Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Kansas is a smart young State . . .

. . . and is getting on surprisingly in the arts of civilization, especially Finance.  A special committee of her Legislature has just presented Charles Robinson, Governor, John W. Robinson, Secretary of State, and George S. Hillyer, Auditor, as guilty of conspiring to swindle the State in the sale of State Bonds to the amount of $189,000.  Some 10 per cent. bonds, it appears, have been sold as low as forty cents on the dollar – that is, nominally sold to confederates, to be resold by them at 95!  By such financing, the State has been swindled out of over $40,000.  The report closes with the following:

Resolved, That Charles Robinson, Governor, John W. Robinson, Secretary of State and George S. Hillyer, Auditor of the State of Kansas, be and they are hereby impeached of high misdemeanors in office.

If this report is well founded, the gentlemen impeached will have earned their money before they get safely off with it.  The Conservative (Leavenworth) says:

“Unless the Legislature impeaches and removes these scoundrels, it will be the religious duty of the people to hang them.  And it will be done.”

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 1, 1862, p. 2

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