In order to avoid personal liability and give their movement the semblance of legality, the directors purchased the charter of the "Pennsylvania Fiscal Agency," and changed its name to the "Credit Mobilier of America." At this time (1864) two million dollars of stock had been subscribed to the railroad company, and two hundred and eighteen thousand dollars paid in. Samuel J. Tilden had subscribed twenty thousand dollars. The first thing the Credit Mobilier did was to buy in all of this stock and bring the railroad company and Credit Mobilier under one management and the same set of officers. Then the directors of the railroad company, through certain middle-men, awarded the contract for building the road to the Credit Mobilier, in other words, to themselves, for from twenty thousand dollars to thirty thousand dollars per mile more than it was worth. Evidence which afterward came to light in the Congressional investigations showed that the Credit Mobilier made a cash profit in the transaction of over twenty-three million dollars, besides gobbling up the stock of the road at thirty cents on the dollar, when the law plainly provided that it should not be issued at less than par.
Oakes Ames, a sturdy Massachusetts mechanic, who had acquired a fortune by the manufacture of shovels, had been persuaded to embark in the construction of the Pacific Railroad. Finding legislation necessary, and knowing how difficult it was to secure the attention of Congressmen to schemes which did not benefit them or their constituents, he distributed shares of this Credit Mobilier, to use his own words, "where it would do the most good." Some of the recipients kept it and pocketed the profits, while others endeavored to get rid of it when public attention was called to it, and they ungratefully tried to make Mr. Ames their scapegoat.
[Facsimile] James Monroe JAMES MONROE was born in Westmoreland County, Va., April 28th, 1758; served honorably in the Revolution; entered the Virginia Legislature when twenty-three years of age; entered Congress when twenty-four; chosen United States Senator, 1789; was Minister to France, 1794-1796; was Governor of Virginia, 1799-1802; re-elected Governor in 1811; resigned and became Secretary of State under Madison, 1811-1817; was President of the United States, 1817-1825; died July 4th, 1831, in New York.
CHAPTER XXIV. RESTORATION OF THE UNION.
The Southern States had again returned to their allegiance, and in the third session of the Forty-first Congress every State in the Union was represented. Vice-President Colfax presided over sixty- one Republican and thirteen Democratic Senators, and Speaker Blaine over one hundred and seventy-two Republican and seventy-one Democratic Representatives. The Republican party had preserved the Union, conquered peace, and was at the height of its power. The "carpet- baggers" from the South were gradually being replaced by ante-bellum politicians and "Southern brigadiers." Many Northern men regretted that the North had not sent more of its heroes to Congress, feeling that men who had honorably faced each other on hard-fought battle- fields would have a mutual respect and a mutual desire to co-operate together for the national welfare.
It soon became evident, however, that the Southern Democrats were about to exercise an important influence in national politics, that they possessed in common some very clearly defined purposes, and that they were not likely to permit their allegiance to their party to interfere with their efforts to obtain what they called "justice for the South." They went in without reserve for the old flag, but they also went in for an appropriation—in fact, several appropriations. They honestly thought that they were only asking simple justice in demanding that the Government should spend nearly as much for the development of their material resources as it did for the suppression of the Rebellion. All their cherished ideas of State Rights vanished when money was to be expended at the South, and the honesty of their intentions made their influence far more to be dreaded than that of adepts in legislative corruption, who are always distrusted.
The number of Southern Representatives was greatly increased by that change in the Constitution which abolished the fractional representation of colored people and made all men equal. It soon became evident, too, that the whites were determined, by a well- disciplined legion, known as the Ku-Klux Klan, whose members pretended to be the ghosts of the Confederate dead, to intimidate the colored voters, and intimidation was often supplemented by violence and murder. The grossest outrages by this secret body went unpunished and Congress finally passed a law which enabled the President to eradicate the evil.
The "Joint High Commission," for the adjustment of all causes of difference between the United States and Great Britain, including the depredations of Rebel cruisers fitted out in British ports and the disputed fisheries in North American waters, assembled in Washington in the spring of 1871. The "High Joints," as they were familiarly termed, took the furnished house of Mr. Philp, on Franklin Square, where they gave a series of dinner-parties, with several evening entertainments. In return numerous entertainments were given to them, including a banquet by the leading Freemasons in Washington, some of them members of Congress, to the Earl De Gray (then Grand Master of Masons in England), and Lord Tenterden, who was also a prominent member of the fraternity.
There are good reasons for believing that the British were induced to gracefully make the concessions involved in the Alabama treaty by the knowledge that General Grant had taken into consideration the expediency of seizing Canada as a compensation for damages inflicted upon the United States ships by Confederate cruisers fitted out in English ports. This was a favorite idea of General John A. Rawlins, who was the brain of General Grant's staff and his Secretary of War until death removed him. General Rawlins was in full accord with the hope that Stephen A. Douglas's aspirations for an ocean-bound Republic might be realized, and it was understood that he was warmly seconded by General Pryor, of Virginia, ex- Lieutenant Governor Reynolds, of Missouri, and others.
The treaty was indirectly opposed by Monsieur de Catacazy, the Minister Plenipotentiary of the Emperor of Russia to the United States, who endeavored to prejudice Senators against its ratification, and inspired the correspondent of a New York paper to write against it. This prompted Secretary Fish to request the Minister's recall, and there was also much scandal circulated by Madame de Catacazy, a beautiful woman, who had been at Washington—so the gossips say —fifteen years before, when she had eloped from her husband under the protection of Monsieur de Catacazy, then Secretary of the Russian Legation. The Emperor of Russia, on receiving complaint against his Envoy, directed the Minister of Foreign Affairs to ask in his name that the President "would tolerate Monsieur de Catacazy until the coming visit of his third son, the Grand Duke Alexis, was concluded." To this personal appeal General Grant assented.