Franklin W. Smith and the U. S. Navy

[David Lockmiller]

I re-read recently the story of Franklin W. Smith and his brother in F. B. Carpenter's book "The Inner Life of Abraham Lincoln. Six Months at the White House." Today, I read the story in the NYTimes from which I qouted in my original thread posting. The most interesting fact to me is that the Department of Justice has been investigating the allegations of multi-million dollar fraud for at least three years.

The narrative is so good in Carpenter's book, I thought that I would share it:

The celebrated case of Franklin W. Smith and brother, was one of those which most largely helped to bring military tribunals into public contempt. Those two gentlemen were arrested and kept in confinement, their papers seized, their business destroyed, their reputation damaged, and a naval court-martial, "organized to convict," pursued them unrelentingly till a wiser and juster (more just?) hand arrested the malice of their persecutors. It is known that President Lincoln, after full invetigation of the case, annulled the whole proceedings, but it is remarkable that the actual record of his decision could never be obtained from the Navy Department. An exact copy being withheld, the following was presented to the Boston Board of Trade as being very nearly the words of the late President: --

"Whereas, Franklin W. Smith had transactions with the Navy Department to the amount of one million and a quarter of a million of dollars; and whereas, he had the chance to steal a quarter of a million, and was only charged with stealing twety-two hundred dollars -- and the question now is about his stealing a hundred -- I don't believe he stole anything at all. Therefore, the record and findings are disapproved -- declared null and void, and the defendants are fully discharged."

"It would be difficult," says the New York "Tribune," "to sum up the rights and wrongs of the business more briefly than that, or to find a paragraph more characteristically and unmistakably Mr. Lincoln's."

-- "The Inner Life of Abraham Lincoln. Six Months at the White House." at pages 259-60.