Bad as they were, however, the substitute-brokers and the
bounty-jumpers were not the worst villains of the period.
Men high in public station, and occupying offices of the great est responsibility, were engaged in robbing the government and in swindling the public, to an extent that was absolutely startling to me when I obtained cognizance of their doings, and, for the purpose of carrying out my plans, became an accomplice in some of their transactions.
Thieves and Counterfeiters in the Treasury Department.
The treasury department itself where the Federal currency, and the interest-bearing bonds, upon which was raised money to carry on the contest, were manufactured was the headquarters of a gang of thieves and counterfeiters, who carried on their operations for months, within my own knowledge, in a most barefaced manner, and who, when at length detected and brought to bay, were able, not only to escape punishment, but to retain their positions, and to find apologists in their official superiors and in prominent members of Congress.
I really did not know what to make of it when I read the report of the committee of Congress, which not only exonerated certain treasury officials, whose misdeeds were discovered by Colonel Baker, but which actually insinuated that the detective was engaged in a conspiracy against them. I knew only too well how guilty they were, and I knew that Baker had ample evidence against them, although he was not in formed of a tithe of the villanies they had committed. That the secretary and the solicitor of the treasury should take sides with them, and that a congressional committee, composed of statesmen who claimed to be honest and patriotic, should, in the face of the evidences of their guilt which were produced, sustain them, and endeavor to punish Baker for having detected them, are things that I have never yet been able to understand.
That they were protected, and that attempts were made to punish Baker, are, however, facts that cannot be denied; and certainly, of all the disgraceful things which occurred during the war, this was one of the most disgraceful.
No person has a better right to speak plainly and emphatically on this subject than myself, and no person who reads this narrative will suppose for a moment that I am influenced
