The Delegate Who Sold Seattle’s Future for Five Thousand Dollars

What Has He Done?

At the beginning of the present canvass in this Territory, we asked the obvious question in regard to Mr. Garfield’s services as Delegate in Congress, and partially answered the same by quoting from the Congressional Globe the index of every measure he introduced during one long session, in which there was no act for the general benefit of the Territory. For this we have been assailed by Mr. Garfield in public speeches, and by his personal organs in public print, as a liar and falsifier of the records. But the record still stands, an unimpeachable witness of the literal truth of our statements, open to the inspection of all who choose to refer to it, and proving beyond the possibility of doubt or explanation, that Mr. Garfield himself and his suborned witnesses are the liars and falsifiers of the public record.

Convicted of deliberate falsehood by the record, he consumes from two to three hours in each of his public speeches in plausible excuses for not doing, and specious pretenses of what he has done, for which he has no documentary evidence to show; nothing, in fact, beyond his own impeached veracity to prove.

He premises his speeches by an affected fairness in stating the fact that the ordinary expenses of Territorial government would be provided for if the Territory had no Delegate in Congress, and that the duty of the Delegate was only to look after contingent interests which might arise. That is true, and almost the only true statement of fact which he makes in any of his speeches.

He then goes on to show what he has done in the way of obtaining extraordinary appropriations. First of these is for mail service. He shows mathematically that this branch of public service has been increased during his term of service, in and through this Territory, very largely, and this he claims as a special achievement of his own. Does not every intelligent man know that this is an ordinary branch of the public service in which the Department employs its own Agents? This service has been increased under the management, and, in every instance on the special recommendation of the Hon. J. B. Underwood, the U.S. Postal Agent for this district. There is no evidence, anywhere, beyond his unsupported statement, that he had anything to do with this increase.

If he had, why did he suffer, without public protest, a change in the mail service to Alaska, from Port Townsend, the nearest port of entry, to Portland, an inland town in Oregon? Surely, a proper representation of the facts to the Department would have shown the absurdity and injustice of this change, which imposed double pay for conveying the mails between Port Townsend and Portland. His comparison of the mail service in Washington Territory—with its millions of freight commerce, and steamers flying almost hourly between commercial towns—with the same services provided for the nomadic populations of Montana and Wyoming, was a way shallow experiment upon popular ignorance and credulity.

His next boast is that by having a cousin Chairman of the Committee on Public Lands, he procured an appropriation of $70,000 for surveying the public lands in this Territory. This is a sorry compliment to the Legislation of Congress, ascribing to nepotism what should be conceded to the public interests. The public lands do not belong to the people of the Territory, but to the federal Government. If the appropriation was demanded by the public interests, it is no credit to the Delegate that it is made; but is among those ordinary appropriations which would be made without the intervention of the Delegate. But, if not this it was merely a personal concession for the special interest of the Delegate, and to that end it is notoriously used providing a fund for the maintenance of a newspaper and to corrupt the voters in the interest of Garfield; and this is unquestionably the view taken by Mr. Garfield and his cousin, who helped him to an appropriation.

He claims that to his special exertions is due the appropriation of $430,000 for the improvement of the upper Columbia river. Oregon had two Senators of acknowledged influence, and a Representative equally interested with the constituents of Mr. Garfield in this appropriation, and the records of Congress make no mention of his personal exertions in this matter.

He claims that through Senator Williams, of Oregon, he procured an act protecting the settlers upon the lands held by the Puget Sound Agricultural Company. The records of Congress show nothing to establish this claim; and if it is true, it only shows Mr. Garfield’s proverbial modesty in conceding to another, on the record, what was justly due to himself, for the bill was passed in Senator Williams’ name, as Mr. Garfield has the grace to confess, with a plausible explanation of the fact.

We have a public record, however, of what Mr. Garfield did do in connection with those same lands. In 1866 the Puget Sound Agricultural Company owed the county of Pierce about $30,000 of delinquent taxes. Mr. Garfield made a written proposition to the authorities of Pierce county to collect the same for seven and one-half per cent. of the gross amount collected. This proposition was officially accepted by the County Commissioners and entered of record as a legal contract between the County and Mr. Garfield. Under this contract suit was instituted by Mr. Garfield and judgment for the amount obtained. The suit was appealed to the Supreme Court of the Territory and the judgment affirmed. It was then appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, but never brought to trial owing to the fact that the company had entered into an agreement whereby the United States purchased the lands. Before the arrangement was completed Mr. Garfield was elected to Congress, and the County Commissioners believing that this presented an opportunity for collecting their judgment by stopping that amount to the purchase money in the hands of the Government, applied to Mr. Garfield, both as retained Attorney and Delegate, to take the necessary steps to stop so much of the purchase money as was necessary to pay this judgment. To which Mr. Garfield replied, repudiating his existing contract and refusing to proceed further in the case unless the Commissioners would give him the entire control of the matter and allow him to retain one-third of what might be collected. The Commissioners declined to accept those forced terms and the consequences were that the County lost the whole amount through the perfidy and faithlessness of their retained Attorney.

Two years ago Mr. Garfield made a triumphant tour through this Territory as the recognized representative of the Northern Pacific Railroad—an enterprise upon the success of which the people then based all their hopes for the future prosperity of the country—and he made a majority of the people believe that every vote cast for him was a vote for the railroad, and every vote against him was a vote against the railroad; in fact, that the success of the railroad depended entirely upon his re-election, to perfect the projects which he had already inaugurated. With all the popularity of fact, combined with the most persuasive rhetoric, he described his personal share in securing the land grant, and the private assurance of Jay Cooke and others in interest, that it was to his influence they were mainly indebted for the success of the measure.

It was not then publicly known, as it is now, that for every service rendered the Railroad company he demanded his pay as its retained Attorney or a substituted Legislator; that taking advantage of his official position as the Delegate from Washington Territory, he first received a retainer of four thousand dollars from Hon. Holliday to advocate the rival interest of the Oregon Central road for an extension to Puget Sound; thus making it necessary for the Northern Pacific company to pay him a larger sum in order to secure his services; and that he actually took from Jay Cooke five thousand dollars, which was essentially a blackmail operation, besides taking in fee on both sides in the contest between the two companies for the right of way, and as might be expected of an attorney who will sell his client for a larger fee, he played false to both and false to his constituents; false to Ben. Holliday in taking no measure to secure his project, for which he had been paid; false to the Northern Pacific Company in not attempting to secure in the charter any means by which connections might be made at any point on the bound but at their final terminus, thus depriving them of the right of constructing branches to any of the towns on the Sound to the very great detriment of those towns; and false to the interests of his Territory by consenting to make the main road terminate at or near Portland, with only the privilege of a branch to Puget Sound, and false to the interests of the settlers in opposing in Congress an amendment limiting the sales of lands to actual settlers at $2.50 an acre; and now he comes again, with all this falsehood and treachery on his head, discarded and despised by the Railroad companies he first put under contribution and betrayed, and attempts to make interest with the settlers and loggers against the soulless monopoly to which he had sold their rights and interests for a price—the price of perfidy and double dealing.

Will you again trust a public servant who has heretofore used your suffrages only as capital to promote his own selfish and unscrupulous ends?

We all know what Mr. Garfield promised to do and has not done. We know that he has not during his term of office, secured to the Territory an appropriation for any purpose other than ordinary expenses, which he admits would have been passed without any Delegate there, and these appropriations amount to much less than to any other Territory, several of which are represented by Democrats not in accord with the party in power, and he is the author of no measure for the general benefit in which he had not a special personal interest.

We know that the last Territorial Legislature memorialized Congress on several matters of deep public interests, and that he did not present one of those memorials to Congress. His excuse was that he was not served with copies.—This many know to be a positive falsehood; George McConaha, our Representative in the Legislature, transmitted to him a certified copy of one of those memorials and his attention was specially called to it by many of his anxious constituents and yet he took no notice of it.

We allude to the memorial asking Congress to cede the mud flats on Duwamish Bay to the City of Seattle. The people of this City had a deep interest in this matter, because they had good reason to believe that if the city had the disposal of these lands they could make terms with the Northern Pacific railroad for terminus at this place, and they had reliable assurances upon which this belief was based. Mr. Garfield knew how much was at stake and he hoped, as in other cases, to force a subsidy for his influence. It was a wilful neglect of manifest public duty for a base motive. Every citizen of Seattle feels that it was a most perfidious betrayal of their interests, however Mr. Garfield may explain or attempt to explain.