Daily Ohio statesman. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1855-1870, 1864-05-28
A ScOrching Article ON Secretary
stanton = The HURT Quarter
mnster COrruptIOns.
From the New York World.l

D.
tH-. From the New York Worldl
Whether the military should be subordi-
nate to the civil authority, as our fathers
taught, or override it and trample it in the
dust, as this administration practices, is a
question of which men may take the wrong
side without necessarily covering them
selves with inTamy; for it is but another
torn of the old question between civil lib
erty and despotism, on which men in some
ages of the world have honestly differed.
But there is one point OH which men never
differed, and OH which honest difference OF
| opinion is impossible. Theft and embezzle-
ment never ranked as virtues either under
despotism or in democracy. No person
intrusted with any branch of military adj
ministration can defraud the government
under which he Is acting without intamy,
or screen such frauds. if he be the head of
a department, without becoming an accom-
plice i'm the frauds and q sharer in the just
disgrace. 9sl.
| In considering the character of Secretary
| Stanton, we will lay out of view for the
| present the evidences of his incapacity.
| That he has, in repeated instances, COM
mitted great campaigns to Generals having
courage without brains, OF courage without
experience, may be the simple consequence
/ of his theory that strategy is Il form of
atheism. That Pope was failure; that
| Burnside was failure; that Hooker was a
! failure: that Banks is a failure; that Sigel is
a failure; that Butler is a failure; that nu
merous others intrusted by him with less
| important and conspicuous commands have
| been failures, may not tend to strengthen
public confidence in the soundness of Sec
| retary Stanton's judgment; but it is posi-
BILE for man to be preposterously wrong
headed, and yet be personally honest We
can even conceive that his illegal arrests
| might be prompted by n narrow but honest
! bigotry-like Burnside's toreXample, whose
uprlghtness of intention nobody ever doubt
ed. We lay all such matters out of view.
1t is not our present purpose to prove that
Mr.. Stanton is unfit to be Secretary OF War,
but that he is unfit to hold any office of trust.
Why is Major Mclean, of Ohio, exiled to
the most distant and inaccessible point in
our terrtory-Fort Vancouver, on the Pa
cific, in the extreme northwestern corner
of the republic2 Major Mclean was order
ed to that remote outpost last November,
he being most important witness in trial
by court martial then soon to take place in
| Cincinnati. The culprit to be tried was
Captain L. w. HURT, Assistant Quarter
master in the Department of the Ohio; the
charges, four in number, with some twenty
or thirty specifications, developed long
continued, widely ramitied, system of
accomplices were persons having intimate
relations with distinguished member of
the Cabinet, one of them being III. ID.
Cooke, of the firm of Jay Cooke & CO., and
another partner of Hurtt, in the proprie-
torship of the Ohio State Journal, the organ
of Secretary Chase at Columbus. The evil
| dence against HURT consisted, in part, of
| letters written by him to Geo. B. Scott, an
other accomplice and sharer in the profits
of the fraudulent transactions, some of
which letters are recited verbdttm in
the specifications of the Judge Advocate,
| and are important as indicating the sources
of the oral testimony which ought to have
been produced at the trial. This widely
ramified and long-continued system OF
heavy frauds and embeZzlements had been
traced out by the industry of Major Mclean
who, on frivolous and dishonest preteXt,
was spirited away to Fort Vancouver in the
most remote and out-of-the-way corner of
our Pacific frontier. Considering who Jay
Cooke & Co. are, and considering who the
proprietors of the Ohio State Journal are.
| the developments before that court-lnartial,
had the trial been permitted, were likely to
prove sufficiently awkward and embarrass-
| ing; but that will hardly be accepted by the
country as justifiable reason for first spir-
| iting away the most material witness in a
| case of wholesale embezzlement, and then
quashing the proceedings, by dissolving the
court-martial at Cincinnati and ordering
| the case and papers to be transferred to
| Washington, several hundred miles from
the residence of the other witnesses cog
infant of the facts.
The gigantic scheme of plunder and en-
beZzlement had grown up at Cincinnati be-
fore General Burnside was transferred to
the West Under his administration, it
was tracked out and dragged to light, a
court-martial appointed, and the charges
| and specifications drawn up by Major Bur-
nett, the judge-advocate Of the Depart
ment of the Ohio. The trial was to have
taken place in the beginning of December
last, and for want of better pretext to get
Major Mclean out of the way, he was BAN
ished to Fort Vancouver; for--not voting In
| the November electionl General Burn
side, who, with some weaknesses, is un.
doubtedly an honest man, opposed this ex-
traordinary proceeding, both on other
grounds and because Major McLean's tes-
/ timony was wanted in the approaching
| trial. The delay consequent on this oppo-
sition proving likely to defeat the purpose
of the War Department, the trial was post
| poned, and Major Mclean, in disregard OF
| General Burnside's wishes, was perempto-
rily ordered to leave at once and to inform
the department what day he would start.
We submit this simple recital OF facts
leaving readers to form their own conclu-
sions.
THE Ashland Union thus announces SER
vice in one of the churches of that town: