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THE WASHERS AND SCRUBBERS.

THE MEN WHO ROBBED THEM.

BY F. C. ADAMS,

WASHINGTON, D. C.: PRINTED BY JUDD & DETWEILER. 1878.

"WHITE MAN BERY UNSARTIN."

"NIGGER HAINT GOT NO FRIENDS. NO HOW."

THE MEN WHO ROBBED AND COMBINED TO ROB THE FREEDMEN OF THEIR HARD EARNINGS.

WASHINGTON: JOS. SHILLINGTON, Publisher, 363 Pa. Avenue.

THE WASHERS AND THE SCRUBBERS--THE MEN WHO ROBBED THEM.

The last report of the three Commissioners for winding up the affairs of the bankrupt Freedmen's Bank, brought out in response to a resolution of Congress, introduced by the Honorable Nicholas Muller, of New York, is one of the most remarkable documents ever given to the American people. It is remarkable as illustrating the heartlessness of man; remarkable as illustrating the amount of scoundrelism there is in our social and political organizations; and remarkable for its exemplification of those trite sayings so common among the slaves of the South before the war, and which I have placed at the head of this article. "White man very unsartin." "Nigger haint got no friends, no how."

I again approach this black chapter in the history of the great--perhaps I should say once great--Republican party with feelings of sadness. Here, in this remarkable report, we have man's inhumanity to man portrayed in all its darkest colors.

Just here let me pause for a moment to thank kind, generous-hearted Mr. Muller for introducing the resolution which brought out the strange chapter of scoundrelism contained in this remarkable report. And I do this the more cheerfully because he is a Democrat and I am an old time Republican, perhaps I should say Abolitionist, and had failed in three attempts to get a Republican to introduce it.

Before proceeding to dissect this remarkable report, however, I propose to say, as a matter of history, something in regard to the formation of the plot concocted by, to use a vulgar phrase, Boss Shepherd and his Ring to rob this bank for the earnings of the poor.

Even high-toned robbery has its vein of romance, and there was something romantic in the early stages of the history of this gigantic robbery. One cold, stormy November night, in the year 1871, my rooms were invaded, and my reveries broken by a man I regarded as an intruder. He threw off his wet coat, put his umbrella in the coal box, and I invited him to take a seat. "I am here," he said, "on a very important mission." He was considerably excited, and for some minutes spoke with a tremulous voice and somewhat incoherently. At first I thought he was under the influence of liquor, but I remembered that he was not given to the cup. I begged him to concentrate his thoughts, and tell me in the fewest words possible what he had to say.

"Mr. Adams," he said, after pausing a moment, "I know you are a true friend of the colored man."

"Well, never mind that," said I, "proceed with what you have to say."

He did proceed, and disclosed to me the most monstrous plot for getting possession of the money deposited in the Freedmen's Bank, and that by men who had been prominent Republicans and professing Christians. There was something so monstrous, so heartless, and so at variance with the laws which ordinarily govern human actions, as to create a doubt in my mind of the truth of what he said. The name of this gentleman was John R. Elvans, a member of the Examining Committee of the bank, who informed me that he had protested, in the name of honesty and humanity, against the contemplated robbery, and had resigned rather than have it appear that he had countenanced so monstrous a wrong.

The substance of the plot was that the six millions of hard earnings of the slaves, constituting their lifetime savings, were to be got by the conspirators on worthless securities, such as bogus paving company stock, second mortgage bonds, and stock of the Seneca Sandstone Company, shares of the Young Men's Christian Association, and other stuff even more worthless. He also insisted, with considerable emphasis, that the Seneca Sandstone Ring had got complete control of the bank's money.

In reply to a request that Mr. Elvans would give me the names of the men prominent in so dastardly a conspiracy, he gave me those of A. R. Shepherd, Hallett Kilbourn, William S. Huntington, Doctor John L. Kidwell, Lewis Clephane, O. O. Howard, and D. L. Eaton. He also asserted with some vehemence that the officers of the bank, professing Christians and pretended friends of the negroes, were "deepest in the fraud."

In order to be sure of my ground, and not to be misled, I requested Mr. Elvans to get me a transcript from the books of the bank, of the loans he had asserted had been made on those worthless securities. Two days afterwards he brought me the desired transcript, which is now before me in his own handwriting. The following is an exact copy of it:

Mr. Emery was mayor of the city at the time, and it is only right to say here that the loan was a legitimate one, and ultimately paid, with interest.

As to the matter of Mr. Clephane's wealth, so suddenly acquired, I can safely leave that as a matter to be decided between his conscience and himself. Enough of this. Let us return to Mr. Elvans' transcript.

This Scharf Paving Company was an offshoot of the rascally Metropolis Paving Company, of which John O. Evans, Kilbourn, and other congenial spirits, were the managers, and Lewis Clephane the president. And just here I beg the innocent reader not to forget that during all this time Lewis Clephane, the high society Republican, described above, was a member of the Finance Committee of the Freedman's Bank, made such, because of his supposed friendship for the colored man.

These bonds were not worth the paper they were printed on.

GENERAL O. O. HOWARD, THE GREAT CHRISTIAN SOLDIER, COMES UPON THE STAGE AS A SPECULATOR.

To avoid argument, let us accept General O. O. Howard as a first-class Christian and an accepted friend of the colored man and brother. But the reader must not forget that, from the days of Adam, our great forefather, down to the illustrious Babcock, temptation could be made too strong for even the purest of Christians. And, too, there were crimes by which even the angels fell. The six millions of dollars deposited in the Freedmen's Bank by the slaves just set free, after nearly two centuries of the most abject bondage, proved Brother Howard's Satan, tempting him on to commit crime. The temptation was too strong for him, and he fell a victim to his ambition for speculation, just as Satan, before him, had fallen under the too great weight of another kind of temptation. Yes, the great, the good, the Christian soldier fell a victim to his love of gain. Our Saviour scourged the money-changers for a crime much less heinous, and he drove them out of the Temple, too. It is in proof that this walking example of Christian purity, this soldier of the Lord, resigned his position as Vice-President of the Bank for the safe keeping of the freedmen's earnings, because the law debarred him from being a borrower, and three days afterwards appeared at the counter of the bank and borrowed ,000 of its money--that, too, for the vulgar purpose of speculating in corner lots. General O. O. Howard still holds his position as a high society Republican, and is an idol of the church.

I now come to that great modern statesman, Christian, friend of the church, and defender of the illustrious U. S. Grant, and the still more illustrious Babcock, the personification of the late Board of Public Works, and all the crimes it was heir to. It was not to be expected that a gentleman of so much goodness of heart, so wise, modest, and retiring; a gentleman whose heart yearned every hour of the day to do generous acts for the benefit of his fellow-men--who went to bed of a night contemplating the amount of good he could do for mankind in general and Washington in particular; whose disinterestedness caused him to forget himself entirely--a man, I assert here without fear of contradiction, who, by his own unaided exertions, had raised himself from the position of an humble plumber and gas-fitter--thankful for a job, no matter how small--to the high position of a governor, a modern statesman, a friend of humanity, and an adviser of the President. Here let me say, as a lover of truth and justice, that a great deal has been said about the fall of this great modern statesman, and very little about his rise. To us the rise is the most important part of it, and for the very reason that it repeats the story of Whittington and his cat, thrice Lord Mayor of London, to say nothing of honest Sancho Panza and his government of the island of Barritario. But comparisons between governors are odious, as Mrs. Malliprop said.

Just here I confess, as a lover of the truth of history, to have erred and strayed from my subject. My object was to show you that Alexander R. Shepherd was one of the original conspirators for robbing the Freedmen's Bank! This is sad, but it is true. He appears in Mr. John R. Elvans' transcript, as follows:

I was informed on good authority that these lots, on which Mr. A. R. Shepherd borrowed fifteen thousand dollars, were not worth half the amount. This gentleman's future operations with the bank were conducted on a more magnificent scale, but in the names of other persons. As Mr. Beverly Douglas said during his investigation into the affairs of the bank, it was marvelous to see how many of other peoples' fingers Mr. Shepherd had used to pull the Freedmen's Bank chestnuts for him. I had hoped that the solemn and impressive death of that other great modern statesman and benefactor of mankind, William Marcy Tweed, would have had a good effect on the moral and religious status of our late governor. But recent events convince me that the solemn and impressive warning remains unheeded.

Here again we have another Christian statesman, of high standing in the Republican church, who wants the Freedmen's money--doubtless for a pious purpose.

It is due to Mr. Cooke to say that this sum was afterwards paid. Doubtless his intentions were good when he borrowed the money. Naturally a well-meaning man, he fell a victim to bad association.

This completes the transcript brought me from the books of the bank, in November, 1871. I need hardly tell the reader that the gentlemen whose names appear as original conspirators to rob the bank were Republicans of high standing in the party, and professed friends of the colored man. It will also be observed that they initiated the robbery, by getting the money on worthless securities, and with two or three additions of men of the same stamp, in politics as well as religion, continued it to the very end.

Fully satisfied that what Mr. Elvans had told me was true--satisfied also of the existence of a conspiracy to steal the funds of the bank--the next question was, as to how the disaster, sure to result from it, could be averted. I laid Mr. Elvans' statement before several leading Republicans, in and outside of Congress, and appealed to them to assist me in rescuing the bank and its money from this combination of robbers. I use very plain language in treating of this very black crime--one which should sink the Republican party so far out of sight that it would never again have an existence. Must I confess here that I appealed to Republicans in vain? Some of them had for years been shedding tears over the sorrows of the slave; but, like Pomeroy, of Kansas, they had borrowed the newly emancipated slave's money, and it had sealed their lips and withered their consciences.

I appealed to a member of Grant's cabinet. He had previously professed friendship for the negro. He glanced over Mr. Elvans' black list of loans, smiled, and handed it back, saying, the names were those of highly honorable gentlemen, who would not do a dishonest act. He intimated, also, that Mr. Elvans was bent on creating a sensation. This cabinet minister, as was afterwards proven, was connected with the most prominent of these conspirators in real estate and other speculations. In plain language, this gang of Republican knaves were all powerful at court, at that time. Grant, himself, was their friend, associate, and partner in Seneca sandstone and other speculations. Indeed it is only the truth to say of Grant that such was the force of his democratic instincts that he never had any real, honest sympathy with the negro, to say nothing of his contempt for poor men of whatever color. It was Grant's native dislike of the negro and the abolitionist alike, that led him into his unfortunate quarrel with Mr. Sumner. That quarrel initiated the independent Republicans, and it also initiated the disintegration of the Republican party.

I associate the robbery of this bank with the Republican party, because, as I said before, the robbers were all Republicans of high standing in the church; and the chosen leaders of the party looked on with indifference while the robbery was going on, and continued to look on with indifference until the bank closed its doors in bankruptcy.

Then for the first time the cry of shame went up, but not from the leaders of the Republican party. Their energies were given to protect the robbers, to stifle investigation, and to slander the men fearless enough to expose the hideous conspiracy.

Here we were brought face to face with the fact that the Republican party had abandoned its principles, had abandoned truth and justice--even humanity itself--and in the future would depend on dollars and cents for its strength. Its political morality strongly resembled the Democratic party as it was twenty years ago, when slavery was its Political Fetish--when it had a Jew banker at one end of it and a prize fighter at the other.

Again we were brought face to face with the fact that the Republican party and its professed leaders had reached that very high standard of modern civilization, when a bank for the savings of the wages of the poor could be made part of a system of robbery, the robbers being encouraged and recognized by the administration and society. To be even more explicit, it was the first time in the history of felony that the workmen and workwomen, the scrubbers and washers, the orphans and widows of the poorest and most ignorant classes in the city of Washington, were unwittingly made to cash obligations issued by an organized gang of thieves and plunderers.

It is hardly necessary to say here that subsequent developments have shown the black chapter of that robbery to have been ten times blacker than I had painted it. The villainy unearthed by Mr. Beverly Douglas' committee, three years ago, stands to-day the blackest crime in our criminal history. That committee, in its clear and able report, gave us the names of the prominent actors in that great crime; and yet the finger of justice has not touched one of them. Strange as it may seem to the ordinary thinker, these men, so well known at this day, and who committed the meanest theft history has any account of, stand as high in the Republican church to-day as they did when General Grant was the great high priest of the party.

Here let me say that the fact must not be overlooked, that

A REPUBLICAN CONGRESS

was, in a great measure, responsible for the robbery of the Freedmen's Bank. And this I say more in sorrow than anger. The reader will bear in mind that the acts of Congress, under which the bank's original charter was granted, prescribed the character of the securities on which its money could be loaned. The men who had combined to get possession of the bank's money, on worthless securities, such as Paving Company stock, Seneca Sandstone stock, Morris' Mining Company stock, stock of the Young Men's Christian Association, and other stock equally worthless and fraudulent, found this simple and very requisite safeguard a serious impediment to the successful carrying out of their infamous project. They went before a Republican Congress, and with the assurance of experienced cracksmen, asked it to repeal the restrictive clause, and pass an act which made the robbery that followed, possible. And, as the vote will show, a Republican Congress was only too glad to accommodate them. In truth, Congress enacted laws for their benefit, and which virtually placed the funds of the bank at the mercy of the thieves and plunderers, who at once entered its vaults and began the work of emptying them. A Republican Congress placed in the hands of these bad, designing men, the power to make the scrubbers and the washers, the widows and orphans of the poor and the ignorant--even the maimed soldier--unwittingly cash their worthless obligations.

Here, and now let me say a few words in

DEFENSE OF THE NEGRO.

Much has been said and written on the vices, great and small, of the negro. He has been accused of being ignorant, brutish, and vicious, of want of thrift, of having largely developed animal propensities, of a chronic inability to tell the truth, of a disposition to accumulate property not his own, and of a weakness to explore the chicken roosts of his neighbors. In truth he has for more than a century been charged with no end of small vices, and a propensity to do the meanest kind of stealing. Heaven knows he has small vices enough. I admit it and deplore it, as well for its bad effect on society generally, as for the damage it inflicts on his own people. But the thoughtful and candid reader will join me in saying that the negro, in his very worst and most vicious condition to-day, is precisely what slavery made him. Slavery was based on cruelty and tyranny, and was alike destructive--morally, mentally, and commercially--of the best interests of black and white.

Slavery, in the very magnitude of its cruelty, denied the black man education, manhood, the right to think or act for himself. Slavery denied him all right to his own offspring, all right to regard himself as a man. It caused him to be born a chattel, to be raised a chattel; it degraded him, made him brutish, and sold him in the market like a beast of burden. When the day of his deliverance came he was found to be exactly what slavery made him--nothing more, nothing less. And I appeal to the thoughtful reader, to the just and the generous, if it is not too great an exaction to expect examples of morality and high Christian virtues, of a race so long held in degrading bondage?

Criminal and vicious classes are not confined to race, color, or country. They are found everywhere. A long residence in the South enabled me to observe and study the habits of both black and white. A more illiterate, vicious, and depraved--a class more reckless of human life than the poor whites of the South it would be difficult to find in any country. I refer more particularly to what are known as crackers, wire-grass, and sand-hill men. Depraved and vicious to an extent almost beyond belief, they yet, in many things, hold the better classes subject to their dictation, and too frequently make them responsible for their crimes. My experience has been that for Christian virtues, for all that was kindly and tractable in human nature, the negro, even as a slave, was by far the poor white's superior; in truth, I never saw the time, in the South, when I would not prefer trusting myself in his hands. Now that the negro is a man, a citizen, a voter, and a factor in the body politic of the South, it seems to me that it should not only be the desire but the ambition of the "ruling classes" to treat him fairly, as if he had always been a man entitled to the value of his own labor, to educate and elevate him--in a word, to make him part and parcel of their own welfare. They must make him something more than he was when he came out of the fiery furnace of slavery, as a means to their own protection. I would suggest, also, as I did twenty-seven years ago, that the "ruling classes" of the South would find it to their benefit to try the experiment of education on that large and very dangerous class I referred to above, called poor whites. I make this suggestion, fully aware that these poor whites--lawless, vicious, and degraded as they are--have heretofore fiercely resisted all attempts in that direction, firmly believing, as they do, that education is an evil, and civilization an infringement of their sovereign rights to roam over the sand hills, raid on the plantations of the rich, shoot negroes at sight, and burn down school houses.

The present Governor of Kentucky understood the situation I have been discussing perfectly when he said, in his message vetoing the act for the restoration of that relic of barbarism and cruelty, the whipping post: "Mankind is already too much degraded. He who can elevate and place mankind on an higher plane is a benefactor of his race." I have had these words printed in letters of gold, framed, and hung on the walls of my humble sanctum.

NOT TO BE FORGOTTEN.

Out of all the charges of vice laid at the door of the negro race there rises the fact that almost on the heels of their emancipation the men and women composing it brought out their savings of a lifetime and deposited nearly six million of dollars in this Freedmen's Bank and its thirty-odd agencies. The candid-minded will admit that this fact is something greatly to their credit, and must not be forgotten when their virtue or want of virtue is under discussion. Indeed, it speaks volumes for their thrift, for their love of saving, and providing for future wants. Most of this money was drawn from the middle southern States, the negroes of Georgia alone contributing nearly half a million, all of which, or nearly all of which, was brought here and placed at the mercy of a ring of Republican sharpers, and with the shocking result already known. It is also something to the credit of the race that, during and just after the war, very many of them, with remarkable shrewdness, purchased property and built comfortable little homes in what is now the most desirable part of the city, and where real estate is the most valuable. The imposing churches and school houses they have built in this neighborhood must also be accepted as proof of their thrift and progress. It is also something to their credit that, during the reign of Mr. Shepherd and his vile Ring, they successfully resisted the shameful attempts made to get possession of their property and drive them from their homes. Here let me say that the greatest danger to the future prospects of the race will come from those mischievous, ambitious, and restless men, more white than black, who set themselves up as leaders, and are always shedding tears over what they call the sorrows of "their race." They have no claim to race distinction, being a bad cross between a bad white man and an unchaste negress. I cannot help thinking that their example is bad and their teachings worse.

The damaging effect, morally, physically, and otherwise, on the negro, of the robbery of the Freedmen's Bank can hardly be over estimated. It was a very serious blow to his progress--to his future hopes. It made him lose faith in the integrity of the white man. The hope of gain no longer sweetens labor with him. He no longer saves his money to deposit in a saving bank, where he was so plausibly told it would bring him large interest, and ultimately a home. No; my experience has been that a large majority of the negroes to-day spend their money as they earn it, and indeed have lost that ambition to put something aside for a rainy day which characterized them a few years ago.

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