Chapter XIV: The A. B. Plot

On Monday, the 19th of April, the Speaker of the House (Mr. Clay) laid before that body a note just received from Ninian Edwards, Esq., late Senator in Congress, from Illinois, and then Minister to Mexico, and then on his way to his post, requesting him to present to the House a communication which accompanied the note, and which charged illegalities and misconduct on the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. William H. Crawford. The charges and specifications, spread through a voluminous communication, were condensed at its close into six regular heads of accusation, containing matter of impeachment; and declaring them all to be susceptible of proof, if the House would order an investigation. The communication was accompanied by ten numbers of certain newspaper publications, signed A. B., of which Mr. Edwards avowed himself to be the author, and asked that they might be received as a part of his communication, and printed along with it, and taken as the specifications under the six charges. Mr. Crawford was then a prominent candidate for the Presidency, and the A. B. papers, thus communicated to the House, were a series of publications made in a Washington City paper, during the canvass, to defeat his election, and would doubtless have shared the usual fate of such publications, and sunk into oblivion after the election was over, had it not been for this formal appeal to the House (the grand inquest of the nation) and this call for investigation. The communication, however, did not seem to contemplate an early investigation, and certainly not at the then session of Congress. Congress was near its adjournment; the accuser was on his way to Mexico; the charges were grave; the specifications under them numerous and complex; and many of them relating to transactions with the remote western banks. The evident expectation of the accuser was, that the matter would lie over to the next session, before which time the presidential election would take place, and all the mischief be done to Mr. Crawford's character, resulting from unanswered accusations of so much gravity, and so imposingly laid before the impeaching branch of Congress. The friends of Mr. Crawford saw the necessity of immediate action; and Mr. Floyd of Virginia, instantly, upon the reading of the communication, moved that a committee be appointed to take it into consideration, and that it be empowered to send for persons and papers--to administer oaths--take testimony--and report it to the House; with leave to sit after the adjournment, if the investigation was not finished before; and publish their report. The committee was granted, with all the powers asked for, and was most unexceptionably composed by the speaker (Mr. Clay); a task of delicacy and responsibility, the Speaker being himself a candidate for the Presidency, and every member of the House a friend to some one of the candidates, including the accused. It consisted of Mr. Floyd, the mover; Mr. Livingston, of Louisiana; Mr. Webster, of Massachusetts; Mr. Randolph, of Virginia; Mr. J. W. Taylor, of New-York; Mr. Duncan McArthur, of Ohio; and Mr. Owen, of Alabama.

The sergeant-at-arms of the House was immediately dispatched by the committee in pursuit of Mr. Edwards: overtook him at fifteen hundred miles; brought him back to Washington; but did not arrive until Congress had adjourned. In the mean time, the committee sat, and received from Mr. Crawford his answer to the six charges: an answer pronounced by Mr. Randolph to be "a triumphant and irresistible vindication; the most temperate, passionless, mild, dignified, and irrefragable exposure of falsehood that ever met a base accusation; and without one harsh word towards their author." This was the true character of the answer; but Mr. Crawford did not write it. He was unable at that time to write any thing. It was written and read to him as it went on, by a treasury clerk, familiar with all the transactions to which the accusations related--Mr. Asbury Dickens, since secretary of the Senate. This Mr. Crawford told himself at the time, with his accustomed frankness. His answer being mentioned by a friend, as a proof that his paralytic stroke had not affected his strength, he replied, that was no proof--that Dickens wrote it. The committee went on with the case (Mr. Edwards represented by his son-in-law, Mr. Cook), examined all the evidence in their reach, made a report unanimously concurred in, and exonerating Mr. Crawford from every dishonorable or illegal imputation. The report was accepted by the House; but Mr. Edwards, having far to travel on his return journey, had not yet been examined; and to hear him the committee continued to sit after Congress had adjourned. He was examined fully, but could prove nothing; and the committee made a second report, corroborating the former, and declaring it as their unanimous opinion--the opinion of every one present--"that nothing had been proved to impeach the integrity of the Secretary, or to bring into doubt the general correctness and ability of his administration of the public finances."

The committee also reported all the testimony taken, from which it appeared that Mr. Edwards himself had contradicted all the accusations in the A. B. papers; had denied the authorship of them; had applauded the conduct of Mr. Crawford in the use of the western banks, and their currency in payment of the public lands, as having saved farmers from the loss of their homes; and declared his belief, that no man in the government could have conducted the fiscal and financial concerns of the government with more integrity and propriety than he had done. This was while his nomination as minister to Mexico was depending in the Senate, and to Mr. Noble, a Senator from Indiana, and a friend to Mr. Crawford. He testified:

"That he had had a conversation with Mr. Edwards, introduced
by Mr. E. himself, concerning Mr. Crawford's management of the
western banks, and the authorship of the A. B. letters. That it
was pending his nomination made by the President to the Senate,
as minister to Mexico. He (Mr. E.) stated that he was about to
be attacked in the Senate, for the purpose of defeating his
nomination: that party and political spirit was now high; that
he understood that charges would be exhibited against him,
and that it had been so declared in the Senate. He further
remarked, that he knew me to be the decided friend of William H.
Crawford, and said, I am considered as being his bitter enemy;
and I am charged with being the author of the numbers signed A.
B.; but (raising his hand) I pledge you my honor, I am not the
author, nor do I know who the author is. Crawford and I, said
Mr. Edwards, have had a little difference; but I have always
considered him a high-minded, honorable, and vigilant officer
of the government. He has been abused about the western banks
and the unavailable funds. Leaning forward, and extending his
hand, he added, now damn it, you know we both live in States
where there are many poor debtors to the government for lands,
together with a deranged currency. The notes on various banks
being depreciated, after the effect and operation of the war
in that portion of the Union, and the banks, by attempting to
call in their paper, having exhausted their specie, the notes
that were in circulation became of little or no value. Many men
of influence in that country, said he, have united to induce
the Secretary of the Treasury to select certain banks as banks
of deposit, and to take the notes of certain banks in payment
for public land. Had he (Mr. Crawford) not done so, many of our
inhabitants would have been turned out of doors, and lost their
land; and the people of the country would have had a universal
disgust against Mr. Crawford. And I will venture to say, said
Mr. Edwards, notwithstanding I am considered his enemy, that
no man in this government could have managed the fiscal and
financial concerns of the government with more integrity and
propriety than Mr. Crawford did. He (Mr. Noble) had never
repeated this conversation to any body until the evening of the
day that I (he) was informed that Gov. Edwards' 'address' was
presented to the House of Representatives. On that evening, in
conversation with several members of the House, amongst whom
were Mr. Reid and Mr. Nelson, some of whom said that Governor
Edwards had avowed himself to be the author of A. B., and others
said that he had not done so, I remarked, that they must have
misunderstood the 'address,' for Gov. Edwards had pledged his
honor to me that he was not the author of A. B."

Other witnesses testified to his denials, while the nomination was depending, of all authorship of these publications: among them, the editors of the National Intelligencer,--friends to Mr. Crawford. Mr. Edwards called at their office at that time (the first time he had been there within a year), to exculpate himself from the imputed authorship; and did it so earnestly that the editors believed him, and published a contradiction of the report against him in their paper, stating that they had a "good reason" to know that he was not the author of these publications. That "good reason," they testified, was his own voluntary denial in this unexpected visit to their office, and his declarations in what he called a "frank and free" conversation with them on the subject. Such testimony, and the absence of all proof on the other side, was fatal to the accusations, and to the accuser. The committee reported honorably and unanimously in favor of Mr. Crawford; the Congress and the country accepted it; Mr. Edwards resigned his commission, and disappeared from the federal political theatre: and that was the end of the A. B. plot, which had filled some newspapers for a year with publications against Mr. Crawford, and which might have passed into oblivion, as the current productions and usual concomitants of a Presidential canvass, had it not been for their formal communication to Congress as ground of impeachment against a high officer. That communication carried the "six charges," and their ten chapters of specifications, into our parliamentary history, where their fate becomes one of the instructive lessons which it is the province of history to teach. The newspaper in which the A. B. papers were published, was edited by a war-office clerk, in the interest of the war Secretary (Mr. Calhoun), to the serious injury of that gentleman, who received no vote in any State voting for Mr. Crawford.