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