Dear Sir,

FROM THOMAS LAW.

I return the pamphlet with many thanks for the perusal of it. With heartfelt regret, I join with all the citizens of Washington in bidding you farewell. Mrs. Law unites with me in wishing you health and as much happiness as this life can afford. In most countries, those who leave the public treasury in a good state, have their own finances made flourishing also, but with you the "mens conscia recti," is the sole reward. I remain, with unfeigned esteem, respect, and regard,

THOS. LAW.

TO MRS. WOLCOTT.

WASHINGTON, January 31, 1801.

The Report of the Committee on my letter was unanimously agreed to and is entirely satisfactory. I have been treated with attention by the citizens and members of Congress. God be praised that my sincere exertions for the public good have not, as has sometimes happened to others, been ungratefully requited.

The stereotyped charges of defalcations and frauds in the public affairs with which that infamous organ of the Jefferson party, the Aurora, and the other Jacobin presses teemed, received a momentary stimulus from two occurrences of this winter. Fires successively took place in the buildings occupied by the War and Treasury Departments; in the former on the Sth day of November, in the latter on the 20th of January. Furions attacks were at once made upon the federal officers, of which Wolcott received his full proportion. He had been present at the fire in the War Department, and had recommended that the room to which it was at first confined, should not be opened until the arrival of assistance; advice, the neglect of which ensured the destruction of the building. He had also been present at that in the Treasury, and Mr. Dexter, the Secretary, being then in charge, and the fire being under control, had removed some trunks of his own book and papers to his lodgings. On these facts affidavits were manufactured charging him with preventing the

extinguishment of the fires, and with seizing the opportunity of the latter to abstract the public records. The fires as a matter of course were attributed to design, and party malignity vented itself in accusations of the most atrocious kind. The fact that the persons under whose charge the departments had so long been, had resigned, and that the party itself was on the eve of going out of power, that predictions of such occurrences had been among the thousand calumnies of hack editors, gave a temporary, but only a temporary color to these falsehoods.

Mr. Dexter as acting Secretary of War, and Secretary of the Treasury, was called upon by the House of Representatives to communicate such information as was in his power relative to the destruction of official books and papers in the respective offices, and the probable effect of their loss on the adjustment of unsettled accounts. As to the former he replied, that the rapidity with which the flames extended on the admission of air into the room. where it originated, had precluded the possibility of saving the books or papers in the apartments of the Secretary, but that those in the Accountant's office were preserved. It was not presumed that any consequences to effect the adjustment of unsettled accounts would follow from the loss of the papers in the Secretary's office, the original expenditures being, it is supposed, obtainable on the exhibition of the accounts growing from them; and it was not probable that any material injury would result from the losses sustained in the Accountant's office, which were but few. With regard to the fire in the Treasury, he reported that the papers in his own office, in those of the Comptroller, the Register, Treasurer, Commissioner of the Revenue, and Superintendent of Stamps, had been all, with a few immaterial exceptions, preserved. In the Auditor's office, some papers had been lost or injured, but

not to any serious extent, nor generally in cases where much inconvenience would result to the public.a

A committee of the House was appointed on the 10th of February, to examine into the causes of these occurrences. This committee consisted of Messrs. Nicholas, Macon, Livingston, Gallatin, Varnum, Harper, and Waln, the majority being among the most distinguished members of the opposition. Their report, from which the following is an extract, was made on the 28th of February.

"The committee having seen an assertion in a paper called the Cabinet, that, during the fire in the Treasury Department, persons were discovered in one of the rooms of that Department in circumstances which excited suspicion, the committee called on the Editor of that paper, and requested to be informed whether he could mention the names of any persons who were witnesses of that fact, or any other relating to the fires. By him they were referred to Lamson Pearson and Salem Roe, from whose depositions, and the deposition of John Woodsides, it appears that the persons thus discovered were Clerks of the Department employed in taking care of the books and papers.

It having been mentioned in the depositions of some of the witnesses, from whom the committee were taught to expect material information, that Mr. Oliver Wolcott, late Secretary of the Treasury, was seen at one end of the Treasury Department during the fire therein, loading a cart with boxes and papers, the committee considering it as a circumstance which might be made to excite suspicion, and believing it was due to Mr. Wolcott to investigate thoroughly a fact of this nature, which had been partially disclosed by their means, have taken several depositions on that subject which are herewith reported. From these depositions no suspicion can remain that the boxes were not Mr. Wolcott's private property.

The committee do not think it necessary to make a minute report of their opinion on the facts of the several cases, as the depositions themselves will afford more satisfactory information; they report on the general result of their enquiries, that it is probable the fire in the War Department was communicated from the fire place in the adjoining house; and that there is no evidence whatever, on which to found a suspicion of its originating in negligence or design; that as to the origin of the fire in the Treasury Department, they have obtained no evidence which enables them to form a conjecture satisfactory; it would only be in their power to make an abstract of the testimony; and in doing this they might add to or diminish its force, and therefore choose to report it only in the words of the witnesses themselves."

With regard to the fire in the War Department, the

testimony of the building itself was conclusive as to its origin, and with due respect to the opinion of the committee, the same might have been said of that in the Treasury; built of a single thickness of brick, and in the upper part of only the width of a brick in the partition walls, with wooden blocks in the fire places, gaping seams between the courses, and exhibiting marks of scorching on the wood work in the fire places of rooms where the conflagration had not reached, the offices temporarily hired for the several departments, seemed to have been constructed for the pillage of insurance companies. The testimony of the clerks showed too, that the fire originated in some book cases in a room directly behind the fire place of the Auditor's office, to which room the fire was chiefly confined.

The committee it will be seen, carefully confined their exculpation of Wolcott to the fact that the boxes he was seen to remove were his private property, leaving open the suspicion insinuated by the individuals who had made the statement, that he was not unwilling that the records. of the department should be destroyed; but the testimony of the principal clerks explained his declining to assume the direction of affairs, in the presence of Mr. Dexter, the Secretary, and in the fact that the fire was already under control. A suit was afterwards trumped up against Mr. Dexter, in the name of the individual who owned the building in which the War Office was situated, the real object of which was a political one. Upon some papers in the cause, preserved by Wolcott, is endorsed the following:

a

MEMORANDUM.

LITCHFIELD, CONN., 1825.

While I was attending a Circuit Court of the United States, at Albany, in the fall of the year 1801, the interrogatories subjoined were presented to the Hon

VOL. II.

a Hodgson vs. Dexter, I. Cranch, 345.

41

ourable James Kent to obtain my answers on oath. On perusing them, I perceived at once that a snare had been prepared by my political adversaries at Washington, to obtain minute answers to a great variety of questions affecting my honour and the characters of public men with whom I had been associated in the public service. I determined at once that I would not answer any interrogatories out of court, but would go to Washington, and there meet any accusations which any politicians or others might have the hardihood to adduce. I appeared at Washington, visited Mr. Jefferson, the Vice-President, the Heads of Departments, and Speaker of the House of Representatives. When the Court convened, I attended, and presented the interrogatories which had been sent to Albany, and offered myself to meet any inquiry which might be instituted. I stated that I would not voluntarily answer such questions, but would submit myself to any order of the court. The interrogatories were read before a numerous and respectable audience, from all parts of the country, and they excited general disgust and indignation. The intriguers soon perceived that their trap had been sprung, without injury to those for whom it had been set. They fell to quarrelling among themselves in presence of the court, who commanded silence. I was then sworn in open court, and put in the answer, of which a copy is recorded, which explained the cause of the fire, in a manner wholly satisfactory to the audience.

I consider the manner in which the interrogatories which were sent to Albany were framed, as one of the most flagitious and profligate devices of party malice, of which I have any knowledge. I PRESERVE THE PAPERS AS COLUMBUS IS SAID TO HAVE PRESERVED HIS CHAINS, AS MEMORIALS OF THE INDIGNITIES I HAVE SUFFERED WHILE IN THE SERVICE OF THE UNITED STATES, FROM THE EVIL EFFECTS OF WHICH, I HAVE BEEN PROTECTED BY THE KIND PROVIDENCE OF A MERCIFUL AND JUST GOD.

The interrogatories certainly merited the appellation bestowed upon them. They were prepared with great minuteness and the utmost professional art. The cross examination of a house-breaker's suspected accomplice could not have exhibited a more searching ingenuity. They were directed not to any of the legitimate objects of the suit, but solely to the implication of Wolcott in the firing of the War Department, to conceal frauds, of which it was assumed to have been the scene, and in an alleged obstruction, even by personal violence, ! of attempts to extinguish it. The source from which this dastardly and scandalous blow at the reputation of men of pure and unsullied character proceeded, was well understood. The Mr. Joseph Hodgson who appeared as plaintiff on the record, was but the cat's-paw of more distinguished