Sketches New and Old. Mark Twain
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got an act passed transferring the Fisher matter from the dull Auditor to the ingenious Floyd. What did Floyd do? He said, “It was proved that the Indians destroyed everything they could before the troops entered in pursuit.” He considered, therefore, that what they destroyed must have consisted of “the houses with all their contents, and the liquor” (the most trifling part of the destruction, and set down at only $3,200 all told), and that the government troops then drove them off and calmly proceeded to destroy—
Two hundred and twenty acres of corn in the field, thirty-five acres of wheat, and nine hundred and eighty-six head of live stock! [What a singularly intelligent army we had in those days, according to Mr. Floyd – though not according to the Congress of 1832.]
So Mr. Floyd decided that the Government was not responsible for that $3,200 worth of rubbish which the Indians destroyed, but was responsible for the property destroyed by the troops – which property consisted of (I quote from the printed United States Senate document):
Dollars
Corn at Bassett’s Creek…………… 3,00
Cattle………………………….. 5,000
Stock hogs………………………. 1,050
Drove hogs………………………. 1,204
Wheat…………………………… 350
Hides…………………………… 4,00
Corn on the Alabama River…………. 3,500
Total………….18,104
That sum, in his report, Mr. Floyd calls the “full value of the property destroyed by the troops.”
He allows that sum to the starving Fishers, together with interest from 1813. From this new sum total the amounts already paid to the Fishers were deducted, and then the cheerful remainder (a fraction under forty thousand dollars) was handed to them, and again they retired to Florida in a condition of temporary tranquillity. Their ancestor’s farm had now yielded them altogether nearly sixty-seven thousand dollars in cash.
6. Does the reader suppose that that was the end of it? Does he suppose those diffident Fishers were satisfied? Let the evidence show. The Fishers were quiet just two years. Then they came swarming up out of the fertile swamps of Florida with their same old documents, and besieged Congress once more. Congress capitulated on the 1st of June, 1860, and instructed Mr. Floyd to overhaul those papers again, and pay that bill. A Treasury clerk was ordered to go through those papers and report to Mr. Floyd what amount was still due the emaciated Fishers. This clerk (I can produce him whenever he is wanted) discovered what was apparently a glaring and recent forgery in the papers; whereby a witness’s testimony as to the price of corn in Florida in 1813 was made to name double the amount which that witness had originally specified as the price! The clerk not only called his superior’s attention to this thing, but in making up his brief of the case called particular attention to it in writing. That part of the brief never got before Congress, nor has Congress ever yet had a hint of forgery existing among the Fisher papers. Nevertheless, on the basis of the double prices (and totally ignoring the clerk’s assertion that the figures were manifestly and unquestionably a recent forgery), Mr. Floyd remarks in his new report that “the testimony, particularly in regard to the corn crops, demands A much higher allowance than any heretofore made by the Auditor or myself.” So he estimates the crop at sixty bushels to the acre (double what Florida acres produce), and then virtuously allows pay for only half the crop, but allows two dollars and a half a bushel for that half, when there are rusty old books and documents in the Congressional library to show just what the Fisher testimony showed before the forgery – viz., that in the fall of 1813 corn was only worth from $1.25 to $1.50 a bushel. Having accomplished this, what does Mr. Floyd do next? Mr. Floyd ("with an earnest desire to execute truly the legislative will,” as he piously remarks) goes to work and makes out an entirely new bill of Fisher damages, and in this new bill he placidly ignores the Indians altogether– puts no particle of the destruction of the Fisher property upon them, but, even repenting him of charging them with burning the cabins and drinking the whisky and breaking the crockery, lays the entire damage at the door of the imbecile United States troops down to the very last item! And not only that, but uses the forgery to double the loss of corn at “Bassett’s Creek,” and uses it again to absolutely treble the loss of corn on the “Alabama River.” This new and ably conceived and executed bill of Mr. Floyd’s figures up as follows (I copy again from the printed United States Senate document):
The United States in account with the legal representatives of George Fisher, deceased.
Dol.C
1813.-To 550 head of cattle, at 10 dollars…………. 5,500.00
To 86 head of drove hogs……………………. 1,204.00
To 350 head of stock hogs…………………… 1,750.00
To 100 acres of corn on Bassett’s creek………. 6,000.00
To 8 barrels of whisky……………………… 350.00
To 2 barrels of brandy……………………… 280.00
To 1 barrel of rum…………………………. 70.00
To dry-goods and merchandise in store………… 1,100.00
To 35 acres of wheat……………………….. 350.00
To 2,000 hides…………………………….. 4,000.00
To furs and hats in store…………………… 600.00
To crockery ware in store…………………… 100.00
To smith’s and carpenter’s tools…………….. 250.00
To houses burned and destroyed………………. 600.00
To 4 dozen bottles of wine………………….. 48.00 1814.
To 120 acres of corn on Alabama River………… 9,500.00
To crops of peas, fodder, etc……………….. 3,250.00
Total……………………..34,952.00
To interest on $22,202, from July 1813 to November 1860, 47 years and 4 months…….63,053.68
To interest on $12,750, from September 1814 to November 1860, 46 years and 2 months,35,317.50
Total…………………… 133,323.18
He puts everything in this time. He does not even allow that the Indians destroyed the crockery or drank the four dozen bottles of (currant) wine. When it came to supernatural comprehensiveness in “gobbling,” John B. Floyd was without his equal, in his own or any other generation. Subtracting from the above total the $67,000 already paid to George Fisher’s implacable heirs, Mr. Floyd announced that the government was still indebted to them in the sum of sixty-six thousand five hundred and nineteen dollars and eighty-five cents, “which,” Mr. Floyd complacently remarks, “will be paid, accordingly, to the administrator of the estate of George Fisher, deceased, or to his attorney in fact.”
But, sadly enough for the destitute orphans, a new President came in just at this time, Buchanan and Floyd went out, and they never got their money. The first thing Congress did in 1861 was to rescind the resolution of June 1, 1860, under which Mr. Floyd had been ciphering. Then Floyd (and doubtless the heirs of George Fisher likewise) had to give up financial business for a while, and go into the Confederate army and serve their country.
Were the heirs of George Fisher killed? No. They are back now at this very time (July, 1870), beseeching Congress through that blushing and diffident creature, Garrett Davis, to commence making payments again on their interminable and insatiable bill of damages for corn and whisky destroyed by a gang of irresponsible Indians, so long ago that even government red-tape has failed to keep consistent and intelligent track of it.
Now