Mr. ——, of Baltimore, who was made an Indian inspector in 1885, had been involved in notorious election frauds and was condemned by the civil-service reform Independents of Maryland as a companion of Higgins, as a ballot-box stuffer, and a professional gambler.
The postmaster at Sioux City, Iowa, was convicted and sentenced in Dakota for violation of the pension laws. The man who was removed to make a place for this eminent civil-service reformer had eight months yet to serve, and there was no complaint against him even to the extent that he was an offensive partisan.
Mr. Holmes, a postmaster in Mississippi, had been involved in notorious election-fraud scandals.
Mr. Shannon, appointed postmaster at Meriden, Miss., was the editor of the Mercury newspaper, which after President Grant’s death contained a rabid editorial attacking the General’s character; and he had been indicted in the United States court for “unlawfully and criminally conspiring with many others for the evasion of the civil rights law.”
In Rhode Island a Democratic postmaster was appointed who had been in the preceding three months arrested nine times for violation of the liquor law.
In Pennsylvania a man was appointed in the Philadelphia Mint who openly confessed to writing a forged letter from Neal Dow to be used in influencing the German vote in the State of Ohio the preceding year.
There have been some strange things done in Maine. I almost hesitate to quote this, but if I am wrong the Senators from that State will undoubtedly correct me. It is alleged that the postmaster in the town of Lincolnville was at the time of his appointment actually in the Portland jail, where he was serving a term for a misdemeanor.
An agent by the name of Judd, who was appointed in the Bureau of Labor Statistics, was, upon inquiry as to the fact whether he had been a horse-thief and served in the penitentiary, suspended from office. The writer states that the only ground for supposing that he was not a horse thief arose from the fact that they do not put men in the penitentiary for stealing horses out West: that if he was alive it was a reasonable, natural conclusion that he had not stolen any horses. Nobody denied the penitentiary.
A gentleman named Richard Board, of Kentucky, was appointed in July, on the recommendation of Comptroller Durham, clerk in the railway mail service and assigned to duty in New Mexico. This is under the Postmaster-General, who found leisure between removing postmasters every fifteen minutes to appoint this man in another branch of the service where he incautiously mentioned to his friends something about his previous history, and it appeared that he had been three times arrested in Cincinnati for obtaining money under false pretenses, that he had been twice arrested for stealing in Kentucky, and once in Texas—a variegated and diversified career. “No pent up Utica” contracted his powers. He had stolen in three states. His father was a very wealthy man in high standing who had spent a great deal of money to protect his son, and through him he secured the endorsement of Comptroller Durham, and after he had been in service for a few weeks he committed a number of robberies, stole $163 from the money order service, and at the date of this communication was lying in jail at Santa Fé awaiting trial.
The Senator from Indiana [Mr. Voorhees] yesterday took occasion to advert with somewhat of animated hilarity to the suggestion of the Senator from Iowa about the evolutionary condition of the Democratic party, and dwelt with considerable unction upon a term that the Senator from Iowa had applied to the Democracy in his very able and interesting speech: “a protoplasmic” cell, and the Senator then proceeded to give us the definition of the term as it appears in the dictionaries, and suggested that if those facts had been known at the time when the canvass was pending Mr. Cleveland would undoubtedly have been counted out in New York.