Sketches New and Old by Mark Twain

and calmly proceeded to destroy–

Two hundred and twenty acres of corn in the field, thirty-five acres of

wheat, and nine hundred and eighty-six head of live stock! [What a

singularly intelligent army we had in those days, according to Mr. Floyd

–though not according to the Congress of 1832.]

So Mr. Floyd decided that the Government was not responsible for that

$3,200 worth of rubbish which the Indians destroyed, but was responsible

for the property destroyed by the troops–which property consisted of (I

quote from the printed United States Senate document):

Dollars

Corn at Bassett’s Creek, …………… 3,000

Cattle, ………………………….. 5,000

Stock hogs, ………………………. 1,050

Drove hogs, ………………………. 1,204

Wheat, …………………………… 350

Hides, …………………………… 4,000

Corn on the Alabama River, …………. 3,500

Total, ………….18,104

That sum, in his report, Mr. Floyd calls the “full value of the property

destroyed by the troops.”

He allows that sum to the starving Fishers, TOGETHER WITH INTEREST FROM

1813. From this new sum total the amounts already paid to the Fishers

were deducted, and then the cheerful remainder (a fraction under forty

thousand dollars) was handed to then and again they retired to Florida in

a condition of temporary tranquillity. Their ancestor’s farm had now

yielded them altogether nearly sixty-seven thousand dollars in cash.

6. Does the reader suppose that that was the end of it? Does he suppose

those diffident Fishers we: satisfied? Let the evidence show. The

Fishers were quiet just two years. Then they came swarming up out of the

fertile swamps of Florida with their same old documents, and besieged

Congress once more. Congress capitulated on the 1st of June, 1860, and

instructed Mr. Floyd to overhaul those papers again, and pay that bill.

A Treasury clerk was ordered to go through those papers and report to Mr.

Floyd what amount was still due th emaciated Fishers. This clerk (I can

produce him whenever he is wanted) discovered what was apparently a

glaring and recent forgery in the paper; whereby a witness’s testimony as

to the price of corn in Florida in 1813 was made to name double the

amount which that witness had originally specified as the price! The

clerk not only called his superior’s attention to this thing, but in

making up his brief of the case called particular attention to it in

writing. That part of the brief never got before Congress, nor has

Congress ever yet had a hint of forgery existing among the Fisher papers.

Nevertheless, on the basis of the double prices (and totally ignoring the

clerk’s assertion that the figures were manifestly and unquestionably a

recent forgery), Mr. Floyd remarks in his new report that “the testimony,

particularly in regard to the corn crops, DEMANDS A MUCH HIGHER ALLOWANCE

than any heretofore made by the Auditor or myself.” So he estimates the

crop at sixty bushels to the acre (double what Florida acres produce),

and then virtuously allows pay for only half the crop, but allows two

dollars and a half a bushel for that half, when there are rusty old books

and documents in the Congressional library to show just what the Fisher

testimony showed before the forgery–viz., that in the fall of 1813 corn

was only worth from $1.25 to $1.50 a bushel. Having accomplished this,

what does Mr. Floyd do next? Mr. Floyd (“with an earnest desire to

execute truly the legislative will,” as he piously remarks) goes to work

and makes out an entirely new bill of Fisher damages, and in this new

bill he placidly ignores the Indians altogether puts no particle of the

destruction of the Fisher property upon them, but, even repenting him of

charging them with burning the cabins and drinking the whisky and

breaking the crockery, lays the entire damage at the door of the imbecile

United States troops down to the very last item! And not only that, but

uses the forgery to double the loss of corn at “Bassett’s Creek,” and

uses it again to absolutely treble the loss of corn on the “Alabama

River.” This new and ably conceived and executed bill of Mr. Floyd’s

figures up as follows (I copy again from the printed United States Senate

document):

The United States in account with the legal representatives

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