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 $24,000 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 (according to Mr. Elvans,) 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.

May I ask the reader to go back with me to the time Mr. John R. Elvans made his statement. Finding there was no other way of stopping the robbery or exposing the crime but through the press, I had recourse to that. My first articles, as is very well known, appeared in the Savannah Morning News. The New York Sun, on being assured of the correctness of my statements, afterwards came to the rescue and did good service in making the hideous crime public. The appearance of these articles created great excitement in Washington, as well they might. Denials came thick and fast, the robbers and their friends—and they were numerous and strong—asserted that the bank was in a perfectly sound condition, that its management was above suspicion. Of course the author of the articles was denounced as a libeler, and threatened with vengeance. The officers of the bank, without distinction of color or previous condition of servitude, were declared to be Republicans in good standing, and very high-toned gentlemen. I had heard something very similar to this before.

There was a weak and somewhat dyspeptic Democratic journal, called the Patriot, published in Washington at that time, and to the columns of which Montgomery Blair and other patriots contributed. The managing editor of this paper was a Mr. Harris, an experienced journalist, who appreciated the value of truth to a properly-conducted newspaper. This gentleman intensified the excitement then prevailing, by republishing, in a somewhat modified form, two of the articles from the Savannah Morning News. For this great offense he not only lost his place, but the paper made two of the most abject and cowardly apologies journalism has any account of. The chiefs of the gang forced these abject apologies from the managers of the Patriot by threatening castigation and libel suits.

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