The sad story of greed recorded in the above account of fees is so well told as to render comment by me unnecessary. And yet the above is by no means all lawyer Enoch Totten got of the money of the washers and the scrubbers, the very poor and the very ignorant. He can afford to ride in his coach; and I hope he can sleep at night with the self-satisfaction that he has been just and generous to the poor freedmen who had been so cruelly robbed, and had pocketed only what was right of their money.
Not very long since, Mr. Frederick Douglas said there were men in Washington, living in palaces, and riding in their coaches, who were prominent in robbing his people of their hard earnings. Mr. Douglas never told a greater truth. I envy no man destined to carry a guilty conscience through the world with him.
To turn to this lawyer Totten, he may be eminent as a lawyer, but I never heard of it. Nor have I ever heard that his reputation at the Washington Bar was such as to entitle him to excessive fees.[2] I have heard of Attorney-at-Law Totten, in connection with the “Beaufort and Texas Prize Claim,” which, in the language of District Attorney Wells, was one of the very worst frauds invented to get nearly a million dollars out of the Treasury of the United States.
I am assured that the legal services rendered by Mr. Totten, were of a very simple and commonplace kind; and that there are at least fifty members of the Washington Bar, as good and perhaps better lawyers than Mr. Totten, who would have gladly performed the service for one-sixth of the amount charged.
You have in the above a faint glimpse of the ways and means by which the money of these poor, plundered people is disappearing. And yet these well paid Commissioners, who have proven themselves so recreant to this trust, tell us with a coolness that challenges our credulity, that they have “no knowledge of any improper use of the funds of the company to which reference is made in the preamble of the resolution of the House of Representatives.” How very innocent these Commissioners are. Their innocence is only equalled by Mr. Attorney-at-Law Totten’s great respect for the money of his clients, the washers and the scrubbers, the very poor and the very ignorant. It was Sheridan, I believe, who said that if he wanted to find a first-class scoundrel, heartless and soulless, he would search for him in the legal profession. Had he lived in this age of Christian statesmen he certainly would have improved on that.
MORE FEES FOR LEGAL SERVICES.
Here, too, is our legal brother, John H. Cook, colored, following modestly in the footsteps of his paler-faced brother, Totten. John found the field open and went in and made a goodly harvest of fees. Ordinarily, John H. Cook’s clients are of the ten, fifteen, and twenty dollar class. Here, however, he improved on himself, like Mr. Frederick Douglass. John H. Cook, a member in good standing at the Washington Bar, never forgets that he is a friend of “his race.” I would here say, however, that I am assured by several members of the Washington Bar that Mr. Cook’s services in behalf of the bank extended over as long a period of time and were quite as valuable as those rendered by Mr. Totten. A glance at the list of his charges, published below, will at least convince the reader that he was more modest in making up his accounts. Why the Commissioners should have discriminated against color in this remarkable manner is a question the reader can decide for himself.
There are other attorneys-at-law, plain and colored, who were employed by the Commissioners, and who got fees to a very considerable amount; but I nowhere find the name of that eminent patriot and statesman, John Andrew Jackson Creswell. Indeed he does not seem to have rendered legal or any other service, notwithstanding General Grant’s assurance that as a lawyer he would be very useful in winding up the affairs of the bank.
Here is Brother Cook’s account current for legal services. I have omitted dates: