The Captain made his third visit to Washington in the winter of 1864–65. His particular business was to secure payment on his government contracts, which had been approved by the Department of War and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, but disallowed by the Treasury. He went to Secretary Chase, but was told by that gentleman that all Missourians were prima facie Rebels, and that that was why his account was being held up. La Barge did not relish this very much, as he had been doing business for the government all through the war, and had even gone so far as to take the oath of allegiance. He went to Lincoln and laid the matter before him. The President smiled at Chase’s remark, gave La Barge a card with his autograph on it to hand to Chase, and said he presumed that would fix matters all right. La Barge went back, and the account was paid without further delay. La Barge, with his usual distrust of the American Fur Company, suspected that some of its members had been giving him a bad character in Washington in order further to cripple his opposition.
THE BLACKFOOT’S ANNUITIES.
FINAL EVIDENCE.
On the occasion of his interview with the President he brought up the matter of the Blackfoot annuities, explicitly charging that these goods had been wrongfully disposed of and had not reached their proper destination. Lincoln sent for the proper officer of the Indian Department to hear La Barge’s accusation. This officer stated that he had receipts signed by the Indian chiefs saying that they had received their annuities. The signatures of the Indians were witnessed by agents of the American Fur Company. La Barge declared that the receipts were false; that he had himself carried these goods and knew that the Indians had not received them, but that they had been appropriated by the American Fur Company and sold. “Well,” said the official, “there are the receipts; we cannot go back of them; they have been considered final evidence in such cases since the foundation of the government.” And there the matter rested.
While in Washington on this visit La Barge was summoned before the Senate Committee on Pacific railroads and questioned by B. Gratz Brown upon his knowledge of the Western country and his opinion upon the availability of certain routes for a transcontinental line.
LOOK AT YOUR MAP.
Before he left Washington the Captain was the central figure in an amusing little incident that occurred at Ford’s Theater. Harper’s Weekly had published a story of La Barge’s steamboating experiences which ran something like this: On one of his trips up the river in the earlier part of his career there were several Englishmen aboard. They had a map and applied themselves industriously for the first day or two in trying to identify the various places upon it with those along their route. They were in the pilot-house a good deal, and one of them questioned La Barge rather officiously about the geography of the country.
“What place is this that we are approaching, Mr. Pilot?” he asked.
“St. Charles, sir,” La Barge replied.
“You are mistaken, sir; according to the map it is ——”