| From the Richmond Daily Dispatch |
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| January 17, 1863 |
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| How speculators get Transportation |
| Curious Developments. One case among the
thousand which are occurring in the Confederacy has come to official
cognizance, showing how speculators — those pests of society — use
the Government for their own purposes. The grand jury of the
Confederate District Court at
Mobile
has made a presentment, a copy of which has been forwarded to
President Davis. An extract from the presentment will explain itself: |
| The matter in question relates to the
widespread perversion and abuse by Government officers, as these
jurors believe, of the public transportation to
purposes of personal emolument and speculation. They find, among other
facts of the same nature, and conspicuous among them, that George B.
Clitheral, a resident of the city of Mobile, at or about the month of
March of the present year, after having procured, through the agency
of A. R. Powell, of Montgomery, an order from Maj. W. S. Gen, General
Transportation Agent at Richmond, for
the forwarding of public supplies from New Orleans to Montgomery,
proceeded to have transported there, under large quantities, sugar and
molasses, which were to a very small extent, if any at all, Government
army stores, but almost entirely the property of private speculators,
and the subject of enormous profits; the amount whereof they cannot
more accurately define than by stating that they were not less than
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Those jurors further find that
while this transportation of pretended
public supplies was monopolizing the railroads to enrich a few
interested individuals, the whole community of the State, together
with the State and General Government themselves were daily and deeply
suffering the most serious detriment by their almost complete
exclusion from the use of said roads. |
| They further find that the goods in
question were several times arrested in their transit by the vigilance
of officials, who doubted the pretence that they were Government
property, notwithstanding the same were fraudulently marked "C.
S. A.;" and that on every such occasion, Mr. Clitheral, who
sometimes verbally described himself as a Government agent, but was
really the salaried agent of the unknown speculators, represented that
they were public supplies, and the authorities at Richmond having
charge of such matters, when telegraphed upon the subject, confirmed
this erroneous statement by directing that the goods should be
permitted to go on, or by referring to the original authority in the
hands of Major Calhoun, at Montgomery, who, upon a similar
application, returned the same answer and direction. |
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