inent New Yorkers say that these prosecutions looked like as if the Attorney-Gene was trying to put the President in a hole. I told Mr. Bliss that he knew this was not true, and that it was his duty to correct such false impressions, and to say that the Attorney-General prosecuted these marshals solely as an act of duty. Mr. Bliss said he knew that the Attorney-General was a friend of the President, but that the President's friends generally did not know it and would not believe it so long as these prosecutions continued. "You may not know it," said Mr. Bliss, "but you are held answerable for these arrests, and I may as well say to you frankly, if this thing goes any further you will be removed." "I would like to know who will remove me, Mr. Bliss," I said; "certainly the Attorney-General will not, for he has carefully examined the evidence and personally directed proceedings to be instituted in each case. I have nothing to do with these cases further than faithfully to report the facts." Mr. Bliss said that sort of talk was all nonsense; that I could shape these investigations so as to insure a different result; that it was very easy for me, finally, to present the facts in such a manner as to make it appear to the Attorney-General that a criminal prosecution was not advisable; and Mr. Bliss added that if I was a friend of the Attorney-General, I had better observe these suggestions. I told Mr. Bliss I had too much respect for the Attorney-General to deceive him in that way or any other. I said, moreover, the plan he proposed would fail, for the Attorney-General examined the papers with too much care to be misled, unless I should suppress the evidence. Mr. Bliss said, "there is a good deal of irritation over there" (pointing to the White House), and that something had to be done or there would be trouble; that there could be no objection to prosecuting persons who were appointed by Hayes or Garfield, and who were detected in rendering false accounts, but if any more of the President's appointees were arrested I would certainly be removed, or if the Attorney-General declined to dismiss me he would be removed; and Mr. Bliss then repeated what he had said before about an appointment condoning past offenses. I told Mr. Bliss that he could not make me believe the President wanted these men retained in office. I said further that I had carefully observed the President's course, and there was nothing in it to warrant the language of Mr. Bliss. Mr. Bliss replied that the President was all right, and that he did not speak by the President's authority, but there were persons high in authority who had his ear, and who had determined to put a stop to these prosecutious in one of two ways: first, by my dismissal, or, failing in that, secondly, to remove the Attorney-General. Mr. Bliss said substantially that he spoke to me upon this subject, because he could not speak to the Attorney-General, who would resent as an intrusion the interference from any one not connected with the cases, but he said something must be done and done at once to prevent any more arrests, for there was already a sentiment of hostility to the Attorney-General that had impaired his usefulness as a member of the Cabinet. "Of course he has the hostility of the star-route thieves and other law-breakers," I said. “Oh, no,” said Mr. Bliss, “I do not refer to that class. There are responsible people, among others, two members of the Cabinet." "I do not believe there are two," I said. Mr. Bliss then reassured me that there were two members of the Cabinet who were hostile to the Attorney-General, and he said further that the Attorney-General was of no use to the President as an adviser, for the reason that he never expressed an opinion of his own, but always concurred in the views of the President. I asked Mr. Bliss if he spoke by the President's authority, and he said, “No, no; don't misunderstand me. I have no authority to speak for the President," but Mr. Bliss went on to say that he knew what he was talking about, and if I wanted to retain my position or see the Attorney-General retain his, that I had better not cause the arrest of any more marshals. I told Mr. Bliss I would speak to the Attorney-General about it. He said I must not do that, for he had spoken to me in confidence. As soon as I saw the Attorney-General I repeated to him the whole of Mr. Bliss's conversation. He condemned the conduct of Mr. Bliss for attempting to interfere with the administration of the law. I expected to see Mr. Bliss dismissed from the service of the Government, but the Attorney-General said, upon reflection, that the removal of Mr. Bliss at that time would be misunderstood and would be disastrous to the star-route cases. The next time I saw Mr. Bliss in my my office I told him I had repeated his remarks to the Attorney-General. Mr. Bliss turned pale and became very much agitated. He said I had been guilty of a wanton breach of confidence, for he had told me that his conversation was private. He said I might have refused to receive it, but I was in honor bound not to repeat it. I told Mr. Bliss he had not said his conversation was in confidence till it was over. If he had made secrecy a condition to anything he had to say about the Attorney General I would not have listened to a syllable. I told Mr. Bliss that every sense of honor required me to advise the Attorney-General of what he had said, for if he was speaking advisedly, as he pretended to be, and the Attorney-General desired to remain in office, he would be obliged to accept my resignation; and I further informed Mr. Bliss that I was too good a friend of the Attorney-General to complicate him for my own personal advantage, and that I had therefore tendered him my resignation as general agent of the Department of Justice, to take effect whenever he might think it advisable to accept the same. Mr. Bliss said he had spoken to me in strictest confidence and as a friend, for my own good, so as to temper my zeal. I asked Mr. Bliss, if it was not his purpose to deter me from doing my duty, what was his object in repeating to Mr. Ker substantially what he had said to me about my removal from office, &c., if these investigations continued to result in prosecutions. Mr. Bliss then wrote a letter to the Attorney-General in which he said that he was surprised and humiliated beyond expression to learn that I had repeated to him, &c. The Attorney-General replied that when accusations were preferred against marshals or deputies and made good by sufficient proof that he would follow, expose, and punish them; and wherever the law laid its hands on a man as a culprit and a wrongdoer against the Government, and it came within his immediate jurisdiction and direct knowledge, that he would follow him according to law; and when he could not do that without molestation or hinderance, he wrote Mr. Bliss that he would leave his place. Mr. Bliss subsequently came to my office and said he had seen the Attorney-General. He was greatly alarmed lest the Attorney-General should report the matter to the President. Mr. Bliss then spoke in high terms of the Attorney-General and of the President's respect for him. Mr. Bliss complained to me that I had given a coloring to his language which conveyed an impression to the mind of the Attorney-General wholly different. from what he wished to convey. I repeated to Mr. Bliss what he had said, especially, about an appointment condoning all past offenses. Mr. Bliss said he still insisted that that was a correct theory, and he did not complain about that, but that I was either very stupid or perverse or I never would have repeated to the Attorney-General, in the bungling way I must have done to have made all this trouble, what he (Bliss) said about the possible removal of the AttorneyGeneral. I intimated to Mr. Bliss, if he would have any trouble, that he had brought it upon himself by using the President's name without authority. Subsequently Mr. Bliss told Mr. Ker substantially that he would punish me by interfering with the appropriation for the examination of accounts out of which the examiners are paid. Mr. Bliss to Mr. Brewster. (Personal.) BREWSTER CAMERON. MONDAY, A. M. (Received June 6, 1883.) DEAR SIR: I learn to my surprise and mortification that Mr. Cameron has repeated to you a conversation I had with him, giving to it, I judge, a coloring and importance neither it nor the facts justify. I did not intend that you should be bothered about the matter. As it has come to your ears, I will take an early opportunity to call and explain the whole thing to you that it may cease to worry you, if it has had that effect. Your obedient servant, GEORGE BLISS. Hon. BENJ. HARRIS BREWSTER. Mr. Brewster to Mr. Bliss. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, MY DEAR SIR: I have spoken to no one upon the subject of what I understood you had said of me but to Mr. Chandler. I said in a very general way only that you had spoken harshly of me, even to him, and I did not tell him that it was Mr. Cameron who repeated it to me. I was hurt, for if I had done anything to annoy or interfere with you I thought it was your place to come to me directly. I am certain I never did anything to annoy you or interfere with you, but on the contrary the last I heard of what you had said of me was most encouraging words of applause and warm words of thankfulness; that I had ever been cordial, friendly, and encouraging to you-in fact, to that degree that you hesitated to come to me, as I always assented to what you said, and you feared to ask too much. I thought if there was any one here with whom I had become acquainted since I had been connected with this office, or immediately before it, whose affectionate friendship I enjoyed, it was yours, and I am sure I never had a thought that was hostile or unfriendly to you. In your letter you say that Mr. Cameron, you judge, has given a coloring and importance to the matter. Of course, you must infer that, for I entered into no particulars and gave no details to Mr. Chandler. Mr. Cameron is not hostile to you; that I well know, and he did not repeat what he said as an act of hostility or in a spirit of hostility. I never heard him say anything of you except in a spirit of respectful regard, and as a gentleman who was his senior, in whom he had confidence and for whom he had respect. He did report to me, as it was his duty to do, in a straightforward, simple, calm way the conversation you had with him, which I said, and still say, you ought to have had with me, and not with my subordinate or any other person. I was hurt. I will not go into the details of it now, for most of it I have forgotten, and all of it I want to forget. I wish to keep alive friendly relations with you. We began in cordiality, and it shall be no fault of mine if you are not cordial with me to the end. You know very well the anxieties and vexations that have surrounded me. Part of them have been connected with you in this terrible prosecution that you have had in charge, and which has attracted on me as a focal point the open, avowed, aggressive hostility of the worst men in the United States of America, scattered over its surface from Maine to the remotest Territory-the jobbers and public plunderers and conspiring thieves, and their hatred and hostility is my public compliment. I despise them, and if I can I will punish them, no matter where they are, no matter what they have been; and when accusations are preferred against marshals or deputies, and made good by sufficient proof, I will follow, expose, and punish them, despising them and their vulgar threats; and wherever the law lays its hand upon a man as a culprit and a wrongdoer against the Government, and it comes within my immediate jurisdiction and my direct knowledge, I will follow him according to law, and when I cannot do that without molestation or hinderance I will leave my place. I took it up with honor and I will lay it down with honor as clean as I took it. If these inen, any of them, who rail at me and threaten me had any claim in the remotest way to the status of gentlemen, by association with gentlemen, I would say to them: Gentlemen never threaten, and gentlemen never regard threats; but, as they are a despicable set of low-bred scoundrels, I can only say I despise them. Now, again, I say I have no desire to have other than cordial, friendly feelings to you. If it is your wish to speak with me about it I will suggest that you first see Mr. Cameron, and learn from him what he did say to me, and then come with him to me and we can talk together in the same spirit of friendship and good feeling tha we began in, and as I supposed had maintained to this time. I am truly, &c., Col. GEORGE BLISS, BENJAMIN HARRIS BREWSTER. Mr. Bliss to Mr. Brewster. NEW YORK, November 30, 1883. MY DEAR SIR: For some months I have felt that while you showed me every personal kindness, the atmosphere, so to speak, of the Department of Justice was not so kindly, so confidential to me as it was. I traced various unkind remarkssome of them almost slurs-to Mr. Cameron. They dated from about the time when, with the kindest feeling to him, near the time of the Strobach prosecution, I urged upon him that there had been two or three cases in which immediately after the President had appointed marshals or district attorneys the Department of Justice had instituted prosecutions for antecedent matters, and told him that while I believed the persons prosecuted were rascals, I felt that the prosecutions were either too soon or too late, and that no administration could or would permit many repetitions of such a course. I urged tact, judgment, discretion in such cases. Mr. Cameron obviously took what I said not so kindly as it was meant. Yours, very truly, Hon. BENJAMIN HARRIS BREWSTER. GEORGE BLISS. Extract from letter of George Bliss to Attorney-General, dated New York, November 30, 1833. I have had or thought I had reason to complain of Mr. Cameron, but have not done 80, and to you have taken pains to speak, as you remind me, of his many good qualities. I do believe him a very valuable man to you and to the Government, and think it would be a sad day for both should he leave. But frankly, I think he is, as the sayingis, "getting too big for his boots." He has passed beyond the stage of taking counsel. He does and induces you to do things which while abstractly right are under the circumstances not wise to do at all, or not wise to do in the way he does them. You must of course rely upon him, must take his hasty statements of the reasons for this or that letter. He must be your sieve. In that capacity he needs some tact and discretion. He has become self-reliant, self-asserting. He subjects you and the Department to criticism; gives cause for enemies to chuckle and make capital against you and the administration. Understand me. Even if this must continue, as a condition of his continuance with you, I should say he is so valuable that you must keep him cum oneris, but I do wish you could tone these things down; not on my account at all, not on your account solely, but on account of the administration. Mr. Brewster to Mr. Bliss. MY DEAR MR. BLISS : DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, By the by, as to what you say in your letter to me about Mr. Cameron's having people indicted who are recently appointed by the Government, I do not subscribe to what you say about that, nor will the moral sense of the world at large. It would be straining political necessity pretty far to say that it is not the best thing an administration could do to expose and punish its own delinquent appointees. The inspectors who went out to pursue these people have hitherto been negligent of their duty. Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been stolen from the public Treasury by these marshals, and their corrupt lives and vicious practices have brought discredit upon the Republican party, and it is the shame of their misconduct, scattered throughout the country, that has created this sense of hostile opposition in the way of independents within our own ranks. Better that we should perish and expose them than our enemies do so; better that we should get rid of these fungi, that are a stench in the nostrils of the Republican community in which they live and over whom they exercise official authority. There is no per They were strangers to Mr. Cameron; they were strangers to me. sonality in it; that must be plain to you and to anybody. They were not hunted up because they had been appointees of the party. They were not hunted up at all. The examiners who went out to do their duty went out to do it without knowing who he was, without knowing whether a man had been appointed to-day or a year ago, and they treated him according as his accounts appeared, having no knowledge of him, and no purpose except the truth. The result was that one of them went to the penitentiary, where he ought to be, and his punishment was an honor and a credit to the administration, and the result was that the other was indicted, when he ought to have been; for although acquitted, I must tell you here that, impressed with the complaints that were made that undue severity had been exercised toward Mr. Strobach, I directed the transcript of the trial, and all the evidence, and the judge's charge, and everything connected with that case, to be laid before every assistant attorney-general in the Department of Justice, including the Solicitor-General, and had the judgment of each separately, neither one of them knowing that the other had passed upon it; and the judgment of all thus taken was that Paul Strobach ought to have been convicted. I did this without expressing a word of my own opinion. In fact, I had no opinion, because I did not read the testimony, being resolved to be impartial to the last minute, and being resolved that the investigation thus made by me should be made in an honest spirit and in an impartial spirit, so that if it turned out that the man had been persecuted, and his acquittal was a just one, in the opinion of the majority of the gentlemen, I would have dealt with Mr. Cameron upon the spot, if there had been any evidence of his complicity in such severity, and I would have dismissed the examiner who occasioned the prosecutions. And now upon the record of the Department lie these opinions, these individual opinions, these unbiased opinions, of every one of these gentlemen, from the Solicitor-General down, condemning that verdict-a verdict obtained (as I have been informed by a great deal of honest testimony it was) by the skillful manner in which Mr. Strobach prepared his own jury. H. Mis. 38, pt. 2- -61 This I tell you for your satisfaction, for I know very well that it will give you pleasure to know that all of this complaint which these evil-disposed men have instigated is, in the judgment of impartial men, not well founded. If they are entitled to the benefit of doubts, I am very sure that the Department of Justice, and myself particularly, acting from no personal motive, and from no personal knowledge of these men, and only governed by a desire to do a high public duty in an honest way, that I am entitled to the benefit of an honest doubt, too, both as to the integrity of my purpose, and the regularity of my action, and the honest policy of it, too. Very respectfully, your friend, BENJAMIN HARRIS BREWSTER, Attorney-General. Col. GEORGE BLISS, 160 Broadway, New York City. Mr. Brewster to Mr. Springer. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, SIR: I have the honor to transmit a copy of an affidavit of Frederick C. Shaw, a member of the panel from which the first star-route jury was drawn, and copies of two affidavits of James A. Nelson, who swear that they were employed in the interest of the defense to corrupt the jury in the star-route cases. These sworn statements were obtained in the investigation which has lately been made into the subject under the supervision of Mr. Woodward, of the Post Office Department. It was intended to have this matter brought before the committee in the form of oral testimony, with other evidence which would have been developed in the course of the personal examination of these witnesses, but having learned with regret that the committee, owing to the press of other things, and the time being limited, were unable to give it a hearing, though desiring the evidence and having summoned the witnesses, I forward the above-mentioned affidavits for the information of the committee, and with the request that the same may appear in your record to be considered in connection with the result of the star-route trials. I, James A. Nelson, residing at No. 20 Covington street, between Q and R and Ninth and Tenth streets, northwest, do depose and say as follows: About the time that I was employed by the defense in the star-route cases, namely, the first Monday in December, 1882, I was engaged by Mr. A. B. Williams to look out and watch Government counsel, Government spotters, and the members of the star-route jury. My instructions from Mr. Williams was to report to him daily whatever I could find out about the parties named, and such other general information as might be of use to the defendants in the star-route cases, and particularly to watch the jury, see what connections they made at morning, noon, and night. I was continuously employed and reported to Mr. A. B. Williams on these matters from the time named until the Saturday after the verdict in the second trial. During the second trial of the star-route cases, Crossn an, who was the agent or partner of John H. Crane, foreman of the jury, was daily around the court-house, and I saw him frequently in communication with Mr. John H. Crane aforesaid and the said A. B. Williams. Said Crossman was constantly around the corner of the court-house east and north of the city hall, where the jury were locked up during the time the jury were in their room, after they were charged by the judge, and I saw the said Crane send or give signals to said Crossman from the east side of the jury-room. The window Crane had was the second one from the northeast corner of the building. I saw said Crane signal from said second window to said Crossman and to A. B. Williams, from said window, and saw both of those gentlemen respond that they understood what he meant. Crane made nine motions with a fan he had in his right hand and by three taps on the window with his |