I am doing all in my power to expedite and hasten the delivery of that
stock. The delay has been occasioned by circumstances wholly beyond my
control. But I shall reach a conclusion within a few days and make the
formal delivery then. It will be an immense relief to get it off my hands, I
assure you : far greater than it will be for you to receive it."
Later after, as the correspondence shows, Mr. Fisher had been pressing
for a partial settlement with Mr. Blaine, while the latter had been refusing
any partial settlement, but had urged a complete one, Mr. Blaine wrote Fisher
on April 22, 1872:
' ' You have my obligation to deliver to you a specified interest in North
ern Pacific which I was to purchase for you, and in which I never had a
penny's interest, direct or indirect. Some months ago you wrote me (twice)
declaring that you would not receive the share, but demanding the return of
the. money. This was impossible, and I therefore could do nothino- but
wait. s

45
"Nothing I could write would make my obligation plainer than the mem
orandum you hold. Nothing I could write would change my obligation under
that memorandum."
Finally, in September, 1872, Mr. Atkins testifies that at a meeting with
Mr. Blaine he said to him "that the thing had been standing a year and that
no one of us wished the interest in the bonds then, even if we could get it ;
that I, for one, did not wish any interest in the Northern Pacific Railroad, and
that the best thing he could do was to return the money. He said, ' Do you
think so ?' I said, ' Yes '; ' Then ', he said, ' I will do it '. That was the end of
the transaction." The $25,000 paid was returned, with interest and without
deduction of any sort, and Mr. Atkins says it was impossible, as it obviously
was, that Mr. Blaine could have made anything out of the transaction.
It will be perceived that Mr. Blaine, in his original letter to Mr. Fisher,
of November 25, 1871, says distinctly that he could not have any interest in
the matter. " I can't touch it." His letter of April 22, 1872, says that he " never
had a penny's interest, direct or indirect," in it. Mr. Atkins swears that he
understood distinctly that Mr. Blaine " would not have any interest," "that
was distinctly stated not only that you had no interest, but would take no in
terest." Mr. Fisher testifies to the same purport, and adds that he never un
derstood that Mr. Blaine was in anywise interested either as buyer or seller,
and that Mr. Blaine's intervention was a friendly act on his part, that he,
Fisher, might have an opportunity to make some money, and that Mr. Blaine
not only never suggested or hinted that he would like an interest in the mat
ter or would take an interest in it, but that the contrary was always under
stood ; and that Mr. Blaine's inability to deliver it proved to him that he did
not own it.
It is, therefore, evident that Mr. Blaine started out by saying he could not
have any interest in the Northern Pacific venture, and that he, in fact, never had
or sought any interest ; that being disappointed in his expectation of obtaining
the stock and bonds for his friends, he repaid the money with full interest
some twenty-two months after it was paid to him. He could have got noth
ing out of the transaction but annoyance and probably some loss of interest
on the money. It is to be noted that Mr. Atkins' statement that when the
money was refunded the condition of the Northern Pacific road was such that
none of the parties then wanted the bonds or stock, and Mr. Fisher's twice
repeated declaration late in 1871 or early in 1872, referred to in the letter of
April 22, 1872, is a sufficient answer to the "Evening Post's " mean insinuation
that probably Mr. Blaine had found a better customer, and therefore "went
back " on his friends. As some of Mr. Blaine's opponents seem to think it a
very suspicious matter, I mention that in his original letter to Mr. Fisher with
reference to the Northern Pacific venture, Mr. Blaine said : " Of course, in con
ferring with others, keep my name quiet, mentioning it to no one unless to Mr.
Caldwell." One of the papers obtained from Mr. Mulligan and printed in the " Record,"
though not read by Mr. Blaine, because it was not written by him, and he
knew nothing about it, described as "Contract with Northern Pacific," is ob
viously a copy of a form of subscription, such as Jay Cooke & Co. circulated
at or about this time. It bears out Mr. Blaine's description in his original
letter to Mr. Fisher, wherein he says that since Jay Cooke & Co. took hold of
the matter, any one who obtained an interest under them was obliged to agree
not to sell the first mortgage bonds received. It further shows that Jay

46
Cooke & Co. had only twelve of the twenty-four interests, as Mr. Blaine
stated. The one Mr. Blaine expected to obtain for Mr. Fisher was obviously
one of the other twelve.
Now, I ask, is there anything in this transaction which makes against
Mr. Blame's character as an honest man ? There came to him a chance to
go into a speculation in Northern Pacific Railroad securities ; just as at or about
the same time there came similar opportunities to many business men and to
many other public men. Some refused because they were afraid of the risk.
Some public men refused, as Mr. Blaine apparently did, because his motives
might be misunderstood. Some equally scrupulous of their reputations, felt
at liberty to accept the offers. I know one, as high-minded a public a man as
ever lived, who refused, and who told me that in his opinion, there was in
fact no reason why he should not accept the offer by which he believed he
would have made money, but that he would have been in some quarters so
misjudged that he would have had to conceal or explain his interest, and so
he refused the offer. Mr. Blaine's desire not to be known even as the means
by wliich the opportunity was given to his friends, doubtless proceeded from
the same desire to avoid misconception.
I may add that it is characteristic of the " Evening Post's " mode of
treating everything relating to Mr. Blaine, that in spite of Mr. Blaine's state
ment in his first letter on this subject, that the " matter passed by without my
being able to control it." The " Post " says :
" It will be observed, too, that although he had been trying to get hold
of it for two years, and was fully alive to all its beauties, he could not ' touch
it ' himself when he got it. This must, of course, mean, as lie had already
controlled it, that he could not openly hold it in his own name, but must get
rid of it for cash as soon as possible." IX.
I have thus examined all the charges made against Mr. Blaine, and the
evidence produced in connection with them. I have gone much more into de
tail than I anticipated, but I have thought it best, while presenting the con
siderations which have convinced my own mind, to give the evidence in such
detail that no one can fairly say I have omitted anything that is pertinent.
In closing I submit :
First. That Mr. Mulligan had no pretense of right to the possession of Mr.
Blaine's letters after Mr. Fisher had demanded their return ; that even with
Mr. Fisher's consent Mr. Mulligan had no right to publish them, and that
when he avowed to Mr. Blaine his intention to publish them whenever he
chose, Mr. Blaine acted as any man of spirit and integrity would act. He offered
them to Mr. Fisher to whom they were written, and on his refusal to receive
them retained them. This was done without objection from Mr. Fisher. In
any view of the transaction, whether Mr. Blaine's action was strictly legal or
not, he did nothing which can expose his character to any legitimate criticism.
Second. That Mr. Blaine did not suppress any of the letters or any of the
evidence against himself, but published the whole. All insinuations to the
contrary are wholly baseless.
Third. That the charge that Mr. Blaine was in any way interested in the
seventy-five bonds sold to the Union Pacific Railroad Company by Thomas A
Scott is not only without evidence to sustain it, but was on a full investigation

47
absolutely disproved. The charge rested originally on mere hearsay. Every
person who did or could know anything of the transaction agrees in saying
that Mr. Blaine had nothing to do with the sale to the Union Pacific Railroad
Company, never had any interest in the bonds so sold, and neither directly
nor indirectly benefitted by the sale. The only importance that can now be as
cribed to this charge is derived from the light its revival throws upon the
spirit which actuates those who make the charges against Mr. Blaine.
Fourth. That as to Mr. Blaine's action with reference to the Little Rock
and Fort Smith Railroad Company, he not only did nothing in Congress which
was improper, but his action there was in strict accordance with propriety and
parliamentary law, and was in the interest of decent legislation ; that at that
time and for two months afterwards there can be no pretense that either he or
any friend or acquaintance of his was interested in that bill or had any knowl
edge of it; that about two months after the adjournment of Congress Mr.
Blaine was surprised by an offer from an intimate personal and business friend
that he should become interested — apparently by purchase — as a partner in the
contract to build the Fort Smith Road, but that the proposed arrangement
never was perfected ; that while it was still pending Mr. Blaine, in letters to
the friend who had proposed the arrangement to him, stated — as he says as a
matter of natural curiosity — the action which he took with reference to the
bill in Congress ; that these letters were written some six months after Con
gress adjourned, and that there is no pretence that Mr. Blaine ever at anytime
after the proposal was made to him to become interested in the contract did
anything of any nature — proper or improper — to aid those interested under the
bill or the contract, except to sell to friends some of the securities ; that his
statement in one of his letters that if he went into the partnership he would
not be " a deadhead " is evidence of corruption only to those whom idiosyn
crasies or prejudices lead them to ascribe the worst possible meaning to the
language and acts of those they oppose, while it is obvious from the action of
the persons whom Mr. Blaine addressed that they ascribed no such meaning
to Mr. Blaine's language ; and finally, that there was nothing in Mr. Blaine's
position which debarred him from becoming interested under the contract to
build the Fort Smith Road.
Fifth. That under an arrangement wholly distinct from the abortive ne
gotiations for acquiring an interest in the contract for building the road, Mr.
Blaine received and sold to friends a considerable amount of the securities of
the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad Company ; that he derived therefrom
no benefit which was not open to "everyone else ; that by the terms of his
agreement the parties interested in the securities were to receive for them the
precise sums which they were willing to receive, and which they did in fact
receive from all others who purchased such securities, but that in the result,
owing to delays and to a final failure to pay him about a third of the amount
promised him, the parties interested realized more for the securities sold
through Mr. Blaine than they did for those sold to. or through others ; in other
words, that by the original agreement Mr. Blaine was to get no special advan
tage, and in the result he was treated worse than others. Mr. Blaine's refer
ence, in his letters, to the generous nature of Mr. Fisher's offer to him, had no
reference to this arrangement under which he sold securities, as there was of
course no generosity in giving him the same terms that were open to all, but
referred, as the letters clearly show, to the proposition that he should become
interested as a partner in the contract to do the road.

l_-_  48
Sixth. That when the Fort Smith project proved unfortunate, Mr. Blaine,
though not in all cases bound by his agreements so to do, took back the
securities he had sold, .and that through this honorable conduct on his part
and through the defaults of those who claimed to be his friends, he suffered
a large loss and became greatly embarrassed pecuniarily, and this at a time
when his opponents insinuate that he was making large sums through illegiti
mate operations.
Seventh. That Mr. Blaine stated in Congress the truth as to the Fort
Smith bill and as to his relations to that road and its securities. His use of
the word " bought," however, so far as it described the manner in which he
originally became possessed of some of the securities was not strictly accurate,
if understood to mean that he at the outset paid for them in money, but that
it was correct in the result as the transaction stood at the time Mr. Blaine
used the word.
Eighth. That there is nothing in the charge relating to the Northern
Pacific Railroad, that in any manner reflects upon Mr. Blaine. He sought to
do a favor to friends by enabling them to purchase something which he felt
he could not himself purchase without danger of being misunderstood. He
refused at the outset to have any interest in it ; he never afterwards sought any
interest in it ; he never had -any interest in it, and finally the whole matter
was abandoned, and his friends received back their money, principal and in
terest. Ninth. That, so far as the charges against Mr. Blaine rest upon the evi
dence of Mr. Mulligan, the latter is not in any degree confirmed, but is contra.
dieted by the only possible witnesses, and is shown by them to have stated re
peatedly what was not the truth.
Tenth. That the whole circumstances connected with the charges, from
the tim5 they were stirred up by a partisan committee in a Democratic Con
gress, down to the present time, shows an utter disregard of all ideas of jus
tice and fairness on the part of those who made, and of those who now revive
and persist in them; that not only are the inferences sought to be drawn from
the real facts forced and unfair, but they are accompanied by gross misstate
ments and suppression of the evidence ; that there was much more of appar
ent plausibility and force in the evidence brought forward to sustain the
charges against General Garfield in connection with the Credit Mobilier
scheme, than there is to support the charges against Mr. Blaine. Yet Gar
field's defense was accepted as conclusive by the same persons who are now
most prominent in attacking Mr. Blaine. In Garfield's case they indignantly
urged that ambiguous acts and language were of no weight against a long and
unstained public record. In Mr. Blaine's case they hasten to fasten upon and
twist language which is at most ambiguous, and refuse to Mr. Blaine that
charity which every one of them requires for himself in his daily life. If we
admit their sincerity we must deplore their want of judgment and con
sistency. Eleventh. There is nothing in the charges made against Mr. Blaine which
should lead any one who believes in the Republican party, in its principles
and ideas, to withhold his vote from the standard bearer that party has fairly
and unanimously selected, either by abstaining from voting or by voting for
the representative of the Democratic party, or by voting for either of the
other candidates before the people. A REPUBLICAN.
August 18, 1884.