which would obtain for me the freedom of the treasury building, but that I would have to be exceedingly careful of it, and take particular pains not to let any one but the person to whom it was addressed see it.
I, of course, made all necessary promises, and he, accordingly, wrote a note, which he signed with a private mark instead of with his name, and told me to call the next day at the treasury, and give it to a certain prominent official connected with the printing bureau. He then took his leave, and I had little or nothing to do with him afterwards, his share of whatever profits was made being paid to him by some one else.
My arrangement with the parties at whose instance I went to Washington on this business was, that in event of my being able to make a satisfactory bargain with the officials in the treasury department, I was to be the receiver and bearer of whatever they might confide to my care in the way of bonds, notes, bogus plates, and other matters, and was to travel to and fro between Washington, Philadelphia, and New York as a confidential manager, while brokers in the two last-named cities and elsewhere were to do the financiering.
The scheme was an immense one, although it did not reach its full proportions all at once ; and it included not only dealing in genuine borrowed for the purpose from the treasury and bogus Federal securities, but Confederate bogus bonds also. These bonds were to be, as far as practicable, put upon the English market, at the best rates that could be gotten for them, and our that is, the Confederate share of the proceeds was to go into a general fund, to be used for advancing the interests of the cause. As for the Britishers, we considered them fair game, when selling them either kind of bogus securities, for we regarded their conduct as- treacherous to both parties in the great contest, and thought that they might as well be made to pay some of the expenses of conducting it.
From first to last the British government had deluded the people of the Confederacy with false hopes of recognition and interference; and, as at the time of which I am writing, it was becoming daily more apparent that it did not propose to interfere unless it could do so without risking anything, the feeling against it, especially among the Confederates at the North and in Canada, who were constantly in correspondence
