tution and profits go to the depositors or to educational purposes for the Freedmen and their descendants.
The whole institution is under the
charter of Congress and receives the commendation of the President, Abraham Lincoln.” With
blare of trumpet it was chartered March 3rd, 1865; it collapsed in hopeless bankruptcy in 1873.
It had received fifty-six millions of dollars in deposits and failed owing over three millions most
of which was never repaid. A committee of Congress composed of both Democrats and Republicans said in 1876:
“The law lent no efficacy to the moral obligations assumed by the trustees, officers, and agents and the whole concern inevitably became as a ‘whited sepulchre’. . . . The inspectors . . . were of little or no value, either through the connivance and ignorance of the inspectors or the indifference of the trustees to their reports. . . . The committe of examination . . . were still more careless and inefficient, while the board of trustees, as a supervising and administrative body, intrusted with the fullest power of general control over the management, proved utterly faithless to the trust reposed in them. . . .
“The depositors were of small account now compared with the personal interest of the political jobbers, real estate pools, and fancy-stock
