It is difficult to imagine the origin of these unfortunate proceedings, which, beginning in unheard-of harshness, threaten to end in unexampled injustice, unless arrested by the President. But there are certain facts which may shed light upon some of the hidden springs. Nobody supposes that the able and candid Head of the Navy Department became acquainted with this prosecution until after it had been already conceived, shaped, and set in motion. Others in the Department used its great powers, if not for purposes of oppression, at least recklessly and unaccountably.
It appears that Franklin W. Smith, one of the respondents, published a pamphlet, in which he exposed abuses in the contract system of the Navy Department; and it is understood that sundry officials felt aggrieved by these disclosures. The spirit of these officials appears sufficiently in the following extract from a letter of a Government witness, holding an important position in the Navy Department, addressed to another witness, himself also an official.
“I have been summoned before the Select Committee of the Senate for investigating frauds in Naval Supplies; and if the wool don’t fly, it won’t be my fault. Norton, the Navy Agent, has complained that I have interfered with his business: he and his friend Smith are dead cocks in the pit. We have got a sure thing on them in the tin business. They that dance must pay the fiddler.”
The writer of this letter, after appearing before the Senate Committee at a later day, came on from Washington to appear before the court-martial at Charlestown as a witness against the respondents, where he underwent a cross-examination on which I forbear to comment. If the prosecution did not originate in the spirit which fills his letter, it is evident that this spirit entered into it. “If the wool don’t fly, it won’t be my fault”; “Dead cocks in the pit”; “A sure thing on them in the tin business”: such are the countersigns adopted by the agent of this dark proceeding, showing clearly two things: first, the foregone conclusion, that these respondents were to be sacrificed; and, secondly, that the case turned on “the tin business.”
It is hard that citizens enjoying a good name, who had the misfortune to come into business relations with the Government, should be exposed to such a spirit; that they should be dragged from their homes, and hurried to a military prison; that, though civilians, they should be treated as military offenders; that they should be compelled to undergo a protracted trial by court-martial, damaging their good name, destroying their peace, breaking up their business, and subjecting them to untold expense,—when, at the slightest touch, the whole case vanishes into thin air, leaving behind nothing but the incomprehensible spirit in which it had its origin.
Of course, the findings and sentence of the Court ought, without delay, to be set aside. But this is only the beginning of justice. Some positive reparation should be made to citizens who have been so deeply injured.
Charles Sumner.
Washington, March 17, 1865.
To the President of the United States.