"White man bery unsartin": "Nigger haint got no friends, no how"; the blackest chapter in the history of the Republican Party; the men who robbed and combined to rob the freedmen of their hard earnings.

by F. Colburn Adams

Fully satisfied that what Mr. Elvans had told me was true—satisfied also of the existence of a conspiracy to steal the funds of the bank—the next question was, as to how the disaster, sure to result from it, could be averted. I laid Mr. Elvans’ statement before several leading Republicans, in and outside of Congress, and appealed to them to assist me in rescuing the bank and its money from this combination of robbers. I use very plain language in treating of this very black crime—one which should sink the Republican party so far out of sight that it would never again have an existence. Must I confess here that I appealed to Republicans in vain? Some of them had for years been shedding tears over the sorrows of the slave; but, like Pomeroy, of Kansas, they had borrowed the newly emancipated slave’s money, and it had sealed their lips and withered their consciences.

I appealed to a member of Grant’s cabinet. He had previously professed friendship for the negro. He glanced over Mr. Elvans’ black list of loans, smiled, and handed it back, saying, the names were those of highly honorable gentlemen, who would not do a dishonest act. He intimated, also, that Mr. Elvans was bent on creating a sensation. This cabinet minister, as was afterwards proven, was connected with the most prominent of these conspirators in real estate and other speculations. In plain language, this gang of Republican knaves were all powerful at court, at that time. Grant, himself, was their friend, associate, and partner in Seneca sandstone and other speculations. Indeed it is only the truth to say of Grant that such was the force of his democratic instincts that he never had any real, honest sympathy with the negro, to say nothing of his contempt for poor men of whatever color. It was Grant’s native dislike of the negro and the abolitionist alike, that led him into his unfortunate quarrel with Mr. Sumner. That quarrel initiated the independent Republicans, and it also initiated the disintegration of the Republican party.

I associate the robbery of this bank with the Republican party, because, as I said before, the robbers were all Republicans of high standing in the church; and the chosen leaders of the party looked on with indifference while the robbery was going on, and continued to look on with indifference until the bank closed its doors in bankruptcy.

Then for the first time the cry of shame went up, but not from the leaders of the Republican party. Their energies were given to protect the robbers, to stifle investigation, and to slander the men fearless enough to expose the hideous conspiracy.

Here we were brought face to face with the fact that the Republican party had abandoned its principles, had abandoned truth and justice—even humanity itself—and in the future would depend on dollars and cents for its strength. Its political morality strongly resembled the Democratic party as it was twenty years ago, when slavery was its Political Fetish—when it had a Jew banker at one end of it and a prize fighter at the other.

Again we were brought face to face with the fact that the Republican party and its professed leaders had reached that very high standard of modern civilization, when a bank for the savings of the wages of the poor could be made part of a system of robbery, the robbers being encouraged and recognized by the administration and society. To be even more explicit, it was the first time in the history of felony that the workmen and workwomen, the scrubbers and washers, the orphans and widows of the poorest and most ignorant classes in the city of Washington, were unwittingly made to cash obligations issued by an organized gang of thieves and plunderers.

May I ask the reader to go back with me to the time Mr. John R. Elvans made his statement. Finding there was no other way of stopping the robbery or exposing the crime but through the press, I had recourse to that. My first articles, as is very well known, appeared in the Savannah Morning News. The New York Sun, on being assured of the correctness of my statements, afterwards came to the rescue and did good service in making the hideous crime public. The appearance of these articles created great excitement in Washington, as well they might. Denials came thick and fast, the robbers and their friends—and they were numerous and strong—asserted that the bank was in a perfectly sound condition, that its management was above suspicion. Of course the author of the articles was denounced as a libeler, and threatened with vengeance. The officers of the bank, without distinction of color or previous condition of servitude, were declared to be Republicans in good standing, and very high-toned gentlemen. I had heard something very similar to this before.

There was a weak and somewhat dyspeptic Democratic journal, called the Patriot, published in Washington at that time, and to the columns of which Montgomery Blair and other patriots contributed. The managing editor of this paper was a Mr. Harris, an experienced journalist, who appreciated the value of truth to a properly-conducted newspaper. This gentleman intensified the excitement then prevailing, by republishing, in a somewhat modified form, two of the articles from the Savannah Morning News. For this great offense he not only lost his place, but the paper made two of the most abject and cowardly apologies journalism has any account of. The chiefs of the gang forced these abject apologies from the managers of the Patriot by threatening castigation and libel suits.