North America — Volume 2

by Anthony Trollope

In the next place one Starbuck is employed to buy ships. As a government agent he buys two for £1300, and sells them to the government for £2900. The vessels themselves, when delivered at the Navy Yard, were found to be totally unfit for the service for which they had been purchased. But why was Starbuck employed, when, as appears over and over again in the report, New York was full of paid government servants ready and fit to do the work? Starbuck was merely an agent, and who will believe that he was allowed to pocket the whole difference of £1600? The greater part of the plunder was, however, in this case refunded.

Then we come to the case of Mr. George D. Morgan, brother-in-law of Mr. Welles, the Secretary of the Navy. I have spoken of this gentleman before, and of his singular prosperity. He amassed a large fortune in five months, as a government agent for the purchase of vessels, he having been a wholesale grocer by trade. This gentleman had had no experience whatsoever with reference to ships. It is shown by the evidence that he had none of the requisite knowledge, and that there were special servants of the government in New York at that time, sent there specially for such services as these, who were in every way trustworthy, and who had the requisite knowledge. Yet Mr. Morgan was placed in this position by his brother-in-law the Secretary of the Navy, and in that capacity made about £20,000 in five months, all of which was paid by the government, as is well shown to have been the fact in the report before me. One result of such a mode of agency is given;—one other result, I mean, besides the £20,000 put into the pocket of the brother of the Secretary of the Navy. A ship called the "Stars and Stripes" was bought by Mr. Morgan for £11,000, which had been built some months before for £7000. This vessel was bought from a company which was blessed with a President. The President made the bargain with the government agent, but insisted on keeping back from his own company £2000 out of the £11,000 for expenses incident to the purchase. The company did not like being mulcted of its prey, and growled heavily; but their President declared that such bargains were not got at Washington for nothing. Members of Congress had to be paid to assist in such things. At least he could not reduce his little private bill for such assistance below £1600. He had, he said, positively paid out so much to those venal Members of Congress, and had made nothing for himself to compensate him for his own exertions. When this President came to be examined, he admitted that he had really made no payments to Members of Congress. His own capacity had been so great that no such assistance had been found necessary. But he justified his charge on the ground that the sum taken by him was no more than the company might have expected him to lay out on Members of Congress, or on ex-Members who are specially mentioned, had he not himself carried on the business with such consummate discretion! It seems to me that the Members or ex-Members of Congress were shamefully robbed in this matter.

The report deals manfully with Mr. Morgan, showing that for five months' work,—which work he did not do and did not know how to do,—he received as large a sum as the President's salary for the whole Presidential term of four years. So much better is it to be an agent of government than simply an officer! And the Committee adds, that they "do not find in this transaction the less to censure in the fact that this arrangement between the Secretary of the Navy and Mr. Morgan was one between brothers-in-law." After that who will believe that Mr. Morgan had the whole of that £20,000 for himself? And yet Mr. Welles still remains Secretary of the Navy, and has justified the whole transaction in an explanation admitting everything, and which is considered by his friends to be an able State paper. "It behoves a man to be smart, sir." Mr. Morgan and Secretary Welles will no doubt be considered by their own party to have done their duty well as high trading public functionaries. The faults of Mr. Morgan and of Secretary Welles are nothing to us in England; but the light in which such faults may be regarded by the American people is much to us.

I will now go on to the case of a Mr. Cummings. Mr. Cummings, it appears, had been for many years the editor of a newspaper in Philadelphia, and had been an intimate political friend and ally of Mr. Cameron. Now at the time of which I am writing, April, 1861, Mr. Cameron was Secretary-at-War, and could be very useful to an old political ally living in his own State. The upshot of the present case will teach us to think well of Mr. Cameron's gratitude.

In April, 1861, stores were wanted for the army at Washington, and Mr. Cameron gave an order to his old friend Cummings to expend 2,000,000 dollars, pretty much according to his fancy, in buying stores. Governor Morgan, the Governor of New York State and a relative of our other friend Morgan, was joined with Mr. Cummings in this commission, Mr. Cameron no doubt having felt himself bound to give the friends of his colleague at the Navy a chance. Governor Morgan at once made over his right to his relative; but better things soon came in Mr. Morgan's way, and he relinquished his share in this partnership at an early date. In this transaction he did not himself handle above 25,000 dollars. Then the whole job fell into the hands of Mr. Cameron's old political friend.

The 2,000,000 of dollars, or £400,000, were paid into the hands of certain government treasurers at New York, but they had orders to honour the draft of the political friend of the Secretary-at-War, and consequently £50,000 was immediately withdrawn by Mr. Cummings, and with this he went to work. It is shown that he knew nothing of the business; that he employed a clerk from Albany whom he did not know, and confided to this clerk the duty of buying such stores as were bought; that this clerk was recommended to him by Mr. Weed, the editor of a newspaper at Albany, who is known in the States as the special political friend of Mr. Seward, the Secretary of State; and that in this way he spent £32,000. He bought linen pantaloons and straw hats to the amount of £4200, because he thought the soldiers looked hot in the warm weather; but he afterwards learned that they were of no use. He bought groceries of a hardware dealer named Davidson, at Albany, that town whence came Mr. Weed's clerk. He did not know what was Davidson's trade, nor did he know exactly what he was going to buy; but Davidson proposed to sell him something which Mr. Cummings believed to be some kind of provisions, and he bought it. He did not know for how much,—whether over £2000 or not. He never saw the articles and had no knowledge of their quality. It was out of the question that he should have such knowledge, as he naïvely remarks. His clerk Humphreys saw the articles. He presumed they were brought from Albany, but did not know. He afterwards bought a ship,—or two or three ships. He inspected one ship "by a mere casual visit:" that is to say, he did not examine her boilers; he did not know her tonnage, but he took the word of the seller for everything. He could not state the terms of the charter, or give the substance of it. He had had no former experience in buying or chartering ships. He also bought 75,000 pair of shoes at only 25 cents, or one shilling a pair, more than their proper price. He bought them of a Mr. Hall, who declares that he paid Mr. Cummings nothing for the job, but regarded it as a return for certain previous favours conferred by him on Mr. Cummings in the occasional loans of £100 or £200.

At the end of the examination it appears that Mr. Cummings still held in his hand a slight balance of £28,000, of which he had forgotten to make mention in the body of his own evidence. "This item seems to have been overlooked by him in his testimony," says the report. And when the report was made nothing had yet been learned of the destiny of this small balance.

Then the report gives a list of the army supplies miscellaneously purchased by Mr. Cummings:—280 dozen pints of ale at 9s. 6d. a dozen; a lot of codfish and herrings; 200 boxes of cheeses and a large assortment of butter; some tongues; straw hats and linen "pants;" 23 barrels of pickles; 25 casks of Scotch ale, price not stated; a lot of London porter, price not stated; and some Hall carbines of which I must say a word more further on. It should be remembered that no requisition had come from the army for any of the articles named; that the purchase of herrings and straw hats was dictated solely by the discretion of Cummings and his man Humphreys,—or, as is more probable, by the fact that some other person had such articles by him for sale; and that the government had its own established officers for the supply of things properly ordered by military requisition. These very same articles also were apparently procured, in the first place, as a private speculation, and were made over to the government on the failure of that speculation. "Some of the above articles," says the report, "were shipped by the 'Catiline,' which were probably loaded on private account, and not being able to obtain a clearance was in some way, through Mr. Cummings, transferred over to the government,—Scotch ale, London porter, selected herrings, and all." The italics as well as the words are taken from the report.

This was the confidential political friend of the Secretary-at-War, by whom he was intrusted with £400,000 of public money! £28,000 had not been accounted for when the report was made, and the army supplies were bought after the fashion above named. That Secretary-at-War, Mr. Cameron, has since left the Cabinet; but he has not been turned out in disgrace; he has been nominated as minister to Russia, and the world has been told that there was some difference of opinion between him and his colleagues respecting slavery! Mr. Cameron in some speech or paper declared on his leaving the Cabinet that he had not intended to remain long as Secretary-at-War. This assertion, I should think, must have been true.

And now about the Hall carbines, as to which the gentlemen on this Committee tell their tale with an evident delight in the richness of its incidents which at once puts all their readers in accord with them. There were altogether some five thousand of these, all of which the government sold to a Mr. Eastman in June, 1861, for 14s. each, as perfectly useless, and afterwards bought in August for £4 8s. each, about 4s. a carbine having been expended in their repair in the mean time. But as regards 790 of these now famous weapons, it must be explained they had been sold by the government as perfectly useless, and at a nominal price, previously to this second sale made by the government to Mr. Eastman. They had been so sold, and then, in April, 1861, they had been bought again for the government by the indefatigable Cummings for £3 each. Then they were again sold as useless for 14s. each to Eastman, and instantly rebought on behalf of the government for £4 8s. each! Useless for war purposes they may have been, but as articles of commerce it must be confessed that they were very serviceable.