“Revelations of an astonishing character”
On Jan. 22, 1873, Representative Oakes Ames joined an exclusive Washington club.
Ames had already appeared several times before the House committee investigating the Credit Mobilier scandal resulting from his sale of stock in the immensely profitable Union Pacific construction subsidiary to members of Congress.
This time, he testified that the prominent politicians – including the vice president – who claimed that they had not bought stock from him were lying.
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Oakes Ames. Library of Congress photo.
The sensational testimony opened an extraordinary new chapter in the political drama opened by the New York Sun with its exposé of the Credit Mobilier stock sales. The normally restrained Cincinnati Gazette characterized Ames’s testimony as “Revelations of An Astonishing Character.”
Ames’s day-long testimony could be described as one of the first examples of a unique kind of story-changing Washington moment familiar to students of modern scandals and controversies. They include:
Joseph Welch confronting Sen. Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin in 1954 about his witch hunt for Communists: “Have you no sense of decency sir?”
Alexander Butterfield, appearing in 1973 before the Senate Watergate committee to reveal the existence of a previously secret tape-recording system at the White House.
Oliver North testifying before the joint committee investigating the Iran-Contra scandal.
Each of these episodes fundamentally changed the narrative of the political drama in which they occurred. Welch’s indignant rebuke McCarthy and his attorney, Roy Cohn, marked the beginning of the end of the communist witch hunt. Butterfield’s revelations ultimately made it impossible for President Nixon to hide his role in Watergate behind executive privilege. North effectively deflected his congressional inquisitors as Congress probed the scheme to arm Nicaraguan rebels with proceeds from the weapons sales to Iran.
Ames’s testimony proved just as momentous.
After the New York Sun published its exposé on Sept. 4, 1872, many members implicated by the story denied buying shares from Ames. They included Vice President Schuyler Colfax, who bought stock from Ames while Speaker of the House, James A. Garfield of Ohio, and Sen. Henry Wilson of Massachusetts, nominated by Republicans in June to succeed Colfax as vice president.
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Luke Potter Poland of Vermont. Library of Congress photo.
When the investigative committee led by Luke Potter Poland of Vermont began its inquiry, it heard from Ames behind closed doors. The Massachusetts Republican recounted his transactions with his colleagues and testified frankly as to his motivation for selling the stock.
“I strove to use them” – referring to the stock – “in a way that I thought most advantageous in spreading our influence everywhere,” he admitted.
At the time, there appeared to be little danger posed by Ames’s evidence. Although the committee kept a transcript of its proceedings, the closed-door inquiry seemed to guarantee that few would learn of his testimony.
But public outcry over the secret inquiry forced the House to open the proceedings and release the committee transcripts when Congress returned to Washington in early January.
Suddenly, Ames’s testimony was before the public – and the lawmakers he identified could no longer count on the protection afforded by secret hearings.
One lawmaker after another testified under oath to Poland and his colleagues that they did not buy Credit Mobilier stock from Ames – or backed out shortly after agreeing to the purchase. Garfield actually claimed that he didn’t even know what Credit Mobilier was as he talked to Ames.
Ames and others affiliated with the Union Pacific and Credit Mobilier steamed as they watched the parade of prevarication. Thomas C. Durant, once a vice president of the Union Pacific and a corporate rival of Ames, watched the spectacle with contempt.
Members who bought Credit Mobilier stock from Ames could have avoided all the controversy if they had simply admitted to it at the outset. “But they winced, made up pitiful martyr mouths … and tried to wriggle out of it,” Durant told the Sun.
The investigation seemed stalled. Worse, from Ames’s standpoint, he was being made out as the villain while the members of Congress who lined up to buy his valuable stock were seen as no worse than innocent dupes. “His motives,” the New York Times sniffed, “seemed to have been far from pure.”
Ames decided to fight back. The counter-offensive actually began Jan. 21. Sen. James Patterson, a one-time school teacher and scatter-brained New Hampshire intellectual who had firmly denied buying Credit Mobilier shares from Ames when he first testified to the Poland committee, came back to meekly concede that he had, in fact, bought the stock after all.
Trembling “like one of the delinquents he used to torture in the classroom,” Patterson looked on as Ames destroyed his claim. “The senator’s case looked well when he finished it,” the New York Tribune reported, “but Ames demolished it in a few minutes.”
That was just the beginning. The next day, Ames rebutted claims made by Garfield, Sen. William Boyd Allison of Iowa and others with testimony about payments received and stock dividends distributed to congressional Credit Mobilier shareholders.
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Schuyler Colfax. Library of Congress photo.
Colfax, the vice president who would soon be succeeded by Wilson, looked particularly bad. As the Poland committee’s first public witness, Colfax claimed he never bought Credit Mobilier shares from Ames, although he admitted paying $500 toward the purchase. On Jan. 22, Ames testified that not only did Colfax buy the stock, he received $1,200 in dividends.
Despite some initial discomfort, Ames seemed to revel in his new role. “He does not shrink with the air of one ashamed,” the Washington Evening Star noted. “His fills out his wide arm-chair to its capacity. He is the most self-possessed man at the table.”
Mortified members of Congress gathered in small groups in the Capitol to speculate about the implications of Ames’s new aggressiveness.
Garfield, for one, had no doubt as to what it meant. “He is evidently determined to drag down as many men with him as possible,” the future president noted in his diary. “He seems to me as bad a man as can well be.”
Garfield had good reason to fume. Ames’s testimony undercut attempts by his purchasers to avoid the fallout from the scandal. Durant may well have been right – if they had simply told the truth at the outset they would have stayed out of trouble.
The investigation by Poland’s committee had weeks yet to go. There would be more damaging information from Ames. In the Sun, Ames ally John Alley offered an ominous warning: “Some of these weak-kneed congressmen will wish they had pursued a different course.”
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Congress and the King of Frauds: Corruption and the Credit Mobilier Scandal at the Dawn of the Gilded Age, now available at amazon.com.
