The Catiline was bought by Develin for $18,000. The seller of the ship testified that he received, as security for the purchase money, four notes of $4500 each executed by Thurlow Weed, John E. Develin, G. C. Davidson, and O. B. Matteson. Matteson had been a member of a previous Congress from Utica, New York, but had been expelled from the House. The Catiline was chartered for the Government at the rate of $10,000 per month for three months, with an agreement that if she were lost in the service the owners should be paid $50,000. The title to the Catiline was, for convenience, placed in the name of a Mr. Stetson.
Cummings was examined by the Committee on Government Contracts. He testified that he had formerly been the publisher of the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, and later publisher of the New York World, and that he had resided in the latter city about eighteen months; his family still residing in Philadelphia. The purchases made by him to be shipped on the Catiline consisted mainly of groceries and provisions, including twenty-five casks of Scotch ale, and twenty-five casks of London porter; but he testified that he did not see any of the articles bought, nor did he have any knowledge of their quality, nor did he see any of them put on board the ship. The purchases, he said, were made from the firm of E. Corning & Co., of Albany, through a member of the firm named Davidson, whom Cummings met at the Astor House. Cummings assumed that Davidson was a member of the firm because Davidson told him so; he had no other evidence of the fact. He assumed also that Corning & Co. were dealers in provisions, but had no absolute knowledge on that point.[56] He supposed that the goods were shipped from Albany to be loaded on the Catiline, but did not know that such was the fact. All these details he left to his clerk, James Humphrey, who had been recommended as clerk by Thurlow Weed. Cummings testified that he did not know Humphrey before; did not know whether he had ever been in business in Albany or in New York; took him on Weed's recommendation; made no bargain with him as to salary; did not know where he could be found now. Bought a lot of hard bread from a house in Boston. Questioned to whom he made payment for this bread, he answered: "Directly to the party selling it, I suppose." "By you?" "By my clerk, I suppose." Did not recollect who first suggested the purchase of bread. Had no directions from the Government to purchase any particular articles. Bought a quantity of straw hats and linen pantaloons, thinking they would be needed by the troops in warm weather. Did not personally know that any of the goods had been loaded on the steamer or by whom they should have been so loaded. The cargo was certified by Cummings to Cameron as shipped for the Government. Mr. Barney, Collector of the Port, refused to give a clearance to the Catiline to sail. Mr. Stetson, the owner, produced a letter from Thurlow Weed requesting a clearance, but Barney still refused. Finally General Wool gave a "pass" on which the Catiline sailed without a clearance. General Wool revoked the pass on the following day, but the ship had already departed.[57]
The report says: "The Committee have no occasion to call in question the integrity of Mr. Cummings." We must infer, therefore, that he was chosen by Cameron to disburse Government money in this emergency because he was an extraordinary simpleton, and likely to be guided by Thurlow Weed in buying army supplies from a hardware firm in Albany, and an unknown Boston house that furnished hard bread.
Congressman Van Wyck of New York, a member of the Committee, said that Mr. Weed's absence from home had prevented an examination into the nature and extent of his agency in the matter of the Catiline.[58] At the time when Weed's testimony was wanted he was in Europe acting as a volunteer diplomat "assisting to counteract the machinations of the agents of treason against the United States in that quarter," as appears by a letter of Secretary Seward to Minister Adams, dated November 7, 1861.
The Committee on Government Contracts were unable to determine whether the cargo of the Catiline was a private speculation or a bona-fide purchase for the Government. The character of the goods purchased and the mode of purchase pointed to the former conclusion. Scotch ale and London porter were not embraced in any list of authorized rations, nor were straw hats and linen pantaloons included in quartermaster's stores. Congressman Van Wyck conjectured that it was a private speculation until Collector Barney refused to grant a clearance, and that then it was turned over to the Government. Mr. Stetson, who applied for the clearance, first told the Collector that the ship was loaded with flour and provisions belonging to several of his friends. When he called the second time he testified that the cargo consisted of supplies for the troops. The ship was destroyed by fire before the three months' charter expired.
On the 13th of January, Henry L. Dawes, of Massachusetts, another member of the committee, alluded to certain purchases of cavalry horses, saying:
A regiment of cavalry has just reached Louisville one thousand strong, and a board of army officers has condemned four hundred and eighty-five of the one thousand horses as utterly worthless. The man who examined those horses declared, upon his oath, that there is not one of them worth twenty dollars. They are blind, spavined, ring-boned, with the heaves, with the glanders, and with every disease that horseflesh is heir to. Those four hundred and eighty-five horses cost the Government, before they were mustered into the service, $58,200, and it cost the Government to transport them from Pennsylvania to Louisville, $10,000 more before they were condemned and cast off.
There are, sir, eighty-three regiments of cavalry one thousand strong now in or roundabout the army. It costs $250,000 to put one of those regiments upon its feet before it marches a step. Twenty millions of dollars have thus far been expended upon these cavalry regiments before they left the encampments in which they were gathered and mustered into the service. They have come here and then some of them have been sent back to Elmira; they have been sent back to Annapolis; they have been sent here and they have been sent there to spend the winter; and many of the horses that were sent back have been tied to posts and to trees within the District of Columbia and there left to starve to death. A guide can take you around the District of Columbia to-day to hundreds of carcasses of horses chained to trees where they have pined away, living on bark and limbs till they starve and die; and the Committee for the District of Columbia have been compelled to call for legislation here to prevent the city wherein we are assembled from becoming an equine Golgotha.[59]
Horse contracts of this sort had been so plentiful that Government officials had gone about the streets of Washington with their pockets full of them. Some of these contracts had been used to pay Cameron's political debts and to cure old political feuds, and banquets had been given with the proceeds, "where the hatchet of political animosity," said Dawes, "was buried in the grave of public confidence and the national credit was crucified between malefactors."