For years, he had served the nation as financial minister, and at a time when the method of keeping, transferring, and disbursing the moneys of Government afforded infinite opportunities for peculation—­when vast amounts of money arising from the sale of the public domain in the West and the South was under his control, and when he had the selection of the depositories of this, and when these deposits were of great value to the local or State banks, so that they would have paid handsomely for them; yet this noble being came out of the furnace without the smell of fire upon his garments.

There was but one man who ever imputed dishonesty to him, or selfish motives in any act.  When the claims of Mr. Adams and Mr. Crawford for the Presidency were being discussed, and party asperity sought to slay its victims, Ninian Edwards, a senator of Congress from Illinois, charged Mr. Crawford with impropriety of conduct in depositing, for selfish and dishonest purposes, the public moneys arising from the sale of lands in Illinois, in banks notoriously insolvent.  Edwards had been appointed minister to Mexico, had left the Senate, and had gone to his home, preparatory to his leaving for Mexico; and from his home made this attack upon Mr. Crawford.  The son-in-law of Edwards, a man named Cook, was the representative in Congress from Illinois, and, if I remember correctly, was the only representative who at the time reiterated these charges from his seat.  Mr. Crawford immediately demanded an investigation of his conduct.  This was had, and the result was a triumphant acquittal from all blame; and so damaging was this investigation to Edwards that the President recalled the commission of Edwards as minister to Mexico, and appointed Joel R. Poinsett, of South Carolina, in his stead.  Edwards was at New Orleans when the letter of recall from the President reached him, that far on his way to Mexico:  he returned in disgrace, and soon faded from public notice forever.  At the time, it was asserted he was the brother-in-law of Mr. Adams, and knowing that some of the banks in which Crawford had deposited the public treasure had failed, he imagined complicity of a dishonest character, on the part of Crawford, with the officers of the banks, and expected to injure him and subserve the interest of Adams.  In what contrast does this transaction place the purity of the Government, as then administered, with its conduct of to-day, and how peerless were those who were trusted then with public confidence and high places, in comparison with the public men who fill their places now!

Georgia has given to the nation two Secretaries of the Treasury—­William H. Crawford and Howell Cobb; they were citizens of adjoining counties.  Cobb was born within a few miles of Crawford’s grave.  They were both administering the office at a time in the history of the nation when she was surrounded with perils.  The one, when she was just coming out of a war with the most powerful nation