The undersigned, Senators and Representatives in Congress from Massachusetts, ask leave to call your serious attention to the proceedings initiated by the Navy Department against Benjamin G. Smith and Franklin W. Smith, of Boston, of the firm of Smith Brothers & Co., a much respected firm, which has hitherto enjoyed the confidence, personal and mercantile, of the community where they reside. Among their neighbors and friends these proceedings have already attracted much attention, and awakened corresponding feeling.
The proceedings have seemed to be harsh, vindictive, and unnecessary.
1. In the character of the arrest of Messrs. Smith, which was attended by circumstances of severity utterly unjustifiable.
2. In requiring bonds to so large an amount as half a million of dollars. The fact that the parties in question easily obtained bonds for a much larger amount does not render the exaction of “excessive bail” less obnoxious to the requirements of the Constitution and of justice, or less indicative of the spirit in which these proceedings have been conducted.
3. In the seizure of their books and papers, which are still detained, although regarded by their eminent counsel as important to their defence.
4. In turning into a military offence what is more proper for a civil tribunal, and dragging these defendants before a court-martial.
5. In transferring the proceedings from Boston, where the parties reside, and the transactions in question occurred, to Philadelphia: thus increasing greatly the difficulties and the cost of defence. This will be appreciated, when it is understood that the witnesses are very numerous, and chiefly engaged in mercantile business, so that they cannot leave Boston without neglect of their private interests.
The undersigned, on reviewing these circumstances, which are so inconsistent with the administration of justice in its most ordinary forms, have been at a loss to account for the spirit manifested in the prosecution. If they look at the trivial character of many of the specifications against the defendants, they are still more at a loss. It is difficult to account for such elaborate and persistent harshness, without yielding to the prevailing belief that other motives than the vindication of justice have entered into this case.
The undersigned are not strangers to the fact, that one of these defendants, in the discharge of what he believed to be his duty as a good citizen, has, by correspondence and testimony before committees of Congress, been brought into collision with officers of the Navy Department; and there is too much reason to believe that some of these officers have allowed themselves to be governed by personal feelings throughout these strange proceedings.
Under such circumstances, the undersigned most respectfully ask your assistance in securing justice to these defendants, according to the common course of proceedings at law. They are acquainted with the statute which provides court-martial for contractors in certain cases, and they are unwilling to make any suggestion which shall interfere with its efficiency; but they have no hesitation in saying that such a statute, intended for extreme cases, should not be applied to a case like the present, where, with a single exception, the questions are simply whether the defendants complied with their contract, and therefore, from their nature, can be better considered by the ordinary tribunals accustomed to such questions than by a naval tribunal composed of officers who have no familiarity with them.