The "Strikers" of the Washington Lobby

AN incident that occurred in the second year of the war illustrated anew the danger there is in drawing an inference from an incomplete statement of facts. A large steamer with two thousand troops on board lay in Boston Harbor, with steam up, ready to sail for Ship Island, the rendezvous of the expedition against New Orleans. The island was already crowded with soldiers, and this ship-load was to be the last. The commander of the military part of the expedition was at a hotel in Boston that morning, and the captain of the steamer only awaited his coming on board to put to sea. The weather was fine ; there was the usual crowd on the wharves to witness and cheer the departure of the vessel; everything was in readiness, even to the stationing of the sailors at their posts. But the general did not appear. The morning passed, the afternoon wore away, the sun set, and yet he came not. The next day passed, and still no general. A week, two weeks, three weeks, two days more than three weeks, elapsed before the general in command came on board and gave the order to sail; and during all that long period he gave no explanation of the delay, and seemed wholly indifferent with regard to it. Beyond taking minute and effectual precautions for the preservation of the health of the men on board, and running down to Washington now and then, he appeared to be doing nothing, and to enjoy his leisure. He went so far as to invite people to dinner, and took rides into the country, and was said even to indulge in the national game of euchre ; but this last statement I believe to have been a slander. I have had the pleasure of seeing General Butler in almost every variety of circumstances, and in all moods, but never have I beheld him reduced to such a condition of mental vacuity as that would imply.

Now, this huge steamer, with her fires banked up and her dense population of twenty-two hundred men, lay during those twenty-three days in sight of Boston, and every newspaper that appeared mentioned the fact that she had not yet sailed. It was also made known to the public that the steamer was chartered at three thousand dollars a day. Every one asked, Why this delay ? and, in the absence of knowledge, many men conjectured a reason. Human nature abhors a vacuum of tins kind, and will be guessing, inferring, or, alas ! inventing. Here was an incomplete exhibition of facts. Here was a fallow field prepared for a growth of falsehood.

And here I beg leave to suggest that, if ever there is another great book produced in this world, it should be a treatise upon the Natural History of Lies. Any one almost, who has occasion to handle the materials of which history or biography is made, will soon begin to suspect that there are laws which govern the generation, dissemination, and extinction of lies, just as there are laws which control the production and dissemination of thistles and weeds. An observing farmer knows very well what trees will spring up in an abandoned field, and what trees will take the place of a forest destroyed by a fire or laid low by the axe. He knows where to look for mushrooms and where for mullein-stalks, and in what circumstances clover may be expected. Science has in some degree explained these things, so that we now understand why, when a wood is cut down, the trees that spring up upon the vacant soil are of a different kind from those that stood there before ; why the rich loam of the old farm-yard bubbles up into mushrooms, and the hot sand of the roadside produces mullein ; and why watery melons thrive best in dry places, and dry grain in a soil that retains moisture.

After twenty years spent in trying to extract truth from the tangle of falsehood that usually surrounds it, I have the strong impression that lies do not start into being by chance, and that the laws governing their production could be, by a lifetime of well-directed study, ascertained. It would also be possible, perhaps, to show why one honest man is so credulous of evil that he believes readily, and repeats with alacrity and with exaggeration, every tale that blackens a human character ; and why another honest man, no better than the other, should be so incredulous of evil that he shuts his mind against every accusation until irresistible testimony compels him to open it.

In the absence of any Philosophy of Falsehood, I will venture to assert that there is a general tendency in human nature to believe the worst. It is human to people the unknown with horrors. It belongs to the childhood of our race to think that there are things of terror hidden in the depths of the Druids’ forest, and that mortals fall dead upon the shores of enchanted islands. The more ignorant a sect, the more horrible is its hell, and the more use it makes of it. It is said that peasants generally think that profound wickedness is committed in castles and mansions, and many of us know how grossly the mansion sometimes misconceives and undervalues the cottage. At the Bowery Theatre they often have plays in which what is called high life is misrepresented. Invariably the villain of the piece, the crafty seducer of innocence, is a person living in great splendor in a fashionable street, and the virtuous hero who delivers the damsel from his clutches is a workingman in a checked or a red shirt. The Bowery knows something about human nature in the Bowery, and believes it virtuous, — as it is ; but it is ignorant of human nature in the Fifth Avenue, and thinks it wicked, — which it is not.

A popular explanation of the steamer’s delay was, that the general in command had an interest in the charter, and was pocketing several hundred dollars a day by keeping the ship, Admiral Farragut, the fleet, and the army waiting. It is not easy to grasp the stupendous improbability of this theory; and yet, such is the constitution of some minds, that there were people who believed it; educated people, too. If John Adams had been alive, he would have believed it, and put it down in his diary. It is, I repeat, the nature of some men to have minds wide open to injurious falsehood. I need hardly remind the reader, that the true reason why the steamer did not sail was, that the Mason and Slidell affair was pending, and the general was kept waiting by orders from Washington, until it was decided whether we were to have war with England or not. He could no more explain the reason than General Washington, in 1775, near the same Boston, could explain his five months’ inactivity. British officers and Boston tories, of course, ascribed it to the cowardice of the provincial militia; and doubtless there were ill-natured patriots who whispered that the Virginia General had an “ understanding” with General Gage, or sympathized with the Dickenson party in Congress. “ It could not be for want of powder ; for did not General Washington waste powder almost every week in vain salutes and useless cannonading?” But, you see, it was want of powder ; and the purpose of the cannonading was to hide the fact from the enemy ; as garrisons used to toss loaves of bread over the ramparts, to conceal from the besiegers that they were starving.

Another good case in point is that of Commodore Vanderbilt and his alleged “black-mailing,” a few years ago, of the companies running steamships between New York and San Francisco. It is both amusing and instructive to read the testimony of witnesses, and observe how the blackness of the naked fact is mitigated as the reader’s knowledge of the transaction increases. The naked fact, as given by a hostile witness, was, that the two companies paid Mr. Vanderbilt four hundred and eighty thousand dollars a year, for more than three years, merely for not running an opposition. The witness, a director in one of the companies, pronounced the compact “ illegal and unwarrantable,” and a “ robbery.” It may have been unwarrantable ; but notice how much less so it appears when we know all about it. Our first impression is, that Cornelius Vanderbilt was a grasping, unprincipled “striker,” and we find ourselves asking, What opera-house did he buy with his booty? He seems to have extorted from the two mail companies, i. e. from the people of California, a million and a half of dollars, rendering in return absolutely nothing.

But another witness tells us that he bound himself to prevent all other men and companies from starting an opposition, which was something more than nothing. Another witness testified that, by leaving the field free to those two companies, he kept five of his own large sea-going steamers either idle or unprofitably employed ; and that it was necessary for him to retain those steamers in his possession in order to be able to intimidate possible opposition. Californians may say that all this does but aggravate the offence. They will feel that this compact was, after all, an abominable conspiracy of millionnaires to cheat poor, homesick California when she went home to see her mother. But now the president of one of the companies takes the stand, and adds some facts which put a different face upon the matter. He stated that it cost (in 1860) one hundred thousand dollars to transport a load of passengers (five hundred) from New York to San Francisco; that the average life of a sea-going steamer was ten years ; that, consequently, the companies must make money fast, and must seem to be making it very fast, in order not to lose ; that the business was not sufficient to support two lines and two capitals; that, therefore, opposition was inevitable ruin to one of the parties ; which being accomplished, the “ monopoly ” would be re-established, and the public no better off than before. For these reasons, the president was of opinion that the arrangement was — but let him speak for himself and the directors: “We felt that it would be ruinous to our enterprise to permit that competition ; and for the protection of the interests of the stockholders, we, representing two millions, and the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, representing three millions and a half, made this arrangement with Mr. Vanderbilt. He permitted his own ships to lie idle, or employed them in the Atlantic trade, at a loss at times ; and it was considered, in view of the large capital which he had thus unprofitably employed, that a subsidy of forty thousand dollars a month was about equitable. The arrangement was perhaps beneficial all around.”

The reader may not agree with this conclusion ; but he perceives at least that increase of knowledge respecting the transaction changes it in character, from a foul conspiracy of wealthy men and corporations against the public, to an “arrangement” between capitalists, concerning the propriety of which there can be two opinions.

I was present in the House of Representatives last winter, when a most striking illustration was afforded in debate of the manner in which isolated facts can lie. In discussing the alleged Indian infamies, a member stated that at a quartermaster’s sale at one of the Western forts, in 1868, two new steam saw-mills, one of which had cost the government ten thousand dollars, were sold for two hundred and fifty dollars. He also said that a quantity of good army trousers were sold for twenty cents a pair, excellent overcoats for twenty-five cents each, new seventydollar stoves for a dollar and a half each, and good forty-cent bacon for three cents a pound. “ I have talked,” said he, “ with the purchaser to-day, and called his attention to these items, and he told me they were correct.” The government realized from that sale four thousand five hundred dollars ; but the persons for whom they were purchased sold them at the nearest large town for one hundred and twenty thousand dollars. One man, he added, cleared sixty thousand dollars ; and the two saw-mills were still running in Montana, doing a large business. This was an exhibition of facts damning to somebody, and it produced an effect even amid the bustle and resonance of the House of Representatives. But the next speaker was a member from the vicinity of the dismantled fort, who declared himself to be personally cognizant of the facts of the sale. The fort, he said, at the time of the sale, “was surrounded by thousands of hostile Indians,” and the articles sold were all but valueless because of the difficulty of getting them to a place of safety. But there was one man at the fort, a half-breed, who had married a squaw of the hostile tribe, to whom the Indians were friendly, and who alone could get the merchandise through the infested region. By him and through him the goods were bought. “ I believe,”added the member, “that it would have been better for the government to have left everything that was sold at the fort, or to have burnt it up, than attempted to move it away with its own transportation.”

This statement did not pass unquestioned. It is open to remark. But the incident showed, not the less, how necessary it may be to know the whole truth in order to judge of any part of it.

Congress has rather a bad name. The effect produced upon the country some weeks ago by certain tirades in the Senate shows how general is the feeling that the Congress of the United States is sliding down toward the bottomless pit of infamy, where the aldermen, councilmen, and supervisors of the city of New York are more than content to dwell. And yet those tirades were plainly untruthful. “ In our late war,” said the Senator who uttered them, “ there was not one virtuous or high-toned principle animating the contestants. It was nothing but a struggle for place and power, which commenced right here in this chamber.” This was mere rubbish; but, such is the fondness of some minds for whatever justifies an ill opinion of human beings, it was not universally derided. The reputation of Congress is, to use the words of Henry Clay, “part of the moral property” of the nation. It is a precious right of the people to think as well of Congress as the truth respecting it allows.

Among the great mass of disinterested citizens, i.e. those who are out of politics, the desire that the government of the country should be pure, efficient, dignified, and simple, has the force of a passion. It is wonderful to a stranger in Washington, who happens to have an opportunity of seeing its more interior life, to observe how quick and general is the response of the country to anything good or hopeful that is done or said in either house, — how the letters and paragraphs come raining in to members from every point of the compass, from the most distant territories, applauding, criticising, questioning, suggesting. And in all Washington, what sight so impressive as those large galleries filled with people, most of them strangers, sitting in long rows, attentive, curious, watching their own member, proud of him, or blushing for him, and wondering, perhaps, where and how and when the wickedness is done of which they have heard so much !

The members do not look like aldermen or supervisors. I lived three weeks among them some time ago, and they appeared to my imperfect vision a laborious, able, and respectable body of men, intent on doing the best they could for the country. Congress, being composed of mortals, has its faults and its foibles; it does wrong sometimes; it fails often to do right; it has its weak members and its weak moments ; there is need of some changes in the system on which business is carried on ; and on all these points I may venture to discourse a little by and by. But I do not believe that Congress is, in any proper sense of the word, a corrupt body ; nor do I believe there is in the world a national legislature more pure, more patriotic, or containing a greater mass of ability. There are fewer false lights in Congress than there used to be, when Calhoun deluded the South, and Webster’s august appearance and ancient reputation lent a semblance of power to utterances untrue or insignificant; and there is a greater quantity than ever of practical ability, and of the kind of understanding, the most precious of all, which arrives at correct conclusions and originates practical methods.

On a subject of so much importance, the opinion of an individual is of no consequence, unless he gives the facts upon which it is founded. Before attempting to point out the real faults and perils of Congress, I am to have the much more easy and agreeable task of showing some of the ways in which the country is made to think worse of it than it deserves.

During the session Washington swarms with people. At the Capitol, particularly, the crowd is generally great; it begins to gather early, reaches its maximum at ten minutes before noon, and holds its own pretty well until the House of Representatives adjourns, which usually occurs about four in the afternoon. Go where you will in that great labyrinth of the Western hemisphere, and you find a throng and bustle of people. In the rotunda, of course, there are always pleasure-seekers gazing at some of the worst paintings ever paid for by a government, or else looking up into that beautiful, airy dome, worthy to shelter the finest productions of genius. Everywhere else, — in the antechambers and lobbies, in the court-rooms, down in the interminable and numberless passages of the basement, and even in the newly discovered crypt, where a steam-engine of thirty-horse power supplies honorable members with their raw material, wind, — there are always a great many of the people whom Mr. Schenck described as “ prowlers about the Capitol.” Near the Senate Chamber there is a large parlor for the accommodation of those courageous ladies who send in cards to Senators, requesting an interview. This elegant apartment is generally full of ladies waiting their chance. As to the splendid rooms appropriated to the President, Vice-President, and Speaker, are they not part of the show, and would any true American think he had done his whole duty to himself, to his family, and to his native town, if he neglected to inspect them ? You might as well ask him to omit examining the carpet and curtains of the President’s parlor at the other end of the avenue.

To get a lively idea of the crowd in and about the Capitol, follow or accompany an important member of Congress from his residence to his committeeroom. After working off his regular morning complement of visitors, he succeeds, towards ten o’clock, in getting on his overcoat, and stepping out upon the pavement in front of his abode. A young lady accosts him, and says that she is in distressing need of an appointment in the treasury. Will he designate an hour when she can state her case ? As soon as he has dismissed her, a motherly female approaches, and asks his aid in procuring something for her son, a fine lad of sixteen, willing to serve his country. Before he has gone a block farther, he is accosted by a constituent, who wants to know when he, the constituent, can meet the committee of which the member is chairman, with regard to “ that bill,” or that “ little appropriation ” wanted for something in the member’s district. A few steps farther, he is hailed by a total stranger, an “admirer,” who says, with great energy and enthusiasm, “ General ” (members are generally generals), “ allow me to shake you by the hand. I am one of your warmest admirers. Permit me to introduce you to my friend, Major Smith, of our State.” The member does what is requisite, and continues his walk. A little farther on, a recognized and important lobbyist takes him aside, and communicates something in a low tone. Then a gentleman steps forward, and inquires at what hour that evening it will be most convenient to him to receive the delegation having in charge the pig-iron interest. On the steps of the Capitol there may be a lame soldier who wants admission to one of the government asylums, or a boy who has come to Washington to ask for a cadetship at West Point, and has formed the noble resolution to ask every member for the same until all have refused him. In the rotunda, a fellow-member hurries up, and asks, “Are you with us on the Puget Sound business ? ” At every step almost, the member is now addressed. Lobbyists having private claims in charge ; lobbyists with a clause to get inserted in a tariff bill ; men who want a patent extended; men who most particularly do not want it extended ; women who are soliciting subscriptions for a periodical ; correspondents in quest of an item for an evening paper, many hundreds of miles away ; ladies who want to get their sons appointed pages to one of the Houses ; admirers, pairs of admirers, groups of admirers; an influential constituent, six influential constituents ; messengers from committees urging immediate attendance ; men whose bill is coming up that very morning, their whole fortune and fate depending upon it; people on secret missions from somewhere, who want the United States to accept their country as a gift, and have pamphlets in their pockets showing that that country of theirs is the one place on earth which combines every desirable property, and yields every desirable product; men who think they have ideas as valuable as that of Professor Morse when he asked Congress for a grant to try a certain experiment which succeeded, and who want a similar sum to try their experiment ; Oregon men, whose talk is of that line across the continent which Providence arranged expressly for a railroad, depositing all the materials for the same close to it; silver men who have a little scheme for draining a silver region in Nevada by boring a tunnel under it, and letting the water all out below: — all these and many more may accost, salute, exchange words or looks with a member of Congress on his way through the Capitol, while a humming, bustling multitude swarms around.

Most of this crowd of people are in Washington upon legitimate errands of business or pleasure, having accomplished which, they go home. But there are many who stay through the session, and yet do not appear to have any particular business. Some of these are ladies who live quietly enough and excite no particular remark. Others are women of the kind called dashing, who receive company, and ride a good deal. Some of these mysterious waiters upon Providence explain their object at last by walking off with something valuable for themselves, or something for their dependants, —a contract, a consulate, or a cadetship. Others derive their subsistence from the row of small gambling-houses near Willard’s Hotel, of which such exaggerated accounts are occasionally published. A considerable number of them, I think, must belong to the various orders of “Strikers,”—the class who profit by the ignorance and anxiety of claimants, and prey upon the good name of Congress.

A striker is one who sees a good thing that has fallen, is about to fall, or can by exertion be made to fall, into some one’s possession, and strikes for a share of it. Among the multitudes of people who go to Washington every winter to seek things difficult of attainment, the striker finds abundant game; although he does not confine his operations to the capital of his country. The mode in which strikers operate are various. Often they sell an “ influence ” which they do not possess. Example : in the early part of the last session, a large number of assistant assessors and deputy collectors received a circular letter from Washington of which the following is a copy : —

“SIR: Certain influential parties, with myself, will undertake at the coming session of Congress to obtain the passage of a law securing for you the payment of the salary and fees you are properly entitled to for the time during which you acted as collector for the eighth district of Kentucky, namely, from the 4th day of March, 1867, to the 27th day of March, 1867, but which the Treasury Department has now no authority in law to pay you. We shall require as our compensation fifty per cent of the amount due you, and will thank you to state to me as soon as may be whether you are willing to allow it to us. We desire to preserve this matter as much as possible from notoriety, as otherwise it might hinder our efforts. ”

A copy of this circular, duly signed, came to the hands of Mr. Schenck, chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, the committee who would have to draw and report the bill referred to, and who, it was known to many, had determined to do so. The claim was undeniably just, and the committee made no secret of this intention to press its allowance upon the House. The signer of the epistle just given, being aware of this intention, and seeing that a large number of gentlemen all over the country were about to receive some money which they had begun to despair of ever getting, struck for a share. “ We sent for the gentleman,” said Mr. Schenck, “had him before the committee, interrogated him, found that he had acted, as he admitted himself, very wrongly ; that he was penitent for it, and was willing and volunteered to write to every one to whom he had addressed this circular, confessing this wrong ; and we found that he had been in other respects a good citizen deserved much from the government, — indeed, had received a medal of honor for his services all through the war, showing what his loyalty was. We therefore concluded, on the whole, to suppress the name.”

This tenderness to a striker explains, in some degree, another observation of the honorable chairman. He said that this was an ‘‘old game”; and that it was a common practice for the prowlers around the Capitol “ to find out what is likely to be done by a committee or by Congress, and then speculate upon it under pretence that it was through their influence it was obtained to be done.” He added: “I have personal knowledge of an instance in a former Congress, in which a man levied upon a claimant the large sum of ten thousand dollars, and actually received it, for influencing a member of a committee to obtain a particularly favorable report, when that member of Congress never knew or had heard of the rascal before in his life.” And yet the Committee of Ways and Means “ concluded, on the whole, to suppress the name” of the “gentleman” who struck the assessors and collectors tor a modest half of their just claim. Mr. Schenck proceeded to descant upon “the systematic, fashionable abuse of Congress, all through the country, stimulated by letter-writers, for which occasion was given by these prowling agents.” “ I do not assume,” said he, “ that we are any better than the rest of the world, and I hope I ought not to confess that we are any worse than the same number of respectable gentlemen in public or private life anywhere.” This was well and truly spoken. It expresses about the result of a candid inquirer’s impressions. At the same time, letting off that “gentleman ” with a private reprimand, was one of the numberless minor acts by which Congress assists its calumniators to damage its reputation. I should hardly suppose that the directors of any respectable railroad or bank would stand by and see its clerks and engineers struck at in this way, and not prosecute the striker.

I will give another example, derived from the member whom the matter immediately concerned. The name of the “ gentleman ” who performed the exploit about to be related is before me ; but, following the seductive example of the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, I suppress it. A certain distiller, who had not paid the tax on quite all the whiskey he had manufactured, and had been compelled to reveal this and other discreditable facts to an investigation committee, was extremely desirous to get his name left out of the report of that committee. Coming to Washington on this errand, ignorant of the place, not a native of the country, morbidly anxious, and immensely rich, he fell into the hands of a striker, who agreed to get the thing done for twenty thousand dollars, — five thousand down, and fifteen thousand to be deposited in a bank, not to be touched until the report had appeared with the name omitted. The distiller ventured to intimate that this was a “ big price.” The striker replied that the affair concerned “ big men.” The chairman of the committee, he intimated, was an enormous being, whose very presence the striker could not enter, and who must be approached through a “friend,” himself of great magnitude, only to be tempted by a sum of money proportioned to it. The distiller consented, paid the five thousand dollars, and deposited the fifteen thousand. The striker made no attempt of any kind whatever to induce the committee to omit the name. No member of the committee saw him, heard from him, or heard of him. The “friend” of the chairman, who was to be “seen” by the striker, was never seen by him, and knew not of his existence. The adventurer soon left Washington, and, on reaching the much larger city where the distiller lived, informed him that “it was all right.”

The report was published. The name was not omitted. On the contrary, it figured frequently and not advantageously. The distiller demanded an explanation of the striker. That individual could only account for the mishap by saying that “ those scoundrels in Washington had cheated him ” : he had paid them the money, and they had agreed to omit the name. To Washington came the distiller, furious, and there confronted the “ friend ” of the chairman of the committee, who was to have been “ seen,” but who was not. That friend denied the accusation and presented him to the member, who also declared the whole transaction a cheat. The distiller said to the friend, in his shame and misery, “ Will you come to New York and face him?”

“ I will, with pleasure.” They found the man in New York, who confessed his villany. The fifteen thousand dollars were rescued, but the five thousand were lost, for the distiller was much more concerned to hush the matter up than recover a sum which, under Andrew Johnson, he could get back any week by a slight manipulation of revenue stamps and revenue officers.

Now, the committee might have thought it best, for some good reason or bad reason, to omit that man’s name from their report. In that case, the striker would have quietly pocketed the other fifteen thousand, as well as the fervent gratitude of the distiller, who would have communicated to all his intimate friends that members of Congress were as purchasable as some of Andrew Johnson’s assessors. And I am distinctly informed that speculations of this nature upon what members will probably do have frequently no more basis than in this instance. Sometimes, however, as we have seen, a striker obtains positive information of a member’s or a committee’s intentions, and founds upon that knowledge a scheme of spoliation more or less extensive.

Occasionally a man is a striker in spite of himself. The following case rests upon a great quantity of sworn testimony taken before the celebrated Covode Committee in 1860. Two young men —one a partisan, the other an opponent, of Lecompton — were joking together one day, in their common room at Washington, with regard to Mr. Buchanan’s difficulty in getting the Lecompton bill passed. The opponent at length, as a crowning taunt, said, “ I will take the contract for putting that measure through for ten thousand dollars.” The other, in his zeal to serve the administration, reported this remark to the King of the Lobby, Cornelius Wendell, who was then Spending a share of the profits of the public printing in helping the wretched Buchanan debauch the public conscience. Wendell sought an interview with the jocular young man, with whom he was acquainted, supposing, from his connection with the press and politics of Ohio, that he might bring over a few of the Ohio members. He offered him five thousand dollars each for four votes, adding, “ A bushel of gold is no object in this matter ” ; which was true. The young man protested that his remark to his room-mate was nothing but a joke, that he had no power over votes, and that he was not acquainted with any but Ohio members, not one of whom would he “dare approach with money.” To which the tempter thus replied : “ You damned little fool, you might as well make money out of this as anybody else.”

Finally, the young man said he would think about it ; and of course (for he who deliberates is lost) he was willing next morning to fall in with the wishes of Mr. Buchanan’s corruptor-general. “ Here is what I will do,” said Cornelius Wendell, who then wrote upon a slip of paper these mysterious figures : "$5d—$5 30—$5 60—$5 90—"; which, as afterwards explained by a witness, meant five thousand dollars each for four votes. The young man replied that he would prefer to receive five thousand dollars down for doing what he could, and not take the proposed contract; whereupon the tempter drew his check for that amount and gave it him.

He deposited the check in a bank in Washington, profoundly astonished, and even bewildered, to find himself the possessor of such a sum of money. He knew that he could do nothing to earn it, and he did nothing. For some time past, he had been urging the members whom he knew or met to “settle ” the Kansas question in some way, and he continued to do so. So, at least, he swore, and his whole testimony wears a credible aspect, and is supported by the general character of the evidence bearing upon Wendell’s operations at the time. “ I never,” said he, “ ran after a single member ;.... I urged the settlement of that question as I had been doing before.” Meanwhile, he was extremely uneasy with regard to that mountain of money which had tumbled upon him out of the sky. He could not attain to a comfortable assurance that it was his own, and he feared he should go to the bank some day and find it gone, or paralyzed by an injunction, or in some other way placed beyond his control. At last he drew out most of it, sent it home to Ohio, and paid off old debts with it. “ My object,” said he, “ in doing that, was to secure it; I was afraid they would find out I was not doing anything, and would stop payment upon it.”

It would be difficult to believe that a man of Cornelius Wendell’s experience would throw away money in this manner, if the fact were not established by a superabundance of credible testimony. But, with all his money, he could not buy a vote for Lecompton. Votes may have been bought, but if so the price paid was other than money.

If one class of strikers brings Congress into disrepute by pretending to deal in members, another class does the same thing by pretending to expose the infamy. As a rule, men disappointed by legislation raise the cry of corruption ; often as a means of revenge ; often for the purpose of being bought off, or “ let in ” ; often in perfect sincerity, since they are truly unable to comprehend how an honest man can oppose a measure so necessary, so wise, so, — etc. It is of this class of prowlers about the Capitol that Mr. John D. Perry, President of the Union Pacific Railway Company, Eastern Division, wrote last winter, when he warned the House, by circular, against “ the swarm of lobbyists and adventurers who, in Washington and elsewhere, had surrounded the original project at its birth,” and were then “ busily engaged in disseminating falsehoods about the road, by means of printed slips placed on the desks of members, and in other ways, and have approached the company with offers to give up their opposition if they can be employed in its behalf.” He proceeded thus : “ We claim that the prosecution of the enterprise embodied in the provisions of the bill before the House is as honorable to the managers of the road as it is beneficial to the government and beneficent to the country. Nor would there probably have been a question of this, if suspicions and doubts had not been excited by the pertinacious lobbyists whose demands we have refused to comply with, and who have pursued it into the House of Representatives, to compel us to submit to their claims in an extremity which they mean there to create, or to still further harass this enterprise. Had we weakly paid the black-mail demanded, had we basely yielded to their proposals to deliver us votes by States and sections even, this road might have been saved from the clamor kindled against it.”

I cannot say that this statement is correct; I know nothing about the construction of the road in question ; but I know that the tactics described by Mr. Perry are employed. On the very morning, in which I am writing these words, I have read a furious communication in a newspaper, denouncing a certain legislature as corrupt, its members as “bought and paid for like sheep in the market ” ; and, a little further on, the writer betrays the fact that the legislature had just decided against his scheme of a railroad, — a scheme respecting the wisdom of which the bestinformed men might honestly differ in opinion, nay, do differ, as every one knows. If it is possible to calumniate the New York legislature,¹ — a body that really has a corrupt minority, which, in the conflict of parties and interests, can often decide questions of the first importance, — how closely we should scrutinize anonymous denunciations of Congress !

The whole of the Alaska scandal was the work of unsuccessful strikers. I say this without reserve, because accident placed me in circumstances at different times to get trustworthy information both from the strikers and the stricken. Readers remember, probably, the publication of the paragraphs which asserted that the Russian Minister had only sent home five millions of dollars, and had expended the remainder — two millions two hundred thousand dollars, in gold — in subsidizing the press and buying votes. There were two atoms of truth in this huge, many-sided lie. The Russian government, I was informed by a person who could hardly be mistaken, had been obliged to anticipate the receipt of the money, having no more doubt of getting the gold at last than the Danish government had of receiving the price of the Danish islands. The Barings advanced five millions of dollars, and, consequently, the moment Baron Stoeckl received the money at the treasury of the United States, he was in haste to send the five millions to London. He did so ; and this was one of the atoms of truth in the strikers’ mountainous falsehood. And there was another. In Washington there are newspapers which may be described as organs of the lobby,— newspapers which will give publicity to almost any decent scheme or claim to which the attention of Congress is desired. These newspapers are a part of a bad system which has grown up, and which it is the purpose of these articles to exhibit. One of them, as is its way, advertised Alaska profusely, but inserted the advertisements, in the form of editorial articles, and omitted to send in a bill. Hence, when all was over, and the money paid, the gentleman who had the affair in charge handed the publisher of the paper three thousand dollars.

Three persons, and no others, received money for services in promoting the execution of the Alaska treaty, — two lawyers, and this one publisher, — and the whole amount expended was less than thirty thousand dollars in gold. It is barely possible that one member of Congress, or two members, or three, may have expected some indirect political good by voting for a measure that would give an agreeable gun contract to constituents. I do not believe, however, that one vote was changed by such a consideration. The House voted to pay that gold, first, because many members naturally and properly shrink from a refusal to execute a treaty which one branch of the government has negotiated and another ratified ; and, secondly, because the country to receive the money was Russia. This latter consideration was the most influential. Some members the most opposed to the purchase could not bring themselves to do an act which Russia would have felt to be a slight.

While Alaska was pending, a rumor gained some currency among the prowlers about the Capitol that the Russian Minister was spending money, present and contingent, in aid of the measure. An enterprising person visited one of the lawyers engaged by Baron Stoeckl, and struck for a share ; saying, in substance, “ Let me in, or I 'll defeat the bill ”; and reminding the counsel that he corresponded with two newspapers, both daily, and had “ friends ” in Congress. His services were not needed, and he was not “ let in.” He and one or two confederates did what little they could to increase the opposition to the Alaska bill, and in their circle the enormous falsehood originated respecting the expenditure of the money that was not sent to the Barings. Mr. Robert J. Walker, who managed the business throughout, and who spent all the money that was spent, swore before the committee of investigation that, to the best of his belief, not one dollar of the purchase-money was paid to or for a member of Congress, or to or for a member of the press, excepting alone the sum given as explained above. The gun and pistol makers of the United States received the greater part of the money of which the Russian Ambassador could dispose.

There has never been a case in which the inducements to spend money in carrying a measure have been more numerous or more strong than in that of the Danish treaty, which Congress adjourned without acting upon, and which, I presume, is therefore dead beyond resuscitation. I refer to Mr. Seward’s treaty for the purchase of the two Danish islands, St. Thomas and St. John, which had to be ratified at the last session, or never. The sum involved was seven millions and a half in gold, and that was the least important consideration of all. The continuance in office of the Danish Cabinet was felt to depend upon its not receiving the blasting snub of a refusal by the Senate to act upon the treaty. The able man of that Cabinet was in Washington, a favorite with members, popular with the Cabinet, with the diplomatic corps, and with a large circle of influential Americans ; for he had resided among us formerly as minister plenipotentiary, and he is a man to win friends and inspire confidence. But there was felt to be at stake far more than a few millions of dollars and the duration of a ministry.

The Danes are a prudent and thoughtful people. Their kingdom, during the last few years, has lost provinces, has been shorn of its not excessive proportions, has been deserted at critical moments by allies, has suffered deeply in its pride, and has lost something of that confidence in itself which is a source of national strength. If, in addition to such a series of misfortunes and slights, Denmark should incur the indignity of having such a treaty passed by unnoticed, just after a similar one with a great power had been executed, it would be for the Danes seriously to consider whether there is in the modern world a legitimate place for a power unable to defend all its rights and all its possessions. Not that Denmark is going out of existence merely because the United States would not pay her for her islands ; but the question involved was felt to touch the greater question, Is it best for Denmark to resist, or yield to, the tendency which is gathering kingdoms, states, towns, businesses, into enormous and overshadowing masses ? The Danes are a people to think of this beforehand, and not wait till they shall have no choice in the matter.

If the ratification of that treaty could have been secured by the sacrifice of half a million or so of the purchasemoney, few ministers would have hesitated to close the “ contract ” with any competent person disposed to undertake it. It so happened that I was acquainted with the gentlemen who were endeavoring to procure its ratification. I know what they did. I know how they felt. One of them was as well informed a person respecting the modes of influencing Congress as any one, perhaps, in Washington. But the understanding, in the small circle of the “ Danish Ring,” as a newspaper called it, was perfect, that money is powerless to procure the passage of any measure to which Congress is disinclined. No money was employed, except the little requisite in disseminating a knowledge of the case. No means were used or contemplated except such as were legitimate,—such as conversation with members, and the circulation of pamphlets. The only member of the press who took up the subject seriously (Mr. Andrews of the Boston Advertiser) was so scrupulous, that he would not accept an invitation to dinner from the Danish Minister until after his letters upon the treaty had been published.

A stranger will not be long in Washington before the rumor reaches him that members have discovered a way of quartering their mistresses upon the government. Some striker (as I conjecture), male or female, who wanted a clerkship, availed himself or herself of this report, and endeavored, by putting it in print, to create vacancies in the department which employs the greatest number of women. It is a common trick with people who want places, to get letters and paragraphs inserted in newspapers, complaining that a certain department or bureau is full of fogies, or fossils, or Andy Johnson men, or ancient sires who have been in office since the time of Jackson. “Hannah Tyler,” who wrote to the New York Independent a remonstrance against the employment of bad women in the Treasury Department, pretended to be herself employed therein“ We,”wrote the yirtuous Hannah, “ ought not to be insulted by having the paramours and mistresses of members of Congress forced upon us, and be obliged to tolerate their society day by day. Let Mr. Boutwell clean out the riff-raff and pollution of his department. Let him appoint moral and competent women.” She said also that the departments were “crowded with females” who were of no use whatever, and yet could not be got rid of by their official chiefs, because members of Congress kept them in. She declared she could mention “the names of scores and scores ” of such. This last assertion alone ought to render the reader of the epistle incredulous, for there are very few persons in the whole world who can call to mind “scores and scores of names.” There are but about three hundred members of Congress in all, and a very large number of them are elderly, married men, fathers of families, known to be strictly moral in their lives. A person really acquainted with Washington, and not morbidly credulous of evil, could not easily be convinced that, from the beginning of the government to the present day, there have ever been, at the same time, five members of Congress who had mistresses. It is not an American custom. We do our share of the human race’s sum total of sin chiefly in other ways. Mistresses are kept in countries where there is a large class of rich young men, which is not yet the case with us. We are generally poor from twenty to thirty-five, and by the time we are rich enough to indulge in expensive vices, most of us have learned what a disappointing, ridiculous, low delusion vice is. We have grown past it and above it. Some members of Congress do worse things ; but veryfew keep mistresses.

The treasury building, too, is open to the public, and any one can walk over it, and enter all the rooms except those in which the national money is made. A few days after first hearing of the terrible state of morals in the departments, I visited the treasury, and was permitted to go even into the apartments consecrated to the manufacture, redemption, and destruction of greenbacks and stamps. I passed some hours there, and kept looking out for the paramours and mistresses. I saw no woman that was not earning her livelihood by hard, steady, and not very agreeable work. Is it like a kept mistress to labor eight hours a day, in a building in the construction of which everything was thought of except the health and dignity of those who were to work in it ? There are single stones in that enormous edifice which, in cheap times, cost twenty-seven thousand dollars in gold; and a thousand human lives are daily shortened there by bad air. Every face almost in that endless basement is pale ; and many are haggard and pallid with disease. Is it the custom of mistresses to go to such a place, hang up their hoop-skirts on the same peg with their bonnets and shawls, cover their hair with a paper cap, and stand all day at one of those presses, performing an unchanging movement ? Our money is counted thirty-three times before it is packed in boxes and handed over to the treasurer. Perhaps those swift-fingered ladies, so respectable in appearance, so intent on their work, who do this counting, are thus expiating an improper way of life. Or, possibly, members station their mistresses in the upper rooms, where they sit very close together, copying, and doing sums. If these things are so, then may America boast that her very “riff-raff and pollution” are as industrious, as decorous, and as useful as the most virtuous women in “the down-trodden nations of the Old World.”

But the charges have since been carefully investigated on the spot; particularly by the worthy and able editor of the Ohio (Columbus) Slate Fournal, who was in Washington when the letter was published. He ascertained that there was no such name as Hannah Tyler upon the books of the department, and that every statement in the letter reflecting upon the character of the ladies was no better than a striker’s lie. And yet there were two grains of truth in it. It is true that members urge the appointment of too many of their constituents, and that “ a pretty face or a pretty foot ” will occasionally get an appointment due only to a good handwriting and a capacity for adding up columns of figures. This is wrong, of course. The whole system of appointments and removals is thoroughly wrong. I am coming to that by and by. But in order to get, if possible, a more favorable hearing then, I begin by showing that Congress is not the body of reprobates and robbers which it is the occupation of some men to represent it.

Members of Congress are not all the immaculate, disinterested, and devoted men whom we could wish to see sitting in those cane-bottomed chairs. If they were, they would not represent us. I think that, as a body, they do represent us. Just at this moment, when several States cannot send to Washington their natural leaders, and some of the Western States and Territories are imperfectly organized, Congress may not, perhaps, be so accurately representative as it has been and will be. Nevertheless, the average of ability is much higher than that of the people generally, and the standard of morals not lower. Congress does wrong one hundred times from carelessness, indolence, ignorance, timidity, caprice, or good-nature, to once that it does wrong from a motive that so much as savors of corruption. And so do we, the people whom they represent, and so do all mankind.

“ Perhaps,” remarks a writer reviewing the last session, “ not more than one member in ten of the late Congress ever accepted money.” It the writer of that sentence were summoned before a committee of investigation, could he give a tolerable reason for believing that one member of the late Congress sold a vote for money ? Is any one justified in publishing such sentences unless they are founded upon something nearly equivalent to knowledge ? Votes are sold, I admit. By and by I shall endeavor to show how, why, and for what “ consideration ” ; but my conviction is strong that money is scarcely ever, if ever, the commodity for which votes are given.

The greatest triumph of the Washington lobby was the acquittal of Andrew Johnson. It was wholly the lobby’s doing. His conviction was sure until the lobby went to work in earnest, and snatched him only branded from the burning. A person the least credulous of evil can hardly resist the impression that three or four Republican votes were bought and paid for, cash down, only a few hours before the votes were given. Some of the best-informed men in Washington — even the best informed — are convinced of it. They think they know who received twenty-five thousand dollars for a vote, who fifty thousand, who Indian contracts, and who railroad influences more valuable than both those sums united. They think they know at what house, at what time of night, and by what member of the lobby, the money was lost at cards to a Senator who voted next day for acquittal. All of which may be true. Much of the valuable testimony gathered by the select committee of the managers seems to confirm these conjectures. We know that the Johnson lobby, utterly devoid of principle and decency, had the money in their hands with which to buy the criminal off. We know that money was raised in custom-houses, and subscribed by distillers, and that a million of dollars could have been procured from those two sources alone, if it had been necessary. We know that the corruptibility of Senators was a topic of conversation at the President’s table, and that one of his confidants correctly predicted, five weeks before the test vote was taken, which seven Republican Senators would vote for acquittal. We know that two of those Senators, to within a day or two of the voting, continued to declare their intention to vote for conviction, and then suddenly changed their intention without any visible cause. We know that the lobby was in the fullest activity about Washington, rushing to and fro between New York and the capital, and telegraphing in cipher. I know that the strikers of the lobby were not idle, but rose to the occasion, and offered to sell to the managers votes enough to convict for a hundred and ten thousand dollars, — but the managers were up to the game. We know that the heads of the Johnson lobby were as sure of an acquittal before the vote was taken as they were after ; and that they acted upon their knowledge in the gold-room and elsewhere.

Now the simplest explanation of all this is, that the three or four votes supposed to have been given against the convictions of the Senators who gave them, were bought with money; and yet the probability is, that they were not. I wish they had been. Probably, the crude, primitive wickedness of selling a vote for so much cash argues a shallower, a more manageable, perversity than that of which the testimony elicited by 'the select committee gives us glimpses. From that testimony we may infer that there were several distinct lobbies working for acquittal: the Johnson lobby proper, who wanted to get or keep places and chances under the President; the Chase lobby, who wished to place the President under such signal obligations that he would drop General Hancock, and take up Mr. Chase for the succession ; the Pendleton lobby, whose aim was to secure the same advantage for Mr. Pendleton; the whiskey lobby, who wanted another year of impunity; and a “ conservative” lobby, who had a very lively sense of what would happen if Mr. Wade should change his quarters to the White House, and who did not like the prospect These lobbies would have been glad enough, perhaps, to reduce the problem to a simple purchase ; but their task was far more difficult.

Members of Congress, like members of the British Parliament, may be divided into two classes,—legislators and puppets. There are members who go to Congress, so hampered with obligations, that if you want their vote for anything with politics or money in it, you have to “ see ” the man or corporation who placed them there. It may pay a great railroad to send a Senator or two to Washington, or half a dozen carpet-baggers. It may also suit the wealthy corporation to leave to the members who serve it the barren glory of being pure; as great Tammany often permits its creatures to veto Tammany jobs, because it must have a respectable candidate, now and then, with whom to go before the people. It may want its mayor to be candidate for governor. It may be nursing its governor into a candidate for the Presidency.

It is, therefore, not necessary to believe that the Republican votes for acquittal were sold for money. It was to Mr. George H. Pendleton that Woolley so triumphantly and elegantly telegraphed, four hours before the vote was taken: “ We have beaten the Methodist Episcopal Church North, hell, Ben Butler, John Logan, George Wilkes, and Impeachment. President Johnson will be acquitted if a vote is had to-day. Tell my wife.” It were greatly to be wished that the wickedness of that acquittal had been a thing so little complicated, so obvious, so describable, as the giving of so much money for so many votes. If the truth were known, we should probably find that much of the money in the case was squandered among the strikers, and that the votes were paid for in commodities of another description.

There is no law of nature more universal than this : The strong govern and possess the earth ! No community has ever existed, from imperial Rome to a Democratic ward, from the Catholic Church to a Shaker village, which was not, in the long run, controlled by its strongest men. It is impossible to escape the operation of this principle. All that laws and institutions can do is to limit the rule of the strong, — to keep them limited monarchs, instead of absolute. Institutions determine whether the strong shall rule legitimately or illegitimately, by laws or by violence, in the House or in the lobby. Rule they will and must and ought. It is the office of institutions to make it for the interest and glory of the strong to rule so that men shall bless them as benefactors, instead of cursing them as plunderers. It is the office of institutions to decide whether the strong of the earth shall put forth their conquering energy inside or outside of the nominal government ; whether they shall be kept within bounds, or work their own will upon us unrestrained,— like Brigham Young in Mormondom, like our gorged masters in New York. Institutions decide whether we shall have the great lawyers on the bench and the little lawyers at the bar, or the great lawyers at the bar and the little lawyers on the bench ; and also, whether, after all, the powerful client shall not buy and command both. Institutions, in short, determine which shall be master, the House or the lobby.

The lobby gains upon the House, both here and in England ; here more obviously than there, because everything here is more obvious, more candid, more talkative, more rapid than there. The purpose of this article, and some others which may follow it, is to call attention to the power and encroachments of the lobby, and to inquire whether the tendencies can be checked which put the weak inside and the strong outside of government. It seemed best to begin by showing how the good name and the moral ascendancy of Congress' are lessened by a comparatively small class of lobbyists, the very nature of whose occupation compels them to vilify Congress continually.

As a body, Congress is well intentioned, incorrupt, and laborious. It contains a great mass of ability. But there has grown up with the lapse of years a Congressional standard of morals which certainly needs revision. The late Senator Douglas, of Illinois, was a very good example of conformity to this most defective and erroneous code. There was no artifice to which he would not resort to carry a measure or get a vote. He made not the smallest scruple of selling his own vote, or buying another man’s vote, provided the price was of a nature which Congressional morality permits to be given. In other words, he would vote for a measure of which he was ignorant, in order to induce thereby another member to vote for a measure of which that member disapproved. He thought it quite regular and proper to create false impressions, and, in a pinch, to lie outright. The narrative of some of his exploits of this nature has been written and published by an admiring friend, who dedicates the work to " the friends ” of the deceased Senator.

But mark: one day when he was confined to his room after a surgical operation, and was reclining on a sofa, with crutches within easy reach, a man ventured to make a proposal to him which the Congressional standard does not recognize as proper. The proposal was, in substance, this : " Give me a certain document, instead of sending it home to the Secretary of State of Illinois, in whose custody it ought to be. Do this, and I will give you, in exchange, the deed of a tract of land, containing two and a half millions of acres, and worth twenty millions of dollars.” Such was the proposal. The reply was prompt and clear. “ I jumped for my crutches,” Mr. Douglas used to say ; “ he ran from the room, and I gave him a parting blow on the head.”