away; and then I only retained Mr. Ker for a special duty, because you asked for such a person-and that was the preparation of the pleadings. He has been of value since then in many other ways; but the general charge of the case I did not confide to him. I intended that he should be detailed to act under your immediate and special direction in the preparation of the pleadings, and in such other duties as you might require him to do. Mr. Merrick was retained to fill the vacancy occasioned by my withdrawal.

Upon reflection I would prefer, as at present advised, to leave the matter of your remaining to be the subject of our consideration. It is due to your position and dignity that it should be a matter that would rest exclusively between us. The case is under my control officially, and I am responsible, no matter what is done; and that responsibility I would assume after a conference with you hereafter. At present hold yourself as being advised by me that any suggestion of withdrawal is declined.

Mr. Merrick wrote me on the 8th of November:

I have had an interview with Mr. Brewster, and stated to him that your withdrawal from the case would necessitate my withdrawing also. We had quite a long conversation on the subject.

On November 30, having written Mr. Merrick that, as Mrs. Bliss's health had improved, I could remain, but that I did not wish to be here so much of the time; that Mrs. Bliss, being an invalid, was made anxious by my being away so much, Mr. Merrick wrote me a long letter in which he referred to this, and said that he regretted that she was anxious, and then went on to object to my being absent during any considerable portion of the time, saying:

The time you propose to be absent is probably the most important period of the trial for you to be present. All of the counsel should be in attendance during the first few days of the proceedings, when the course and direction of the case are being shaped, and the views and policy of the other side are being developed. Indeed, in such a case, in view of Mr. Ker's physical disability, both the other counsel for the Government should be present whilst the prosecution is putting in its evidence; if not all the time, except during the argument.

Something was said the other day about the removal of certain persons from office here. There were removed Marshal Henry, the postmaster, Mr. Ainger, his assistant, Mr. Parker, Mr. Helm (who was connected with the Congressional Record), and some others. Those gentlemen were all removed upon my letter of recommendation; and, inasmuch as some doubt was thrown out as to the sincerity of the administration, let me say this: I wrote that letter without any consultation with either of the other counsel, and without their knowledge. I addressed it to the President. I did not let the Attorney-General know anything about it. I felt that the men ought to be removed. As to Mr. Henry, the trouble arose from the fact that he had been Mr. Garfield's particular pet and friend, and at that time to do anything that seemed to touch anybody who had been associated with Garfield was looked upon as almost a sacrilege. All through the first trial we felt that Marshal Henry was not in the interest of the Government, and yet we could not put our fingers upon anything that he had done. After the first trial, as I recollect, he went out into Ohio, and there had an interview in which he pitched into the prosecution generally. Mr. Ainger was postmaster here, and owned a paper in Michigan, and after the first trial, or during the trial, he wrote a letter in which he attacked Mr. James and the prosecution generally. The atmosphere of this city was in many respects pretty unfavorable to the Government. Mr. Spencer was another of those removed. He was a Pacific Railroad director.

I wrote this letter to the President. I said to myself that if I sent the letter officially through the Attorney-General, I might not leave the President as I desired to leave him, entirely free to act entirely on his own judgment, because if an official letter came up to him through the Attorney-General from the counsel for the Government requesting the removal of certain persons, even if the act did not commend itself

to his judgment, he might feel under some sort of quasi compulsion to comply. For that reason I addressed the letter directly to the Presi dent. I inclosed it to his private secretary, saying to him that the letter expressed my views, that I wanted the President to read it and to act upon the matter entirely upon his own judgment, and to decide the question independently of any influence of the kind I have suggested; that, therefore, he was at entire liberty to treat it as an official letter on which he was required to act in some way, or to treat it as a private and personal letter (he had many such from me), of which no man would ever hear anything, unless he chose. That letter went to the President on those terms, and the President, without twenty-four hours' delay (though it was longer than that before he made the removals, because time was required for cabinet consultation), announced that the men must be removed, and that any one else who the counsel said was in the way of the prosecution in any manner should be treated in the same way.

By the CHAIRMAN:

Q. When did this take place?-A. Just before the second trial. I should think it was in November, about Thanksgiving, 1882.

By Mr. VAN ALSTYNE:

Q. Did you receive any advice or solicitation that favors of any kind should be extended to any of the defendants?-A. No, sir.

Q. From any one who had ever been connected with Mr. Garfield, intimately or socially?-A. No, sir.

Mr. MILLIKEN. Ask him squarely whether be ever received any such advice from Mr. Blaine?

The WITNESS. I will say to the committee that I have not conversed with Mr. Blaine since I went into the star-route cases; I have not com. municated with him, directly or indirectly, and neither he nor anybody. else approached me on that subject. I think it is just as well to ask the question square out about Mr. Blaine, and a great deal better than it was for Mr. Ker to write to the chairman of this committee to have Mr. Merrick asked that question the other day. That is what he did. The CHAIRMAN. What is that?

The WITNESS. I am speaking of Mr. Ker writing to the chairman of this committee to have Mr. Merrick asked about somebody who ap proached him in relation to relieving Mr. Bosler of the obligation of his subpoena.

The CHAIRMAN. What was it about?

The WITNESS. I don't remember just how it was; but you asked him whether anybody had interviewed him about Bosler. The suggestion of that question came from Mr. Ker, and you know it.

The CHAIRMAN. What is your statement on that point?

The WITNESS. My statement is that Mr. Ker put up that inquiry by a letter to you.

By Mr. VAN ALSTYNE:

Q. Did you see the letter?-A. No, sir.

Q. Who spoke to you about the letter?-A. Some reporter.

Q. Can you give his name?-A. No, sir; I don't know the name of any reporter in this city.

Q. Was it somebody who professed to have seen the letter?—A. No, sir; I don't think he did profess to have seen it.

Q. Then he was speaking from mere suspicion?-A. I understood him

to say that he was speaking from Mr. Springer's statement.

Q. Did you regard that as sufficient authority for you to found your

statement here on ?—A. I generally regard the reporters as very reliable.

Mr. MILLIKEN. I object to the investigation of the chairman of this committee. [Laughter.]

The WITNESS. Mr. Merrick, in this letter of the 30th of November, refers to a conversation that I had with him after I had sent my letter to the President. I told Mr. Merrick that I had made the request for these removals, and he writes me here:

I had supposed from our conversation that certain parties would be removed, but as to the others, I had given them no thought. The prompt action taken in the premises, though not by any means so prompt as it might have been, has been opportune, and has created a very great change in the expressions indulged in by officials.

I was talking about the question of my relations to the Dorsey case. As to my summing up speech, I have here a letter from which I desire to read an extract. The letter is dated August 23, during the summing up, and is from a gentleman who was concerned as an assistant in the case. [Reading :]

I was with Merrick until one o'clock this morning. Your speech exceeds by far any that has been made, and all are praising it. I heard Judge Wylie commending it very highly, and Judge Carpenter is very lavish in his praises. Wylie said it was packed full, and very well arranged, and fairly delivered, and must have required much labor and study. I think the week will close with Merrick's speech, although he says he will not occupy more than three hours.

Q. Who wrote that?-A. A gentleman who was concerned in assisting us in the case. I have no objection to giving the name, if it is desired, but I am willing to leave myself in Judge Wylie's hands, if you will examine him; I will take his judgment upon this question as to my fidelity. Now, there is a single other point as to the Dorsey case to which I shall ask your attention for a moment. If I wanted Dorsey to escape, why did I select that case for prosecution? Walsh says it was a weak case; Mr. Merrick says it was not. On that point all I have to say, summing it all up, is that I never proposed or desired that Mr. Dorsey should escape. The files of this committee show you that Mr. Dorsey did not consider that I had shown him any favors. He has written the chairman of this committee a letter charging me with accepting bribes and doing other things of that sort. He did not consider that I had rendered him any service, or that I had manifested any desire that he should escape. As to my relations with Mr. Dorsey, in point of fact, until after the close of the election by which Mr. Garfield became President, Mr. Dorsey was almost a stranger to me; I had seen him but once or twice up to that time. After that I found that he had arrived at the conclusion at which I also had arrived, that Mr. Conkling and others, in their endeavor to make Mr. Morton Secretary of the Treasury, could not succeed, because Mr. Morton was a banker in active business in New York, and there was a statute which was right in the face of any such selection for Secretary of the Treasury. General Grant had failed to get that statute overridden in the case of Mr. A. T. Stewart, and I felt very well satisfied that it would not be overridden in favor of Mr. Morton, although we were very intimate friends. However, I was still anxious that that position should come to the State of New York, and was desirous that Mr. Folger should be made Secretary of the Treasury, and, to my surprise, I found that Mr. Dorsey had the same opinion. I had two or three interviews with him, but pretty soon my attention was directed to a statement of Dorsey's, in which he said that I did not amount to much politically, that I had no judgment, and a number of things of that kind. If we had had any intimacy before that it ceased, and therefore you will see that I had no such relations with Mr. Dorsey as would cause me to desire to protect him, or anything of that

kind. He does not think that I had any such desire, and nobody who knows anything of the matter does think so.

By the CHAIRMAN:

Q. It was not he who invited you to that dinner?-A. He did not invite me to the dinner.

By Mr. STEWART:

Q. Inasmuch as it has been stated that you were appointed to your position in connection with these star-route cases because of your peculiar relations to the President, I will ask you to state whether the President intimated in any manner, directly or indirectly, any desire on his part to protect Mr. Dorsey -A. No, sir; he not only never inti mated any such desire, but he went so far as this: Dorsey undertook to have an interview with the President, but the President declined to see him-told him he never would see him except as he saw anybody else, with the doors wide open, and Dorsey was cursing around Washington about the treatment he had received from the President on that occasion. The President never said anything to me about Mr. Dorsey in connection with the cases. The only thing that he did say to me was this: "Be careful of your own record, so that nobody shall be able to say that you have let anybody up." I never knew why he said that, or anything about it, but that is what he said and all that he ever did say to me about the cases.

Here is a long dispatch from Mr. Merrick, which I wanted to refer to in connection with my closing argument on the second trial. It shows that on the second trial I was as "vicious and vigorous" as anybody against Dorsey; but if you gentlemen will take the pains (which you will not) to go over that speech and to compare it with my speech on the first trial you will see that I began by saying that I should speak only a very short time, as so much had already been said about the case, but that in fact I spoke nine days, and you will find that for four or five days my speech was almost identical in substance with my speech on the first trial. The arrangement was somewhat changed, but the substance was the same. After I had been speaking two or three days there developed a little intrigne apparently by which the other side were arranging to let the case go to the jury without making any reply. They thought they were going to catch us in that way, because I had covered only part of the ground, and they thought that if they made no reply the remainder of the case would not be touched in our summing up. Thereupon Mr. Merrick telegraphed me to New York that I must go over the entire ground, and, as a consequence of that sugges tion, this speech of mine which was intended to be a brief one of a couple of days' length was spun out to nine days. When I got through one of the counsel on the other side said that for the first three days I did not hurt them any, but that in the last five or six days of my speech I hurt them so much that they had to change their programme and arrange to reply. Here is Mr. Merrick's telegram:

To Hon. GEORGE BLISS,

160 Broadway, N. York:

WASHINGTON, D. C., May 6, 1883.

I don't see how you can finish before Tuesday afternoon. Your argument has made a deep impression, and must be deliberately concluded. The partition of the routes, and the partition at the same time of the "burglar's tools;" their subsequent use by respective parties assisting; acts done by each, distributive for one another, in accordance with the agreement of partition; the books and Rerdell's memorandum, and his evidence in connection with Kellogg and Torrey and Donnelly and Gibbs; Judge Bissell's confronting Dorsey in court-room; refusal to produce check-stubs, not on notice, but on cross-examination, when Torrey swears they were marked "mail"; Bosler's purchase; the affidavit of eighteen eighty-one, which Dorsey was forced to

admit was modified by him and Ingersoll; the relation of Rerdell to the case and present relation to Government, and another review of the affidavits, which are the levers that opened the Treasury doors. All these fully gone into will take time. I will not be allowed to speak, for the defendants will submit, and you must prepare dressing for them on this, treating such conduct in such a case as an abandonment. R. T. MERRICK, Special Assistant Attorney-General.

From the time I got that dispatch and was free to trench upon what I had regarded as Mr. Merrick's ground, I went fully into the Dorsey business, and what I have just stated is the reason, and the only reason, why there was any difference in my treatment of the case of Dorsey on the first and on the second trial.

I have stated that the Attorney-General insisted upon making the closing speech on the first trial. He did so insist, and he did close the case. He wrote me on August 10, 1882, as follows:

Now, about another matter. It seems that some arrangements had been made with reference to the speaking in the star-route case. I was not consulted about it, and I submit perhaps it would have been better that I had been. I had an interview with

Judge Wiley, and a perfect understanding with him that I would speak at the conclusion. He assented to it himself, and saw no difficulty in allowing Mr. Merrick to precede me. This I conveyed to Mr. Merrick and to Mr. Ker. Whatever complaints the defendants made I do not regard them. Of course they would complain, but it was wholly within the discretion of the court, and I have prepared myself to speak in conclusion.

I propose to make a short, concise homily, to be almost quasi judicial in its character. I will conclude the case. That is my position as the head of the case, and there I must be and there I will stand and propose to speak.

I do not desire to speak for the mere sake of speaking. It would give me great relief if I could be discharged from this duty, because I have undergone a great deal of labor this year, and I am pretty well worn out, and then, too, I feel that not having followed the case in court I might be at a disadvantage unless I had prepared myself in a certain way for a certain treatment of the case; as I have done, it will enable me to escape any criticism upon that score. I have most diligently and industriously read every atom of evidence that has been given, and read it more than once, and I have methodized and arranged the subject, both upon paper and in my own mind, and I have collated authorities which I intend to use.

I send you eleven copies of references to those authorities, some of which I will use, and all of which I may use. I do not know what your practice is here, but I do know that with us no authorities can be referred to in a concluding speech that have not either been referred to before, or which, having been cited, must be given to the other side when they begin their speeches. Now, I will have eleven copies of these references sent to you with this, and you may give one to each of the counsel on the other side, if the practice here requires it; if it do not, why keep them; but be careful that we live according to practice, for if we omit what we ought to do I might be excluded from reading these books, and then there would be some sort of contention got up in court, which I do not like to have. I want to go along smoothly without interruption; I want to conduct my part with gravity, in a temperate, straightforward, emphatic way, as I said before, with brevity, sobriety, and directly to the purpose, and with brevity enough not to disgust the jury with an oft-told tale, and yet with certainty and precision enough to bring their minds down to what I conceive to be a sober contemplation of the whole case in its proper aspect with reference to their duty to the community at large and the whole country.

Now, as to my speaking. I propose to speak last, because it is the position of the Attorney-General, and if I go into court in this case contrary to the custom I must stand where my official position places me and no where else. Then, again, if I were to speak last, and they claim to speak after me, and they were allowed to, I would certainly decline to speak if the court imposed such terms upon me, because I hold that the right of the Government to have the last word in all of these cases is so essential as a general principle that it would be a very unworthy thing for me to do to have a precedent set in this case that might be quoted hereafter to the prejudice of the Government, simply for the sake of speaking himself, so I desire it to be arranged that I may speak last, and without any human being following me except the judge. In that way I will maintain what is due to my office, my position in the case, and the practice under such circumstances, and the right of the Government to conclude. You may believe me that I have with patient industry endured more labor in the preparation of this case than I have in any other for a long while.