Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

part in an investigation, and I, on account of some things which had occurred in the past, did not propose that I should be employed without the approval of the President. I made the condition that he should be advised of it and his approval obtained. While in New York I received a telegraphic dispatch to come here; I came here and met Mr. James and Mr. Woodward at Attorney-General MacVeagh's house on Rhode Island avenue, and had some talk with them there. I believe that is the first time I had met Mr. James; I am quite certain that I never called on him at the Department, nor ever made any exhibit to him of any papers or statements. The conference at Mr. MacVeagh's house lasted for some time; and subsequent to that, probably in a day or two, I called upon Mr. MacVeagh at his request at the Department, and came up with him to the Capitol, and remained here while he disposed of a case in the Supreme Court.

Mr. VAN ALSTYNE. Is all this detail material?

The CHAIRMAN. Yes. This relates to his employment.

The WITNESS. I have no desire to go into any detail.

The CHAIRMAN. The question is as to the value of Mr. Gibson's services, and he started out by saying that he had been paid $5,000, and he is proceeding to show that it was only reasonable compensation for his services.

Mr. STEWART. Has anybody questioned the value of Mr. Gibson's services?

The WITNESS. It has been questioned.

Mr. STEWART. It was approved by the Attorney-General, and if the chairman of the committee does not question the propriety of the charge, it seems to me better not to waste any time in justifying it. The CHAIRMAN. It was a subject of comment at the time, I remember.

By Mr. VAN ALSTYNE:

Q. How many interviews did you have with these gentlemen before you were finally employed or instructed to proceed?—A. I think two, sir.

Q. When did you receive those instructions ?-A. Some time about the 22d of April.

Q. And from that time you commenced investigations in addition to those that you had been making previously on your own account into the conduct of the Post-Office Department ?-A. I brought with me the result of investigations which I had made, particularly of the services for the contract term beginning July 1, 1878.

Q. And that was in substance what you had on a former occasion exhibited to Mr. Garfield while he was a member of the House?-A. I had exhibited to him the table of ninety-three routes, which was a summary of a good part of it, which gave a concise view of it.

Q. Did your summary of the 93 routes disclose the relation which Dorsey occupied to the increased pay?—A. Only as some of Mr. Dorsey's routes were included. I will state, for the information of the committee, that you cannot tell who is the real party in interest as it appears upon the books. Gentlemen who are engaged in carrying the mails do not always bid in their own name, and the contracts are not always in their own names. Therefore it requires some person who has some knowledge of people engaged in the business to know who are the real parties. A man may have half a dozen people who bid and the contracts are made of course in the name of the accepted bidder. I went to the Post-Office Department when Mr. MacVeagh told me that my services were needed, and I began and organized the investigation. Hav

ing these exhibits already made it was a comparatively easy matter, and after some days' looking over the matter and talking it over, I recommended that a number of routes be selected and inspectors of the Postoffice Department sent out to examine them, and a number of the inspectors of the Department were summoned here from different points, and I drew up the instructions for them. The object was that reliable men should go over the routes, ascertain the character of the country traversed, the number of people, approximately, at the intermediate points, and how the service was performed, whether it was carried upon horseback or buckboard, or in a stage-coach, the number of men employed, and the number of horses used. These gentlemen came here and they were furnished with these instructions, with a map of the routes, abstracts from the route books giving the terminal and intermediate points, and the various orders that had been made upon the routes, and a copy of the oath made by the contractors, and they went out to make their examinations. In the mean time the Attorney-General sent for me one day and I went up to his office. He took me to one side and said that Mr. Dorsey had made a written statement of his connection with the mail contracts, accompanied by some exhibits which had been shown to the President and to Mr. Windom (Secretary of the Treasury), and that that statement had made an impression favorable to Mr. Dorsey and that some answer had to be prepared to it, and he gave me the paper and instructed me to make an answer to it. I examined the paper. It was a very able and very ingenious statement. I began very soon to make the necessary preparations to answer it. At the same time a number of persons had been engaged in bidding for routes, usually small routes in the different States, East, North, West and South. Mr. A. E. Boone was the principal party, he having been a clerk in the Sixth Auditor's office who had subsequently engaged with Mr. Dorsey in the original bidding, and I found upon examination that these different parties had a great many routes and that there were uniformly the same bondsmen. I called upon the Postmaster-General for two inspectors to make an examinatian of these bondsmen and ascertain whether they had any property. Mr. Shallcross and Mr. Tidball were directed to make that examination.

Q. Who were the bondsmen ?—A. Oh, there were quite a number of them. Another clerk, Mr. Finley, I set to work to make a schedule from the papers in the contract office of the number of routes and the bonds in which the same bondsmen appeared. That required a great deal of time and attention. This work ran along until the President was shot. I had made some progress on the answer to Mr. Dorsey's statement. At the same time I had taken up route 40101, from Santa Fé to Prescott, and San Antonio to Corpus Christi, and another route in Texas, which I considered the strongest cases that I had discovered up to that time, and they were prepared and made ready for such proceedings as might be determined upon. After preparing those particular cases, I was directed by the Attorney-General to prepare a general report upon the star-route service, which involved a great deal of work, examination of the work of the inspectors, as well as of all the records in the Department, and it was finished about the 1st of November. Meantime, the Attorney-General had gone with the President and the other Cabinet officers to Elberon, and I think about the 15th of September, or probably a little earlier than that, he telegraphed me to meet him there with Mr. Cook. Upon calling upon Mr. Cook I learned that he had received a letter from the Attorney-General, and that the object was to meet Mr. Bliss to confer with him. I took along the papers in

the case of route 40101, from Santa Fé to Prescott and San Antonio to Corpus Christi, and the papers in the Dorsey case. We had a two-days' conference there, and the result was a determination to proceed in the case of route 40101 by submitting it to the grand jury. Mr. Cook returned immediately to Washington for that purpose, and I was delayed a day or two longer. When Mr. Cook reached here the grand jury had been adjourned. It was then determined to proceed by information, the statute of the District of Columbia allowing process by information. The matter was examined very carefully by Mr. Brewster, and Mr. Bliss, and Mr. Cook, and Colonel Cook and myself proceeded to prepare to change the indictments into an information, and that was filed. In the meantime my report on the general subject of the star-route service was completed about the time Mr. MacVeagh retired. He had left very soon after the President's funeral, and he came over some time in the latter part of October or early part of November and sent for me, and I met him at Wormley's Hotel. He told me that he had come over to take formal leave of the Department and turn it over to the SolicitorGeneral. He asked about my report, and I told him I had practically finished it, and proposed to bring it to him. He said no, he was going out, and to make the report to the Postmaster-General by his direction, which I did. Mr. James, I believe, a little after that, went to New York and was gone some time. He returned here and remained a week or ten days to complete his annual report previous to going to Florida on a trip. I obeyed the instructions of the Attorney-General, and submitted the report to the Postmaster-General, and he directed that it should accompany his annual report to Congress. I left and went to New York.

By Mr. VAN ALSTYNE:

Q. It was published in Ex. Doc. No. 1, part 4, Forty-seventh Congress, first session?-A. Yes, sir.

By the CHAIRMAN:

Q. This is the report to which you refer ?-A. Yes, sir. This had been put in type; but while I was in New York, Mr. Finley telegraphed me that there was some trouble about it, and I came back here and found that quite a tempest in a teapot had been raised about this report. It had led to some complications, to a dispute with the Solicitor-General, and to publications in the newspapers, which were inspired by officers of the Department of Justice, to the effect that I had no connection with the Department whatever, the practical effect of which was that the Department of Justice was arrayed on the side of the accused persons. Practically my connection with the cases terminated at that time. I had something to do subsequent to that with the prepa ration of some indictments, and appeared before the grand jury in one

case.

By Mr. MILLIKEN:

Q. What date was this?-A. This in regard to the report was some time in the latter part of November.

Q. Was that the time that your services terminated?-A. My services terminated formally-I resigned some time in January, 1882, I think.

Q. What time did your services commence?-A. On the 22d of April, 1881.

Q. What did you say about the Department of Justice being on the side of the accused?-A. I said that on account of the row that was

raised about this report of mine on the general subject of the star-route service, officers of the Department of Justice caused publications to be made in the various newspapers to the effect that I had no connection with the Department of Justice, and was not authorized to make any such report; the effect of which was, so far as the public was concerned, to array the Department of Justice on the side of the accused.

Q. What do you mean by "so far as the public is concerned ?”—A. The general public.

By Mr. STEWART:

Q. Do you mean to say that in the estimation of the public, or that in fact, the Department of Justice was arrayed on the side of the ac cused?-A. I mean to say that the effect of the publications was to lead the public to suppose that the Department was arrayed on the side of the accused.

By the CHAIRMAN:

Q. They were intended to have that effect on the public mind?—A. Undoubtedly they were intended to have that effect.

By Mr. MILLIKEN:

Q. Who raised this row?-A. Well, Mr. Woodward was the originator of it.

Q. What did the row consist in? What was it? What kind of a row was it?—A. Objections to the report. Mr. Bliss requested me to change the report and address it to the Solicitor-General, and to send the Solicitor-General a proof-slip of it, stating that he (Mr. Bliss) had had a conversation with Mr. Phillips, and that that was all that would be necessary. I had occasion to go to New York, and I left on the same afternoon that the proof-slip was sent to the Solicitor-General, and the chief clerk of the Department of Justice declined to receive it. That led to a correspondence between the Solicitor-General and myself; but I have no desire to go into anything of the kind here. The records of the Department speak for themselves. It resulted also in Mr. MacVeagh writing two letters, which I will put in evidence here.

LAW OFFICE OF WAYNE MACVEAGH, GEO. TUCKER BISPHAM,
402 WALNUT STREET, PHILADELPHIA,
December 2, 1881.

MY DEAR SIR: I inclose you a copy of a letter I have just written to Mr. Phillips, in reply to his request for information on the subject of your appointment, which I trust will be satisfactory.

I have not yet received a copy of the exhibits annexed to your report, but the report itself is certainly most admirable. To my mind it is a clear, forcible, unanswerable statement, enabling any person of ordinary intelligence to understand the origin, the methods, and the results of the star-route robbery.

In view of the appalling records they have themselves made, and of the white light in which you have placed them, so that " a wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein," they do well in trying to shift the public attention from them and their frauds to the men who have brought them to the notice of the honest people of the country.

For myself, it is a dull day now when the thieves or their apologists do not invent at least one new falsehood about me. As, however, I have only done my duty, they do not even annoy me.

Very truly, yours,

To A. M. GIBSON, Esq.

WAYNE MACVEAGH.

The following is a copy of the copy of the letter to Mr. Phillips inclosed with the above:

PHILADELPHIA, December 2, 1881.

MY DEAR SIR: It goes without saying that you could no more desire to embarrass Mr. Gibson in his work than I could. Such an idea could never enter your head about me or my head about you. The story of Mr. Gibson's appointment is briefly this: Mr. Woodward and the Postmaster-General represented to me the necessity for the constant presence at the Post-Office Department of a representative of the Department of Justice who would work in entire harmony with Mr. Woodward, and under the supervision of the Postmaster-General, in the investigation and preparation for trial of the star-route cases. Mr. Woodward recommended Mr. Gibson very warmly, and the Postmaster-General as warmly indorsed the request. Their request seemed to me to be entirely proper, and as the cases were to be tried in the District of Columbia, it seemed to me equally proper to appoint the person they desired an assistant attorney of the District. The result was that, after obtaining the approval of the President, I informed Mr. Gibson that he was appointed at the request of and for the purposes mentioned by the Postmaster-General and Mr. Woodward, and directed him to devote himself to the work in question.

I certainly supposed the usual formalities had been observed, but it seems those formalities were omitted. Mr. Gibson's appointment was, however, matter of public notoriety. It was, I feel sure, very generally published at the time, and I remember to have been told that it was made, for a considerable period, the ground of accusations in the star-route organs against the Postmaster-General and myself.

I was therefore surprised when, before leaving the Department, I learned that there was no formal record of Mr. Gibson's appointment, and I hastily wrote him the note to which you allude. That is the whole story so far as my recollection about it now serves me, but if anything else occurs to you I will be very glad to give any further aid I can to place the matter upon a proper basis.

Very truly, yours,

Hon. SAMUEL F. PHILLIPS,

Department of Justice, Washington, D. C.

WAYNE MACVEAGH.

The letter from Mr. MacVeagh to Mr. Phillips satisfied the latter, and my report was received. Mr. Phillips was simply mislead in the mat

ter.

Q. What were the formalities which had been omitted? You were not commissioned and sworn?—A. The formality is a letter stating that you are employed.

By Mr. STEWART:

Q. If I understand you, I gather from what you say that there was some difficulty which arose between Mr. Woodward and yourself as to some point of official etiquette. Was not that about it?-A. I knew nothing of it.

Q. Do you know what Mr. Woodward's complaint was?-A. He never made any complaint to me.

Q. That is not the question whether he made any to you, but whether you know what his point was?-A. Oh, after I came back from New York Mr. Woodward complained about it, and I assured him that I had no intention whatever.

Q. I am only trying to get at the fact.-A. Oh, you are under a misapprehension if you understood me to say anything of the kind.

Q. Well, you have intimated that Mr. Woodward made some trouble about it, and the point I was getting at was that it should, in justice to him, appear that there was some difference as to some point of official etiquette.-A. I understood, but Mr. Woodward did not say to me that be thought this ought to have been a joint report. You understand that I was simply obeying the instructions of the Attorney-General to make the report. The report was read at various times to Mr. Woodward, but, as he stated, he did not understand the general purport of

« AnteriorContinuar »