Called on Secretary McCulloch to-day in relation to payment of our requisitions which the Comptroller, under the impression he is the government, has rejected. He sees the difficulty and the necessity of doing away with the objections interposed by the Comptroller, but yet knows not how to do it.
Senator Sumner called on me in relation to the case of the Smiths, or rather he introduced that subject among others in his visit. He usually calls on me for half an hour or an hour's conversation Saturday afternoon. He read me two or three letters from Boston correspondents, lauding his course and censuring the prosecution. They had touched his weak point. He was feeling well and was ready now to “do something for these men, who had been greatly, deeply wronged.” I asked him if he was satisfied the government had not been injured by their transactions. He said the government could have been injured to but a small amount in very extensive transactions, and the injury, if there was any, only a single article, on which the government was under a strange misapprehension. Mr. Hooper was cited as authority in the matter of Banca and Revlly tin, which he claimed was identical. I told him the last Prices Current showed a difference of eight cents a pound. But I asked him what he had to say of the transaction of the Smiths in regard to anchors, an article in which they did not deal, but for which they had by some means and for some purpose got the contract; had them by collusion paid for in May; they were arrested on the 17th of June, when the articles, though paid for, were not all delivered. They had underlet the contract to Burns, who made the deliveries, and the anchors were many of them worthless, would not pass inspection; and the arrest before full and final delivery was plead as the excuse, although requisition had been issued in May. What of the files, machine-cut, instead of hand-cut as contracted? What of the combination with Henshaw not to bid, whereby they got a contract for a number of hundred tons of iron at $62.50, when other parties sold at the same time for $53? Sumner had not looked into these matters. He could not answer me. I showed him the correspondence of the Smiths with the Trenton Iron Company, expressly stipulating for inferior iron to be delivered to the navy yard, if it would pass inspection. After reading, he said he did not like the transaction. Evidently knew not the case in which he had interfered. I stated to him Ambrister case, and asked his advice how to proceed, when had confessed and made full restitution, while the Smiths had done neither, and were pardoned.
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