“Yes, certain death. It has been, to the
most of our tribe. I begin to feel that I, too,
am called.”
“Young man, you love the bright creature yonder
with the gentle blue eyes and the steel pens behind
her ears—I see it in your soft glances;
you wish to marry her—but you are poor.
Here, hold out your hand—here is the beef
contract; go, take her and be happy Heaven bless you,
my children!”
This is all I know about the great beef contract that
has created so much talk in the community. The
clerk to whom I bequeathed it died. I know nothing
further about the contract, or any one connected with
it. I only know that if a man lives long enough
he can trace a thing through the Circumlocution Office
of Washington and find out, after much labor and trouble
and delay, that which he could have found out on the
first day if the business of the Circumlocution Office
were as ingeniously systematized as it would be if
it were a great private mercantile institution.
—[Some years ago, about 1867, when this
was first published, few people believed it, but considered
it a mere extravaganza. In these latter days
it seems hard to realize that there was ever a time
when the robbing of our government was a novelty.
The very man who showed me where to find the documents
for this case was at that very time spending hundreds
of thousands of dollars in Washington for a mail steamship
concern, in the effort to procure a subsidy for the
company—a fact which was a long time in
coming to the surface, but leaked out at last and underwent
Congressional investigation.]
This is history. It is not a wild extravaganza,
like “John Wilson Mackenzie’s Great Beef
Contract,” but is a plain statement of facts
and circumstances with which the Congress of the United
States has interested itself from time to time during
the long period of half a century.
I will not call this matter of George Fisher’s
a great deathless and unrelenting swindle upon the
government and people of the United States —for
it has never been so decided, and I hold that it is
a grave and solemn wrong for a writer to cast slurs
or call names when such is the case—but
will simply present the evidence and let the reader
deduce his own verdict. Then we shall do nobody
injustice, and our consciences shall be clear.
On or about the 1st day of September, 1813, the Creek
war being then in progress in Florida, the crops,
herds, and houses of Mr. George Fisher, a citizen,
were destroyed, either by the Indians or by the United
States troops in pursuit of them. By the terms
of the law, if the Indians destroyed the property,
there was no relief for Fisher; but if the troops
destroyed it, the Government of the United States was
debtor to Fisher for the amount involved.
George Fisher must have considered that the Indians
destroyed the property, because, although he lived
several years afterward, he does not appear to have
ever made any claim upon the government.
