Rensselaer Union, Volume 5, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 March 1873 — SCHUYLER COLFAX AT HOME. [ARTICLE]

SCHUYLER COLFAX AT HOME.

His Speech at South Hend, March 8. A grand ovation was tendered ex-ViCe-President Colfax by his fellow citizens of South Bend, Ind. , and vicinity, on the occasion of his recent return to his home in that city. The demonstration was participated in by a large concourse of people, irrespective of party. The welcoming address was delivered by Mayor Miller, to which Mr. Colfax responded as follows: Mr. Mayor, Neighbors and Friends: My heart would be cold and callous indeed if it did not throb more quickly and happily at such a welcome home as this one with which I am honored and the gratitude for which it would take a lifetime to exhibit.

Here you have known me from childhood—my goings out and comings in have been before your eyes. My character has- been formed in your midst, and you know whether for a paltry Bum of money I could be induced to wreck it. When you come hither, therefore, by the thousands, spontaneously, and, as I am glad to be told and to know, not confined to political friends alone, but participated in by prominent and life-long political opponents, to honor me with such unmistakable manifestations of your unabated confidence and affectionate regard, I feel it due to you, as well as to myself, to expose the utter injustice of the cruel charges on which I have been arraigned during the past winter. If I had been a confessed and wicked criminal I could not have been pursued with more malignity by a portion of tha American press and their Washington correspondents. Day after day every possible circumstance has been exaggerated and telegraphed as absolute proof of guilt; day after day it has been demanded that I should explain this or that or the other point, but when explained the same malicious enemies have tortured and perverted and misrepresented the explanation, determined if possible that the reputation of the man they hated should be destroyed; and as day by day they thus poisoned the public mind they rejoiced almost with shouts of exultation at having effected, as they hoped, their work of ruin. The frank exposure of all my financial affairs did no good; the disclosure of the sacted confidence of the dead only gave them fresh opportunities for cavil and falsification. The testimony of my step-father and sister, unimpeachable as you here so well know them to be, was denounced as unworthy of belief. These enemies were determined on having their victim; but conscious of my entire innocence of this cruel and wieked charge, and eonfidentthat He who knoweth all things will in His own good time make that innocence manifest to all, I have stood unmoved amid this tempest storm of villifleation and injustice, willing to bide my time for the complete vindication I know is so certain to come. . Let me read -from-the Inter-Ocean ofChica-. go, of September 26, 1872, the following ex-’ tract from the speech I delivered here the previous day. It was made, you will remember, in reply to the charge that I was one of the twelve apostles who sold out to the Credit-Mobilier at $20,000 apiece, who had been bribed by gifts of stock on which enormous dividends had been paid, and for which certain legislation has been enacted: “Never having in my life a dollar of stock of any kind that 1 did not pay for, I claim the right to purchase (Stock in the Credit-Mobilier or CredltImmobilier, if {here Isone; nor do I know of any law iirohibiting it. Do I need to add that neither Oakes Ames nor any other person ever gave or offered to jive me one share or twenty shares or 200 shares in the Credit-Mobilier or any other railway stock, and that unfortunately I have never seen or received the value of a farthing out ofthe 270 per cent, dividends or the SOO per cent, dividend in cash, stocks or bonds you have read ahout the past month; nor 100 per cent., nor the tenth of one per cent. I have said that if twenty shares of it could be purchased at par without buying into a prospective lawsuit it would be a good investment if as valuable a stock as represented; but never having been plaintiff or defendant in a court of justice, I want no stock at any price with a lawsuit on top of it.’’ Although I thus publicly claimed tk« right to purchase this very stock, and avowed frankly my willingness to buy andhold twenty shares of it if I could do it without buying into a lawsuit, and thus accepted all the odium there could attach to purchasing it, as I then understood it, I htiye been charged with prevarication because X did not go on and state that I had withdrawn years before from an incomplete contract to buy twenty shares, losing what I had paid on account. If I had supposed that a denial or explanation of an entirely different charge than that Twas answering would be required of me, I should certainly have done so, as it would have strengthened instead of weakening what I was stating—but that I could not foresee. An eminent divine once said, rather irreverently: “If man’s foresight were only as good as his hindsight he would be but a little lower than the angels,” and my polley in speaking has always been to discuss and explain pending issues and not to explain or discuss those that were not pending. But let us test this by an illustration, a method which often brings out a disputed point more vividly than argument. Suppose any one of you had been charged with having been given shares in a woolen factory; that from these shares you had reeeived enormous dividends, and that as a payment for these gifts and dividends you had aided corruptly in carrying through legislation in regard to the duties on wool, would you not regard it as a sufficient answer to such charges to tell the public that you had been all your life publicly advocating the scale of duties alleged to have been carried by corruption? Besides this, their enactment had been a year before these alleged gifts; that you had never owned any stock in woelen factories, or anything else, that you had not paid for; that yous share had never been given you, and that you had never received any such dividends.

Now, while I am on the subject of dividends, I want to say a word about the letter from South Bend in the Chicago Times this morning. The Times has a correspondent here; Il suppose he is down here at the retable. He says he was around yesterday looking at my investments in South Betid. He says lam Vice-President of the Knoblock Furniture Company, and that all the bedsteads made there have got the Colfax coat-of-arms on them. [Laughter.] And he says, furthermore, that no young married couple can be happy without having one Of these bedsteads. [Laughter.] 1 want to tell you that I have got no dividends on that stock, but if I get every young married couple to buy a bedstead of the Knoblock Furniture Company I will make large dividends very soon. [Laughter and applause.] ■ The gentleman from the Chicago Times says that Mr. Birdsell got a patent extended through my influence with the Patent Office, and that I have become a partner in it. I don’t knaw whether Mr. Birdsell got an extension of his patent or not; but this I do know, that he would not apply to me for anything of that kind, for he has forgotten more about the patents and the extension of patents'than I ever knew. [Laughter.] The last thing. Mr. Blfdaell would du would be to get me to get his patent extended. If there Is one thing in this werld that I do not know, it is patent law. I never practiced in the Patent Office, and I have nothing to do with it. But the Birdsall Company did say to me that, as I was coming back to live in South Bend, they would like me to take some stock in that Company, and I am a stockholder in that company and I am not ashamed of it. lam a stockholder in tfi£ Union Chair Cdiffpanv, and if every married couple wants to’lie happy, they will bay their chairs from the Union Chair Company. [Laughter and applause.] ’ -i—■■ I merely firing this forward to show ’ you the inexpressible littleness of b all these things..iXaak youdfff is not the very refinemeat and quintessence Ol littleness? I ask

the man himself if it is not—to come down here to my own town, in whose prosperity I have always felt the liveliest interest, and 3b this thing? [No response from the Times correspondent.] I have never received a farthing of interest upon my investments here. Is it not inexpressibly little to bring Up these things here, in order to see if they cannot make a point against Colfax ? [Laughter, applause and cries of “ Yes! yes! ft is.”]

When I get dividends from these companies, as we shall get soon—and as I expect to get dividends from the clover-hnller as well as the chairs [laughter]—l will invest them right here at home in this, town of which we are all so proud. [ApplaustS.J Now, if you had voluntarily withdrawn, as I had, at a pecuniary loss over four years before from an agreement to buy such stock in a woolen factory, you would regard what I have supposed as a sufflcient refutation of a charge that you had been bribed by gifts of stock and enormous dividends, but if you padded to all this the frank statement that you JjfttLsaid you would be willing to buy this very factory stock at par, and to hold it if it would not involve you in litigation, would you not think that your answer would be full and thorough on every practical point that the wanton calumny required you to state? No one could have been misled by my speeeh on the vital point; though no such stock was ever given to me, I publicly avowed my willingness to bear all the reproach that could attach to an investment of my money at par, as I then understood it* But I do not intend to rest the argument on this point. Here I call mv enemies as my witnesses. The New York Tribune of September* 26 published the telegraphic extract of this speech, with the following heading, showing that.lt.fully understood my denial was to the charge of having had the stock given to me: “He never owned a share in the Credit Mobilier that he did not pay for." It was eminently proper and fitting that this same paper should, on January 24, print literally a quotation from the speech with the essential word “give” left out, and then basely repeat charges of my untruthfulness on the quotation it had thus altered and r ' [Mr. Colfax here exhibited the paper.] The Chicago Tribune, also, which has almost daily assailed me the past winter for alleged prevarication in the speech, did not misunderstand it at the time. It declared editorially, September 27, in commenting on my speech: —“Mr. Colfax claims the right to purchase whatever stock he thinks proper, even when offered him - at par, and when the accrued dividends are more than equal to its par value.” And September 28, the next day, it said (again I quote its insinuation also,‘although my payment of the $534 disproves that part of it) as follows: - “Mr. Colfax claims that he had the right to purchase the stock of the Credit-Mobilier or any other company. Ames got this stock put in hie hands that he might sell it at par and pay the par value of it out of its then accrued dividends, which was, in fact, making a present of it. According to Mr. Colfax, receiving Credit-Mobilier stock at par, with accrued dividends equal to its price. Would be a straight-out purchase.”

When I testified on the 7th of January, after the holiday recess, during which recess Hon. Mr. Ames said he had refreshed his memory, by his memorandum at home, I declared emphatically, as I did here last September, that I had never received a dollar from him for dividends, nor indeed on any account whatever. He was . present in the committee room and did not deny this nor dissent from it, though I asked him to cross-examine me. On that verv afternoon tie told Mr. Crounse, of the New York Times, who swore to it afterward before the committee, that my statement was probably correct. On December 17, in his carefully prepared and written-out original testimony, he swore about me on page 20 of the report as follows: “Nor can I remember having paid him any dividends,” and Mr. Alley, his associate, swore before the committee (see page 311 of the report), that before the holidays Mr, Ames told him that I was substantially correct in my statement as to the transaction. In spite, however, of the original testimony of his which he declared embodied the exact fact, and his expressing his concurrence with my statement to Alley and Crounse, and listening without dissent to my testimony of January 7, he came before the committee on January 22 with a check for $1,200, payable to “8. C. or bearer,” which he claims he paid to me June 20,1868, but which being payable to no one’s name required no Indorsement, and could as well be cashed by Mr. “A.” or Mr. “B.” or Mr. “Z.” or by Mr. “G.,”<or any one else. Never having seen any check of his in my life till I saw this one in the committee room, I asked him if my name was indorsed on it, and he answered “No;” asking him if he remembered where I was when he handed it to me, he answered “No;” asking him if he remembered what he said when he paid it to me, he answered “No;” asking him if he could not remember what I said when so large a check was handed me, he again answered “No;” asking him if he had any receipt for it, he answered “No;” asking him if he ever gave me a certificate for the stock which he insisted I still owned, he answered “No.” Astounded at this attempt on a check payable to initials and not to my name, not indorsed by me, and for which no receipt could be produced, to destroy my testimony, I immediately had ttye Sergeant-at-Arms, on whom it was drawn, summoned, with his cashier and bookkeeper, to testify as to whether they had ever paid me the money for any such cheek, and they all answered that they had no recollection of having done so. But subsequently Mr. Dillon, the Cashier of the Sergeant-at-ArmSi testified that, while he could not swear with positive certainty after

the lapse of years, yet his very strong impression was that he had paid thia very “8. C.” cheek to Ames himself (see page 477 of the report), and that when he had asked Ames only thirty hours before if he had not done it Ames had replied that it was very likely (see page 481 of the report). In regard to one portion of the checks from Ames drawn for this June dividend there is no controversy. Four of them had the names in full of Logan and Allison (both of whom re-, turned their dividends to him), Patterson and James Wilson. Four of them, however, for this very same June dividend, were made out payable to initials, namely; W another “8. C;,” for $600; which he says was intended for Bcotield; “W. D. K.,” $329, claimed by him to be for Kelley; one “O. A.” $330 said by him to be for Garfield; but Kelley;' Garfield and I have declared that neither of us ever saw these ipitial checks. Scofield says he may have received the money and settled it afterward, but he does not remember any such dividend. Kelley and Garfield are positive they never saw the checks, but that Ames loaned each of them S3OO about that time, and I repeat that I never saw the check ana never received a dollar of money from him in my life. It is a very significant fact that there are no indorsements on either of these initial checks and that no receipt has been presented for either of them, as there has been for some of the other checks, all ot which confirms me in the conviction that they, with the entries in the memorandum book about them, related to the controversy between Ames and McComb in the McComb suit, and that Mr. Ames did state “the exact facts” in his earliest testimony confirmatory of mine, rather than in his latest testimony after they had produced these checks. He claimed to be acting as trustee. These memoranda, if made at the time, may have been memoranda of trust. I will now to you the frank letter of Mr. Dillon, the cashier of the Sergeant-at-Anns, a gentleman whose integrity is beyond all question, which letter 1 think explains the whole matter conclusively. Omra Ssbbsant-at-Arus, ) Housa or RzraasKNTATivßs, > . Washington, March 1.1873. 1 D»ar Sir: When Mr. Aines made the deposit of SIO,OOO in June, 1868, in this office, my mind was naturally excited as to the purpose he had tn view, and was ail at sea till the checks were presented.

Then I surmised that Mr. Ames was the acting chairman of some investigating committee, and that as the contingent fund of the House was ex- . hansted, he wag paying the expanses of the commit tee himself till an appropriation should be made. lam very confident that the checks to initials or bearer were all paid to Mr. Ames himself, and especially the one of $1,200, marked “To 8. C. or bearer. ” I then thought he was himself drawing the “lion’s share” of his own deposit. These thoughts had passed out of my mind till Mr. Ames came into the office this session and demanded that his checks should be shown him. The moment I saw them I recollected all these thoughts of over four years before as vividly as though they had occurred the daybefore.and as soon as Mr. Ames had retired I remarked to Mr. Ord way, the Ser-geant-at-Arms, that I had paid that $1,200 “8. C.” check to Mr. Ames himself, and how I bad paid it, namely: in two SSOO and two SIOO notes. I was remonstrated with, however, and urged not to testify under oath to such belief, as it was Im probable that I should recollect transactions of such a character four years. Being unfamiliar with the laws of evidence, I very naturally did not at first state my strong impressions, but testified as to facts only. At my second examination, however, I freely stated these strong impressions, and if I had had the self-possession of one accustomed to ccr.rts I would have stated the foundation of these decided impressions. This strong impression that I had paid this “8. C. ” check to Ames was confirmed by himself in answer to a question I put to him only the day before my second examination. I asked him: “Did I not pay that check to you. Mr. Ames?” And he replied: “I think it is very likely. ” Indeed, the more I have thought of the whole matter the more firmly I am convinced that Mr. Ames drew the money for the $1,200 "8. C.” check himself. If he had, when writing it, intended it for you, why did he not, as he did with several others who have acknowledged the receipt of the money, write the name in full. All the members who are charged with the initial checks deny ever having seen them, and I repeat, as I testified at my second examination, that my very strong impression is that I paid all the initial checks to Mr. Ames himself. Tendering my congratulation on what I regard as your triumphant vindication from the well arranged plot to injure you in the estimation of the people,l am, very respectfully and truly: Meszs Dillow, Cashier. Mr. Colfax continued: I will also read you the following absolutely conclusive letter from W. Bcott Smith:

Oftiob or Evening Pbbss Association, I Washington, March 5,1873. j On the next evening of the day alluded te (the day Mr. Colfax was first before the Committee), Mr. Ames came into the room of a friend upon whom I was calling at the Arlington House, and after a talk to some extent on various matters, he saidwith much earnestness that he was surprised to see that you had stated before the Poland Committee that he (Ames) still owed you the sum you had originally paid him as subscription to the stock of the Credit-Mobilier. “Colfax astonished me,” said Mr. Ames, “and I have been looking up the matter to see if he is correct I remember well his paying me SSOO, and his coming to me afterward and saying he had concluded to back out of the transaction; but my memory Is clear, and, in fact, I know that I paid him back his money at that time, and the matter was then closed up without his taking the stock or my paying over tohim any dividends," I waa much impressed with what Mr. Ames said, and believed as he stated, that you had never taken the stock or received any of the dividends, and I confess that, as between the public statement made after bis conversation with me, in which he maintained that you took the stock and received the dividends, and his private statement, I felt that I must accept the latter, believing that Mr. Ames, in his former statement,was influenced by some unexplained motive.. In the six years I have represented leading papers East and West at the Capital, among the few men in Congressional llfe whose integrity I never beard Impeached or called in question, you are one. The recent Credit-Mobilier investigation has not shaken my judgment, and I feel that when the public excitement subsides and the facts can be looked at dispassionately, the people will continue to trust you, as they ever have In the past. Sincerely yours, W. Scott Smith. CONCLUSION OK MH. COLFAX’S EXPLANATION. Mr. Colfax then read from the testimony of Mr. Matthews, on page 494 of the report, in regard to the time when he abandoned thia stock, and which testimony on thia point he stated ttie papers had not printed. It was confirmatory of his own statement, Mr. Matthews telling him in the winter or early in the spring of 1868 that he thought the Credit-Mobilier an institution where the big fish ate up the little ones, and that in a couple of months afterward Mr. Colfax told him his investment in it had gone up, that there was a prospect of a lawsuit, and as he had never been in one he had backed out and did not have any interest in it. And, further, that he (Mr. Ames) failed, and Mr. Colfax’s mother expressed great sympathy for Mrs. Ames. Mr. Colfax replied that Ames owed him SSOO but he would never ask him for it until he got able to pay it. He also read from Ames’ testimony of January 22, page 286, that even after Colfax’s conversation about never minding the SSOO he supposed he had to pay the SSOO, which-was-entirely inconsistent with Ames having previously paid him $1,200, which would have been S7OO more than the amount Colfax had paid Ames on account of the stock.

Mr. Colfax then proceeded as follows: When my bank account was brought before the committee and it was shown that I had deposited $1,200 in currency Monday, June 22,1868, two. days after the date of Ames’ check, I was required to explain where I obtained it. My counsel, the very next day, laid before the committee a draft for SI,OOO, purchased by me that very 22d of June with a check out ot this $1,200 deposited and indorsed over to the Chairman of the Indiana State Republican Committee, to whom, as the canceled draft shows, it was paid. My counsel promised to connect this with the subsequent testimony of.. Mr. Matthews, as he has the certificate to substantiate. My sister telegraphed me from Utah that She remembered the Nesbitt letter of the middle of June containing the SI,OOO bill. 1 would not present this testimony behind my accuser's back, he having gone home to MasSa■chusetts. My sister, meanwhile, had made a 3,000 mile winter jdurney, alone, to testify as to what all my family so well remembered. Mr. Matthews, Mrs. Hollister and I, all testified to the receipt of the SI,OOO bill at the breakfast table, with a congratulatory letter. Upon examination, Mr. Matthews fixed the dates as within two or three days after his payment to me of S2OO in bills on the piano debt, which payment of his was on June 16 or 17,1868. This testi-

mony was confirmed by the statement of another sister, in lowa, who remembered that my mother wrote to her in June, 1868, ot my having received a SI,OOO bill, to which she had referred especially. It was further •confirmed by the testimony of Mr. Matthews that in the same conversation it was understood and stated that I would send this Nesbitt remittance to Indiana, and the bank books with the so called draft proved that I did so send it that very day, the 23d of June, out of the $1,200 deposit. This remittance of so large an amount from a stranger was ridiculed by many as impossible, and the fact that he was dead and could not testify as to his own confidential donation was cruelly commented on. The committee, however, after having closed the public f testimony commanded examining privately my bank account during other months than the one in issue. Learning this, I notified them at ence that I had received other remittances at that session from this generous donor, partly for personal use and partly for political, with the distinct understanding that receiving them should create no obligation on my part, that his family did not desire his letters published unless absolutely necessary, and that bv advice of my counsel 1 had not referred’to them in the explanation requested of me as to the precise Source of the currency deposit of June 22. I placed them, however, st the disposal of the committee, and they were subsequently made public. They show that in April, 1868, he sent me SI,OOO for personal uses as a free gift, and that in July, in a letter which did not refer to my nomination at all as the lost letter of June did, he sent another SI,OOO for political uses making in all April, June and July remittances, personally and $2,000 politically. I showed also by another draft [of SI,OOO, indorsed by me, July 18, to the Chairman of the Indiana Republican Committee and returned to the bank paid and canceled, th >t 1 had sent his SIOOO remittance of July to Indiana, as I had the one in June, and thus the two drafts substantially prove both remittances and their dates. 4» (ctmliaiMd en Jbwrf* peps.)