The Washington correspondent of the New York Times . . .

. . . of the 6^th, has the following notice of an imposition on the President:

THE CONFIRMATION OF ZERMAN – You were informed last night that J. Napoleon Zerman, an exiled Austrian, lately on Gen’l Fremont’s Staff, had been confirmed by the Senate as a Brigadier General.  This fact has astounded the knowing ones of Washington, and especially the foreign diplomatic corps.  Count Mercier avers that when he was with the French Embassy at Madrid, he knew Zerman as a detected adventurer and imposter at that court, that his career, if romantic, as stated in the dispatches, has simply the romance of crime, that he is a convicted swindler and forger, who has served in the galleys and pined in the jails of Europe so often that such facts ceased to be novelties worth mentioning.  At the Navy Department, to-day, I learned that Gen. Zerman, a short time since, would have gladly accepted a position as master’s mate in our naval service, with the moderate stipend of $40 a month, but he was spared this obscure fate to rejoice in the star of an American Brigadier.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, May 17, 1862, p. 1