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"If there be a citizen of the United States who is willing to believe that for three hundred and twenty-nine dollars I have bartered away my good name and to falsehood have added perjury, these words are not addressed to him. If there be one who thinks that any part of my public life has been gauged on so low a level as these charges would place it, I do not address him. I address those who are willing to believe that it is possible for a man to serve the public without personal dishonor. I have endeavored in this review to point out the means by which the managers of a corporation, wearing a garb of honorable industry have robbed and defrauded a great national enterprise, and attempted by cunning and deception, for selfish ends, to enlist in its interests those who would have been the first to crush the attempt had their objects been known.

"If any of scheming corporations or corrupt rings that have done so much to disgrace the country by their attempts to control its legislation, have ever found in me a conscious supporter or ally in any dishonorable scheme, they are at full liberty to disclose it. In the discussion of the many grave and difficult questions of public policy which have occupied the thoughts of the nation during the last twelve years, I have borne some part, and I confidently appeal to the public records for a vindication of my conduct.

All minor charges growing out of the above principal ones, it is not necessary to discuss, as they naturally fall to the ground with the collapse of the main accusations.

Perhaps the reader may say to himself here, that the author's admiration for the subject of his sketch has colored his views in regard to this transaction. To meet this we oppose, first, the absolute faith and confidence in General Garfield held by all Republicans, notably so those of Ohio, who investigated their representative, only to reaffirm their belief in his positive consistent integrity.

Judge Poland, chairman of the investigating committee, expressed himself the other day thus:

"At the time of the investigation the public mind was greatly excited on the subject, and it involved the character and reputation of so many prominent men, that probably no

mere personal matter ever was so thoroughly canvassed and discussed by the reading and intelligent people of this country. After the most exhaustive discussion and reflection, the judgment of the people of this country was made up as to each man who was named as connected with it. Saying nothing in regard to any other man, I think I may most truthfully say that this public and popular judgment fully and absolutely acquitted General Garfield of all wrong, either in act or intent, in relation to the matter. No man could have been continued in public life, and constantly risen in public standing and in the public estimation, by the consent and approval of the best men of both parties, as General Garfield has, if there existed a suspicion of wrong-doing against him. I regard this popular and continued verdict of the people as conclusive."

Second, we oppose the opinions of some of the more prominent Democrats. The Hon. Henry B. Payne, of Cleve. land; the Hon. Allen G. Thurman, of Ohio; Henry Watterson, of Kentucky, and others equally prominent, have all declared their belief in General Garfield's absolute incorruptibility, and his entire integrity, during his long public career. That they are in good company in so believing and testifying, the following letter will prove :

"PHILADELPHIA, Februrary 15th, 1873. "MY DEAR SIR:-From the beginning of the investigation concerning Mr. Ames' use of the Credit Mobilier, I believed that General Garfield was free from all guilty connection with that business. This opinion is founded not merely on my confidence in his integrity, but on some special knowledge of his case. I may have told you all about it in conversation, but I desire now to repeat it by way of a reminder.

"I assert unhesitatingly that, whatever General Garfield may have done or forborne to do, he acted in profound ignorance of the nature and character of the thing which Mr. Ames was proposing to sell. He had not the slightest suspicion that he was to be taken into a ring organized for the purpose of defrauding the public, nor did he know that the stock was in any manner connected with anything which came, or could come, within the legislative jurisdiction of Congress.

The case against him lacks the scienter which alone constitutes guilt.

"In the winter of 1869-'70, I told General Garfield of the fact that his name was on Ames' list; that Ames charged him with being one of his distributees; explained to him the character, origin and objects of the Credit Mobilier; pointed out the connection it had with Congressional legislation, and showed him how impossible it was for a member of Congress to hold stock in it without bringing his private interests in conflict with his public duty. That all this was to him a perfectly new revelation I am as sure as I can be of such a fact, or of any fact which is capable of being proved only by moral circumstances. He told me then the whole story of Train's offer to him and Ames' subsequent solicitation, and his own action in the premises, much as he details it to the committee. I do not undertake to reproduce the conversation, but the effect of it all was to convince me thoroughly that when he listened to Ames he was perfectly unconscious of anything evil. I watched carefully every word that fell from him on this point, and did not regard his narrative of the transaction in other respects with much interest, because in my view everything else was insignificant. I did not care whether he had made a bargain technically binding or not; his integrity depended upon the question whether he acted with his eyes open. If he had known the true character of the proposition made to him he would not have endured it, much less embraced it.

"Now, couple this with Mr. Ames' admission that he gave no explanation whatever of the matter to General Garfield, then reflect that not a particle of proof exists to show that he learned anything about it previous to his conversation with me, and I think you will say that it is altogether unjust to put him on the list of those who knowingly and willfully joined the fraudulent association in question.

"J. S. BLACK.

"HON. J. G. BLAINE, Speaker of the House of Representatives."

And one further word, from Donn Piatt, who went into this matter thoroughly:

"General Garfield, personally considered, is singularly pure and upright. He is one of the few men in public life who can look his beautiful little wife and lovely children in the face without shame. We say this advisedly, for we have

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known General Garfield intimately all his public life, and we can advise the mud machine, called partisan papers, that attempts at blackmailing Garfield's character will be signal failures, and will be met by protests from such eminent Democrats as the Hons. Jeremiah Black, Allen G. Thurman and Justice Field, who have already put themselves to record in his behalf. Garfield's purity is so thorough that it gives him a perilous confidence in men, and has gotten him into trouble, precisely as a confiding boy gets into scrapes. In that Credit Mobilier affair, for example, we know, and have so testified, that at the very time it was claimed he was scheming to enrich himself through Ames' rascality, he was 'shinning' about Washington, striving to borrow $300 to pay house rent, and so ignorant of the commonest financial process that he did not know how to negotiate an ordinary note of hand. He has not only lived in the open air, but has occupied positions where, like other leaders, he could have winked himself into millions. He holds to-day the honored position of being the only poor man among the political leaders.'

Republican papers have naturally acquitted him, openly, frankly, fully. Such of the independent papers as are entitled to that name, and have not adopted it as a cover to obtain a wider publicity for doctrines that do not thrive when printed in an openly Democratic organ, have also acquitted him. One of the best of the honestly independent papers is the Boston Herald. It said of Garfield, and its words may be taken as representing that class: "Nobody but an idiot, moved by partisan rage or the necessity for bread and butter, would dare accuse Garfield of dishonesty."

W'

CHAPTER II.

E will now consider the rest of the charges.

The

second set relate to the De Golyer Contract for wood pavement in the city of Washington.

The charges are: (1.) That in the year 1872 General Garfield received a counsel fee of five thousand dollars from De Golyer and McClelland, the owners of a patent for wood pavement which was laid down at a great cost in the streets of the city of Washington, under a contract with the Government of the District of Columbia. (2.) That he did no counsel work in the case. (3.) That the money was paid for

no other purpose than to influence his conduct as a member of the Congress by which an appropriation for this wood pavement was made, and especially as Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations of the House of Representatives.

In regard to them, General Garfield testified before the Investigating Committee:

"The whole story is plainly and briefly told. A day or two before the adjournment of the Congress which adjourned in the latter part of May or the first part of June, 1872, Richard C. Parsons, who was a practicing lawyer in Cleveland, but was then the Marshal of the Supreme Court, and an old acquaintance of mine, came to my house and said that he was called away summarily by important business; that he was retained in a case on which he had spent a great deal of time, and that there was but one thing remaining to be done, to make a brief of the relative merits of a large number of wooden pavements; that the board of public works had agreed that they would put down a certain amount of wooden pavement in the city, a certain amount of concrete, and a certain amount of other kinds of pavement; that they had fixed the price at which they would put down each of the different kinds, and that the only thing remaining was to deter