Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/496

 These men had to sacrifice and strike them down. They did not take the three senior commodores to revise and prune the navy, who could have had no incentive but impartiality, and whose honor might have been relied upon. Commodore Stewart said that even they were not sufficiently informed to judge discreetly; yet these men took the responsibility of making places for themselves under circumstances the most unfortunate.

If you will permit me again, I will give you a quotation that is one of solemn import: "Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them; for it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret." It was a secret tribunal—an inquisition that struck down all alike. You may seek to compare it with the regulation of the army of the United States in 1815, and at other times; but there is no analogy between them. There the senior officers were selected. Why were they selected? Because they had no incentive to disregard the rights of subordinates, and according to their information they could retain or they could strike down or remove. There was no indelicacy, no injustice in that. The object of that was to retain efficiency; but it was not a measure like this. They could remove no superior. The law did not give them that power, but they could recommend for retention by the President of the United States such officers of the army, subordinate to themselves, as they thought proper or right. They might have had personal likings or dislikes, but these could not amount to much.

How different was the case here! Fifteen men were selected with power to gratify all their dislikes, to embody and band together all their antipathies, their aversions, their private slanders, their defamation if they chose, and with power to resort to the cumulative records of the Navy Department, running back for not less than thirty years. I was charged by the venerable Senator from Delaware with having gone back as far as 1838 and 1840 to call for information in relation to these gentlemen. I did not think there was anything very wrong in that; but here I find that Commodore Shubrick says they made "free use" of the records of the department; and what kind of criteria are they? They have been accumulating for years. Every slander which was sent there in relation to an officer was filed. These men themselves might have been preparing for this occasion; for more than five years ago it was designed to consummate this work, and bring about this "reform" in the navy. We may go back, in my opinion, to the period when this occurrence took place on board the Ohio, and such was Commodore Hull's opinion, as I think you will deduce from what I have read.

What kind of impartiality was exercised by the board? Could men act impartially under such circumstances? Did they know with any degree of certainty the character of half the officers upon whom they acted? But what have they done? Mark you, they had prepared a register a year before. They had been figuring and engineering on this subject. Some of these gentlemen the year before had drawn deductions, relying confidently on the consummation of this work, and I have no doubt a work of most iniquitous character. It was stated by the honorable Senator from Florida that there was no harm in these gentlemen dotting the register, and that there was no harm in the congress that was held in Commodore Skinner's office, which I narrated in my former speech. It was before they were appointed members of the board, but not before they knew that they would be appointed and indorsed; and because they were